Amanpour really frosts me with this one.
Poor Amanpour
Christiane Amanpour, CNN's Amazonian foreign correspondent, is complaining of "self-censorship" in her network's war coverage. Back in April, of course, former CNN executive Eason Jordan acknowledged that CNN had indeed engaged in self-censorship, suppressing the truth about Saddam Hussein's regime for fear of losing "access."
But that's not what Amanpour is talking about. She thinks the network was insufficiently pro-Saddam. Asked by TV hostess Tina Brown if, in Brown's words, "we in the media, as much as in the administration, drank the Kool-Aid when it came to the war," Amanpour replied as follows:
"I think the press was muzzled, and I think the press self-muzzled. I'm sorry to say, but certainly television and, perhaps, to a certain extent, my station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News. And it did, in fact, put a climate of fear and self-censorship, in my view, in terms of the kind of broadcast work we did."
In response, Fox News spokeswoman Irena Briganti tells USA Today: "Given the choice, it's better to be viewed as a foot soldier for Bush than a spokeswoman for al-Qaeda."
Meanwhile, the New York Times' John Burns, who did some of the best reporting from Baghdad, blasts the media for complicity with Saddam's regime. Editor & Publisher excerpts Burns's new book, "Embedded: The Media at War in Iraq, an Oral History":
There were correspondents who thought it appropriate to seek the approbation of the people who governed their lives. This was the ministry of information, and particularly the director of the ministry. By taking him out for long candlelit dinners, plying him with sweet cakes, plying him with mobile phones at $600 each for members of his family, and giving bribes of thousands of dollars. Senior members of the information ministry took hundreds of thousands of dollars of bribes from these television correspondents who then behaved as if they were in Belgium. They never mentioned the function of minders. Never mentioned terror.
In one case, a correspondent actually went to the Internet Center at the Al-Rashid Hotel and printed out copies of his and other people's stories--mine included--specifically in order to be able to show the difference between himself and the others. He wanted to show what a good boy he was compared to this enemy of the state. He was with a major American newspaper.
C'mon, John--which paper?
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