Remember Eason Jordan’s 2003 admission that CNN had withheld information about conditions in Iraq in order to protect employees and maintain access? Never mind that CNN’s cooperation presented a distorted view of the actual conditions in Iraq, it was more important to have a story rather than a true story. That decision ultimately cost Jordan his job.

Three years later the Jordan doctrine appears to be popping up again in CNN’s coverage of the Israeli-Hezbollah knife fight. Nic Robertson reported on civilian casualties in a July 18th piece which showed Israel hitting targets with no military value. Newsbusters reports that on the 23rd he added a number of caveats to the story:

Challenged by Reliable Sources host (and Washington Post media writer) Howard Kurtz on Sunday, Robertson suggested Hezbollah has “very, very sophisticated and slick media operations,” that the terrorist group “had control of the situation. They designated the places that we went to, and we certainly didn’t have time to go into the houses or lift up the rubble to see what was underneath,” and he even contradicted Hezbollah’s self-serving spin: “There’s no doubt that the [Israeli] bombs there are hitting Hezbollah facilities.”

But the closest Robertson came to making any of these points in the taped package that aired last week was admitting that “we [he and his CNN crew] didn’t go burrowing into all the houses,” after pointing out (for the second time) that “we didn’t see any military type of equipment” in the area Hezbollah chose to let them tour.

Five days later, Robertson argued that “journalistic integrity” required skepticism: “When you hear their [Hezbollah’s] claims, they have to come with more than a grain of salt, that you have to put in some journalistic integrity. That you have to point out to the audience and let them know that this was a guided tour by Hezbollah press officials along with their security, that it was a very rushed affair.”

Compare that with Carl Cameron of Fox News who this morning states:

(paraphrased) “Hezbollah has asked that we don’t show where they are firing missles from. Out of concern for our safety we are complying.”

That leaves no doubt in the viewers mind that some context is distorted / missing.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 25th, 2006 at 10:03 am by Chad and is filed under War, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.