Re: Dan Kennedy on Reliable Sources

["Dan Billings" <billings@suscom-maine.net>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Donna Halper" <dlh@donnahalper.com>
To: "Dan Billings" <billings@suscom-maine.net>
Cc: <boston-radio-interest@bostonradio.org>
Sent: Sunday, April 20, 2003 1:59 PM
Subject: Re: Dan Kennedy on Reliable Sources


> My point is not that any of this is good-- it's not.  But the CNN story is
> just the most recent in a long line of ethical dilemmas networks and
> reporters have faced over the years.  In the ideal universe, everyone
would
> make the right decision, but sadly, hindsight is always 20/20, and
networks
> do not always do the right thing.

But CNN isn't taking the position that they have learned from their
experience and do things differently.  Their position is that everything
they did was completely ethical and if in the same position, they would do
the same thing again.  That's what is most disturbing.  Maybe that's why I
haven't seen anything about Castro's crackdown on dissidents in Cuba on CNN?

>  But as we have seen with
> Fox (sorry, Dan, but it's not just CNN that has ethical issues here),
whose
> upper management has admitted that it advises the White House (can you say
> "conflict of interests"?) and is often head cheer-leader for any claims
the
> White House makes, bias can and does get into the reporting process.

Roger Ailes wrote a private memo to the White House after 9/11.  He is not a
White House adviser.  Ailes was widely criticized for his memo.  That
incident got much more coverage than CNN's problems.

Fox has a clear point of view.  They have made a marketing decision to be
different from the rest of the media, which most people on the right think
have a left wing bias.

-- Dan Billings, Bowdoinham, Maine