That was Jane Hall, a former reporter for the LA Times, now a journalism professor at The American University, talking about the CNN sniper footage on Fox "News Watch" Saturday night.
Interestingly, nobody on the show--not even Bush-bashing, even Fox-bashing Neal Gabler--stuck up for the CNN decision. Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas was blunt: "This is propaganda." To which Hall added, "I agree with Cal...It inevitably is exploitative."
Host Eric Burns speculated that anti-American terrorists might think to themselves, with good reason, "We’ve got a real pipeline now to the American media."
Gabler strongly opposes the Iraq war, but he did not let that political opposition get in the way of his basic fair-mindedness and decency. He noted that NBC News ran a similar to CNN's but left out the offensive footage. To which Hall asked, "Whatever happened to the rule that you had to notify the family first?"
Jim Pinkerton, Newsday columnist, piped in: He had just seen the movie "Flags of Our Fathers," and noted that one mother recognized her son up atop Mt. Suribachi from the AP photograph in the newspaper, even though the picture merely showed the man's back. But nonetheless, mothers know these things--she was right, it was her son. And so Pinkerton concluded, it's entirely possible that parents and relatives saw their loved one in his last moments, thanks to CNN's exploitative coverage.
Pinkerton echoed Burns' concern that CNN was being used as being a pipeline for foreign terrorists. He recalled the days when former CNN chief Eason Jordan was playing footsie with Iraqi officials to get the best deal for his network--even if that meant being manipulated by Iraq. To which Thomas wondered what happened to another old rule to protect journalistic integrity: not taking tape footage from strangers, let alone enemies.
So that's one more rule of journalistic decency that CNN has flouted.
