RE: CNN: All the news that we see fit to print

["Bill O'Neill" <billo@shoreham.net>]

Dan writes:
Of
> course by staying silent, two other people died.  And the
> world was kept
> from knowing that Iraqi leaders were threatening other Arab
> heads of state.

Great point.  CNN's silence, essentially, effected which two died.  And the ones
who did better served CNN's propagation of it's perceived vantage point in the
world for truth reportage.

 In fact, they were not telling their viewers what
> they knew.  If a
> journalist can't report what they know, what's the point of
> covering a story
> at all?  Wouldn't CNN's viewers have been better served by
> CNN pulling out
> and telling the whole story?

Clearly.  It's akin to playing God with the story.  They became adept at
striking a balance between how much truth to reveal (if you can parse truth) and
how much to withhold for CNN's greater interest in citing a bureau with some
exclusivity.  That exclusivity of positioning in Iraq will  prove to be useless
when the history books are written, IMO.

> This begs the question: What is CNN not telling us to keep
> their bureaus
> open in other police states like Cuba and China?  What deals
> did they cut
> with Castro to establish their bureau there?

If the result with the CNN strategy is that viewers gain true benefit of greater
insight into hotspots, that's one thing. But withholding such vital information
in Iraq over the past TWELVE years, how could things have been different today,
even if the network had been shown the door, and only after spilling the beans
on a brutal regime?  I suspect the losses outweigh which two died.

Bill O'Neill