CNN Staff Say Network’s Pro-Israel Slant Amounts To ‘journalistic malpractice’
CNN Staff Say Network’s Pro-Israel Slant Amounts To ‘journalistic malpractice’
Some CNN staff fear that the result is a network acting as a surrogate censor on behalf of the Israeli government.
Insiders say pressure from the top results in credulous reporting of Israeli claims and silencing of Palestinian perspectives.
By Chris McGreal
The Guardian (2/4/24)
CNN is facing a backlash from its own staff over editorial policies they say have led to a regurgitation of Israeli propaganda and the censoring of Palestinians perspectives in the network’s coverage of the war in Gaza.
Journalists in CNN newsrooms in the US and overseas say broadcasts have been skewed by management edicts and a story-approval process that has resulted in highly partial coverage of the Hamas massacre on 7 October and Israel’s retaliatory attack on Gaza.
“The majority of news since the war began, regardless of how accurate the initial reporting, has been skewed by a systemic and institutional bias within the network toward Israel,” said one CNN staffer. “Ultimately, CNN’s coverage of the Israel-Gaza war amounts to journalistic malpractice.”
“Senior staffers who disagree with the status quo are butting heads with the executives giving orders, questioning how we can effectively tell the story with such restrictive directives in place.”
According to accounts from six CNN staffers in multiple newsrooms, and more than a dozen internal memos and emails obtained by the Guardian, daily news decisions are shaped by a flow of directives from the CNN headquarters in Atlanta that have set strict guidelines on coverage.
They include tight restrictions on quoting Hamas and reporting other Palestinian perspectives while Israel government statements are taken at face value. In addition, every story on the conflict must be cleared by the Jerusalem bureau before broadcast or publication.
Bowing to Israeli government pressure
CNN journalists say the tone of coverage is set at the top by its new editor in chief and CEO, Mark Thompson, who took up his post two days after the 7 October Hamas attack. Some staff are concerned about Thompson’s willingness to withstand external attempts to influence coverage given that in a former role as the BBC’s director general he was accused of bowing to Israeli government pressure on a number of occasions, including a demand to remove one of the corporation’s most prominent correspondents from her post in Jerusalem in 2005.
CNN insiders say that has resulted, particularly in the early weeks of the war, in a greater focus on Israeli suffering and the Israeli narrative of the war as a hunt for Hamas and its tunnels, and an insufficient focus on the scale of Palestinian civilian deaths and destruction in Gaza.
“How else are editors going to read that other than as an instruction that no matter what the Israelis do, Hamas is ultimately to blame? Every action by Israel – dropping massive bombs that wipe out entire streets, its obliteration of whole families – the coverage ends up massaged to create a ‘they had it coming’ narrative.”
One journalist described a “schism” within the network over coverage they said was at times reminiscent of the cheerleading that followed 9/11.
“There’s a lot of internal strife and dissent. Some people are looking to get out,” they said.
Another journalist in a different bureau said that they too saw pushback. …
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15-minute video.
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The scale and brutality of Israel’s crimes in Gaza simply can’t be denied—yet many media outlets are finding a way.
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Israel’s genocide in Gaza has undoubtedly become the most broadcasted atrocity in history. With massacre after massacre streamed daily to audiences in the billions, Israel’s crimes have now been witnessed as if firsthand by a huge portion of humanity. In spite of this, corporate news outlets have trafficked in coverage that all-too-often flouts a reality we can see before our eyes. This sort of unreliability evinces far more than a crisis of integrity in legacy media—it’s a sign of a deep political crisis that runs to the upper echelons of our system. Millions of US voters are turning against the Democrats over the carnage in Gaza, and rather than changing course, the powers that be are simply attempting to distort and pollute the narrative. Adam Johnson and Dan Boguslaw join The Real News to discuss the media’s blatant bias in reporting on Gaza.
