By JENNIFER MILLS
Opinion Editor
CNN needs to examine itself.
It recently admitted to covering up the truth about Saddam Hussein’s government for the past 12 years. Although CNN claimed not reporting Saddam’s brutality was to protect lives, it was the cable news channel’s moral responsibility to stop the torture of Iraqi citizens. CNN should be ashamed.
Chief News Executive Eason Jordan described in a recent article published in The New York Times specific instances of torture and death threats by Iraqi officials.
“Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard – awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff,” he wrote. “I came to know several Iraqi officals well enough that they confided in me that Saddam Hussein was a maniac who had to be removed.”
What kind of organization keeps that kind of information locked up within itself? Having such power to make a difference in the lives of Iraqis, and not doing anything about it is unbelievable.
CNN is arrogant for thinking that it had a right to withhold this information just to remain in Bagdad.
CNN had a moral responsibility to do something. Editors could have told American military officials about the brutality.
By not reporting this, CNN looks like it was slanting news – and American views on the war. Viewers may not have realized the importance of taking Saddam out of Iraq.
“At last, these stories can be told freely,” Jordan’s article read.
But CNN is not so heroic. If Jordan knew about this horror and decided to “protect Iraqis” by not reporting it, why wasn’t CNN at least in support of President Bush when we began to fight for the freedom of those same citizens?
Instead, the lack of news only contributed to the ignorance of the American people.
“The difficulty of showing pain and the reluctance to show death inevitably produce their own terrible bias,” said Ellen Goodman in an article written for The Baltimore Sun.
Although CNN has shown us its bias, the real issue at hand has nothing to do with the “liberal media.” It is an issue of moral responsibility to inform the world of atrocities. Iraqis don’t care about liberal or conservative bias, all they want to do is give their children a chance in life.
“The poison that is war does not free us from the ethics of responsibility,” said past war correspondent Chris Hedges, who was quoted in Goodman’s article.
But apparently, CNN felt no loyalties, not even to Americans.
“They viewed themselves as a global network, not an American network, anymore,” said Ted Kavanua, a former CNN executive who was quoted in the St. Petersburg Times. “They felt they had no special loyalties to America.”
CNN should feel loyalties to humankind if not its own country. And the American people should no longer let such media organizations have so much power.