How different might things be if CNN or Monsieur Jordan had the courage to tell the truth 12 years ago? How can these lying journalists be held accountable? This is absolutley sickening.

Rush is on this right now. And his point is well taken. Could not Mr Jordon have spoken to his anchors (Woodruff, Brown, etc)and told them what he knew so that their coverage would have been a little less accepting of Saddam and a little less skeptical of the Bush Administration. Ditto, the left in general and the Democratic Party in particular. If Jordon knew this stuff, all the other news executives knew. The cocktail parties must have been abuzz with this information. It didn't bother them one wit. It was more important that they maintain their stance against President Bush. They have not one moral leg to stand on.

What else are they afraid to tell us the truth about?

FLOOD THE ZONE on this.

Yeah, I saw this at breakfast this morning and couldn't finish eating.

My stomach literally turned at the matter-of-fact way the head of the CNN bureau admitted his complicity in covering up brutality.

I await Big Media's deafening silence on this; but if they want to know why no one takes them seriously, here it is.

I don't see this as an embarassment for the Left on the subject of Saddam's brutality - they are already neck-deep on that - as much as I see it as an indictment of corporate media.

A.L.

Not that this ever was in doubt, of course, but if Jordan was aware of these ineffable barbarisms one can only guess at the botomless amount of information of this nature that Chirac, Schroeder and Putin were carrying around. Inspect that, a**holes!

A.L. The Left have not YET embarassed themselves on this issue. But they will, and more, IF they remain silent.

This is a literal example of a multinational corporation who deliberately, knowingly fattened its bottom line on the blood of the opressed. You can't get a more quintessential liberal/ leftist cause than that.

If the Left and American liberals decide this can be ignored or downplayed because it hindered action in Iraq (am I the only one wondering if Clinton might have gone ahead in 1998 had CNN and others acted ethically?), they will reveal themselves to lack even an ounce of belief in one of their most fervently-claimed doctrines. It won't be the first time, either... and the commonality binding these incidents together is that in every case, the silence or even shilling was chosen over a course that might defend the USA or make it look good.

After a while, the consistency of the coincidence makes one suspect that the pattern one sees is the reality, and the specific examples merely symptoms.

Here's another take from Rush. Remember when hillery on the floor of the Senate held up the paper with the headline BUSH KNEW referring to 9/11. How about a newspaper with a picturer of a torture chamber/rape room over the headline CNN KNEW!

Sorry to flood the zone on this but Scott Ritter has just made a similar confession in Time Magazine. (Andrew Sullivan links to it). He saw the children's prison back in 1998 but did not want to talk about it because those who were promoting war against Iraq at the time could have use the information to their advantage. And at that time Ritter says he was "waging peace".

A timely quote from long-time CNN anchor Bernard Shaw, published yesterday in Hartford Courant interview, speaking of recent journalistic gaffes:

"I don't know what he was thinking," Shaw says of Rivera. As for his former colleague, Arnett? "I have not talked to him, but my impression from afar is that he was trying to ingratiate himself with Iraqi officials. And I suspect that in the back of his mind is that he'd have such relationships with the officials that it would ultimately lead to an exclusive interview with Saddam Hussein."

"I thought it was embarrassingly sad in both instances, what each man did," says Shaw, known for his serious-minded interviews and unflappable on-air demeanor. "They violated the most precious relationship a journalist has with his readers, viewers and listeners. And that is trust. Credibility is all a journalist has. When you lose it, or when you undermine your credibility, you might as well take down your shingle."

I turn the task of fitting commentary over to my fellow commentarians, for I am flummoxed into silence. Here's the whole article:

http://www.ctnow.com/news/local/hc-stan0409.artapr09,0,7910304.column?coll=hc-headlines-local

For God's sake---why in the world are you using this to attack the left? We knew horrible things were happening in this regime that we helped install, just as we know of terrible abuses in other regimes. Why use every piece of news as a cause to skewer the left? If we had a Democratic president right now, you'd all be turning this back on us as a mistake. Sometimes you all just sound like a bunch of frat boys.

To the person above me, Diane...

The press exists to police governments. Yes our government knew terrible things were happening when they were allied with Saddam Hussein. Guess what, it was the press's job to expose that. (It was the government's job to create the necessary alliances to combat threats as they best percieved them.) So when the press itself becomes a party to the duplicity of a government, which CNN has certainly done by keeping known instances of brutal murder, kidnap and torture hush hush on behalf of Saddam, right-minded Americans get good and pissed off. And since all the CNN anchors have been such great leftist mouthpieces it's not a stretch of the imagination to say that this is just another example of the left being hypocritical and illogical and just plain stupid.

Joyce had me pegged exactly - until the last sentence. No, I don't consider CNN's actions to be motivated by ideology. It's pretty clear that profit and ratings were the only things on their minds, to the exclusion of everything else. Including decency and ethics.

The question is, having done what they did, will they face the slightest criticism from the Left? My bet is no, they won't... and Diane's reaction actually lends force to that belief.

"We knew horrible things were happening in this regime that we helped install,"

No, we didn't really know. That's like, the whole point here with respect to CNN's collaboration.

Second, we did not help install the Ba'ath Party, a socialist client of the Soviet Union from Day 1 who overthrew a British-backed monarchy related to Jordan's. So, right away we have a failure to tell the truth here, as part of an attempt to say "we're all responsible" and avoid thinking about this. CNN wasn't the collaborator here - get it? We all were.

Sorry, doesn't wash. And THIS is exactly the kind of silence and shilling I expected to hear from the left - complete with a mindless "frat boy" slur at the end that's about... nothing, it seems.

But I guess it's a lot easier than condenming a profit-hungry multinational who found it easier to lie about torture and death; and a lie by omission is still a lie. But if they condemn CNN, it raises uncomfortabe questions. Questions like, "where was the Left," and why was it silent too all this time?"

So CNN gets a pass. The subject will be changed, blame broadened if possible. And the Left? It stands for nothing. Nothing expect its eternal wish to blame the USA for all that's wrong with the world. Even when the result of their evasions contradicts their most fondly stated principles.

Even if, as we saw right here, the required evasions are untrue.

Actually, the left I know has despised CNN for some time. It's the television version of USA Today - News Mcnuggets, repeated ad nauseum with tacky graphics and music, by personalities who lack anything close to a personality. I prefer almost any news to CNN, including Fox, which at least reveals its heart on its ticker. CNN tries to inform us how neutral they are while eagerly shilling for their media siblings and creating as much false 'drama" as any small town new show with a truck and a Macintosh that can make nifty slides and charts.

I guess I'm not too shocked by the revelations. I think I assumed that most media agencies these days put their entertainment value first, and for a network like CNN, you gotta have the lead story - that's the entertainment you're selling. A guy standing on a rooftop in Kuwait just isn't the same as one ducking missiles while asking how the soldiers "feel" about getting letters from home.

I see CNN - and even places like Fox - as neither left nor right wing - just businesspeople with a keen eye on the bottom line as well as the headlines. Neither of those lines has anything to do with what we used to consider journalist standards of ethics or telling the truth in any general way. It's all about getting butts in the seats and remotes out of reach.

If you actually read what I wrote I didn't say we installed the Ba'ath party. You did though. I said "Yes our government knew terrible things were happening when they were allied with Saddam Hussein."

You said, "We knew horrible things were happening in this regime that we helped install, just as we know of terrible abuses in other regimes."

I don't get it. Why are you pointing out your own mistake and accusing me of being the one who made it?

oh oops, sorry! i didnt read the name at the bottom. my bad.

just wanted to apologize again =D havent slept in like 48 hours...although that's not really an excuse for not reading all the way through before responding

S'okay, Joyce. Hope you caught some sleep at last. Peace.

When I first read this piece I couldn't believe that it was being used to bash the Left. CNN is not a mouth piece of the Left nor are it's anchors. It frightens me to think how Right you have to be to consider CNN Left.

If CNN are Left why did they delete the few paragraphs of Blix's report to the UN that didn't support Bush's pro-war agenda? Why did they amplify the booing of Michael Moore's Oscar speech?