By Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 29, 2003

Leave it to Thomas Friedman to declare that with war in Iraq, Americans have burst “a stock market bubble, a corporate ethics bubble and a terrorism bubble.” He forgets the most important bubble.

In the The New York Times last week, Eason Jordan revealed that in Iraq, CNN committed serial lying. No price was too high to protect corporate interests and stay in Baghdad, not even dealing with the devil. Thus, rather than close CNN’s bureau or risk his reporter’lives, Jordan was mum on Hussein’s plans to commit several assassinations. He traded others’ murders to protect his own and lied to the public.

For several decades, most media outlets in the Middle East have apparently placed public interests last on the list of parties due their protection. Responding to the universal outcry over Jordan’s professional conduct, former Middle East correspondent Ethan Bronner explains that getting a visa to Iran, Syria, Sudan or Libya is “monumentally frustrating.” Some countries ask whether reporters have “ever visited ‘Occupied Palestine,’ meaning Israel.” They assign minders, and suppress dissent. But Bronner only indicts Jordan and the general press: As a block, Arab nations apply huge pressure on journalists to toe their anti-Israel line, and the press willingly submits to their rules. Continue reading “Bursting the Fourth Estate” →

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