Amanpour goes on to say the press was intimidated into not being aggressive on questions and investigations into the motives for the war, and the WMDs in particular.
What gets this story into the pit instead of GD for me is the following comment by Fox News mouthpiece, Irena Briganti:
FUCK YOU!!!
This piece of idiotic slander is utterly typical of Fox News and absolutely proves Amanpour’s point. Any criticism of Bush or suggestion that the White House has tried to manipulate the press and Chrisiane Amanpour, whose credentials and credibility far exceed anything at Faux News, is now an “al Qaeda spokeswoman.” Could anybody go any sleazier any quicker? Could there be any better example of how Fox News protects Bush and helps to create a climate where criticism of Bush is declared the equivalent of terrorism?
Fuck Bush for lying about the war and then bullying the press into supporting it but fuck Fox News even more for becoming nothing but journalistic goons whose only purpose is to squelch dissent and promote White House propaganda. FNC is the new fucking Pravda.
As usual, the false dichotomy of “Follow Bush or follow Al Qaeda” is used to blindly support the Bush administration. That bit never seems to get tired, does it?
Since CNN doesn’t actually cite any specific instances where the Adminstration or FNC ‘intimidate’ them, I am going file this one in the ‘Whining ratings-losers bitch to anyone that’ll listen’ category. I’ll leave it to the tiny-brained idiots to believe, hook, line and sinker, what some hack at CNN has to say.
Huzzah! To Rupert for making Ted his little bitch.
This is all well and good, but isn’t that quite a different issue from the quoted Fox News statement, which I find pretty frown-worthy completely on its own?
Clearly, Ms. Briganti erred. What she doubtless meant to say is that it’s better to be seen as a foot soldier for Bush than a spokesman for Saddam Hussein.
Diogenes, where was your outrage when it came out that CNN had been deliberately not reporting atrocities its reporters had witnessed under Saddam Hussein’s regime?
You know, I’d really like to see a Battle of the Cable News Stars show.
It’s not that I’d like to see Sean Hannity and Aaron Brown kick the livin’ shit out of each other, it’s more along the lines of a lingerie pillow fight between Laurie Dhue (FOX, literally) and Erica Hill (CNN).
Bullshit. They could have gotten their people out and reported what they saw. However, it was far more profitable to remain in Iraq and not report the stories they had access to.
This is just a bunch of fucking martyrdom crap. Fox doesn’t have the power to say what CNN has to report, so you can’t blame them for CNN’s pattern of being intimidated. Fucking Christiane Amanpour whinging on about how CNN reporters are oppressed, trying to equate “self-censorship” with censorship, and using some stupid claim about “intimidation” (we all know how Bush and his Fox News cronies like to kill CNN reporters’ pets) gets zero sympathy from me. Just shows that CNN has no balls, and doesn’t even have the balls to admit it has no balls.
For quite a while (though it seems the tide has turned) CNN had little choice because Fox was spanking them in the prime time ratings. Fox continues to dominate MSNBC. Unfortunately, the television trend of “follow the leader” has not made its way into news reporting as well, so if CNN changed tone to try to stay on par with Fox, it’s not surprising.
What is surprising is that a veteran television broadcast journalist like Christiana Amanpour would blame Fox for this instead of CNN’s editorial policymakers who were, presumably giving the green light to any self-censorship happening at their network. Unless the Fox folks were actually writing or approving CNN reporters’ on-air copy, it seems disingenuous, at best, to foist all the blame in their direction.
It wasn’t just their people it was their contacts within Iraq. There was no way they could have protected everyone that was in danger.
What about the comment by Brignati? Is it legitimate to call Amanpour an “al Qaeda spokewoman?” Is Amanpour just part of a grand liberal conspiracy to make your precious president look bad? She’s not the only one saying this stuff.
