16
Mar
20 Reader Questions for CNN’s President
Rory O’Connor sent 20 questions of his own to CNN President Jonathan Klein after Klein cancelled a sit-down interview. O’Connor then asked you to submit questions of your own, should Klein care to respond to his viewers and the public he’s meant to serve. Here are 20 Reader Questions for CNN President Jonathan Klein:
1. Why does CNN so rarely interview liberals, especially those outside government, as part of its coverage of daily news?
2. Why are the vast majority of CNN’s so-called terrorism experts retired military personnel or former government employees instead of academics or independent security consultants? Why does CNN think the former group is a good source of objective information?
3. Why do CNN news readers, such as Soledad O’Brien, become argumentative with those being interviewed and offer their (her) own opinions — which just “happen” to be the administration’s arguments or news bites? Or is this “demand” or “command” performance to keep their jobs? Do they know or care that, with disgust, we turn them off?
4. In the months before the war, where was the balance? Why did CNN not give, if not equal time, at least some time to informed critics such as Scott Ritter, Justin Raimondo, Ray McGovern, Noam Chomsky and Alexander Cockburn?
5. I really appreciated your CNN Presents special on how we got things so wrong before the war, and I thought you covered most things carefully. Now, however, we’re hearing those same drumbeats from the same people who brought us the Iraq invasion. I’m speaking of the push for war with Iran… I really believe this was part of the plan which this administration brought with them when they took over the White House and they are certainly not going to let the reality of lack of military and money stop them from their chosen plan. But, are we going to respond like Charlie Brown and trust Lucy to hold the football again? I wish CNN would discuss this possibility and not simply allow the administration to blindly lead us into another war.
6. Kyra Phillips, Miles O’Brien, and Paula Zahn hawked the war against Iraq to the American public, going so far as to ridicule Scott Ritter in interviews in which he denied Iraq had WMDs, frequently beginning interviews with teasers such as “Is Scott Ritter a traitor?” How does CNN justify leaving the Silly Three in place as White House propagandizers at this point, knowing what we now know about Iraq and WMDs?
7. Why did CNN use patriotic artwork and military music to introduce segments about the invasion? Why weren’t the segments introduced with black-draped somber artwork with dirges to depict the death of peace and democracy? Oh, you wouldn’t do that, would you? That would be too slanted toward the peace movement. But patriotic artwork and military music, that isn’t slanted? BU–SH–! Face it; those in charge of CNN wanted the invasion, because it would increase their profits, covering the military action and the subsequent loss of life, not to mention the controversy the long-term conflict would cause. All those in charge of CNN at the time that decision was made should be fired.
8. What do you folks at CNN gain by ignoring and/or colluding with this administration in its lying, conniving, and murderous law breaking? Don’t you give a damn for the future of your kids and grandkids? Why is it necessary for Wolf Blitzer to suck up to power? Watching the Republic sliding into the toilet with the complicity of the mainstream media is not pleasant viewing.
9. Shouldn’t your viewers see and know what war is about? Then they would not allow their money to be spent on such nonsense as political money wars!!
10. Why did it take the mainstream media almost 5 years to discover that this administration was lying from the very beginning??? I just get sick just thinking about all the unnecessary lives lost in this debacle. No one should send our children to war based on lies to die for nothing. Also, all the innocent lives of the Iraqi citizens that have been lost. “They” have blood on their hands.
11. Why won’t you show us the war–and show us pictures of the bodies of our men [and women] as they are returned?
12. Wolf Blitzer may have indicated that his network was using jingoism and he should know. Even the occasional news that questioned what the president was saying was quickly followed up with Wolf asking a question like “Yes, but don’t you think the Democrats need to be careful how they use this? After all, they don’t want to seen as weak on defense especially after 9/11, and the president’s soaring poll numbers should give them pause.” Or how about Wolf talking up Bush and the war in an interview and then being asked about the failure to find any WMDs. Wolf shrugged his shoulders and said “sometimes they are wrong.” And Soledad, Miles and Jack were on message for the WH with all their Liberal/French/Cheese-eating jokes. They were so funny (they thought) and I have not heard an apology about how wrong they were in their slavish support of Bush and their costly refusal to report anything of substance.
CNN has not been held accountable and continues to mislead us now. For instance Daryl Kagen just said they were going to take a look at new poll numbers for Bush and how being a Bush supporter or not is reflected in the numbers. And further crap from the former girlfriend of Rush Limbaugh just now with Kagen saying that the Democrats are seen by many as “the gang that can’t shoot straight.” I realize Kagen is not her boyfriend but she is like-minded. Rush said “a part of me likes this” when news of our hostage being killed in Iraq hit the air. What if anything does CNN plan to do to bring things into honest reporting? What about lying to get us into war, ruining our economy, wiretapping Americans to mention a few things. Bush did not shoot straight? Oh angry Liberals. The Daily Show has it all over CNN in reporting what is really going on.
13. Why has the media all but forgot the deadly effects of Depleted Uranium shells that have exploded all over Iraq in two wars? Why does the media accept the illness classified by the government as “Gulf War Syndrome” Instead of what it really is: “Radiation Poisoning.” When will the media stop entertaining us and start printing news that matters? I now longer read American newspapers, and watch only two news broadcasts — Lou Dobbs and Democracy Now. I get all my other news from foreign broadcasts and on the Internet from independent news sources. Why? Because I don’t have any trust in what you people print or say!
14. About the war coverage, we need to know how many Iraqi civilians have been killed by mistake, accident, whatever. Also, what is the after-effect of the materials used for bombing on the health of the population? CNN has done somewhat better than other sources, but not enough information for the general public.
15. I read and listened to the alternative media –The Nation magazine, Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, Truthout.org, AlterNet, The People’s Weekly World, Political Affairs, The Progressive, etc. and knew without the slightest doubt that Bush et al were totally lying and that the mainstream media were lying down and giving him legitimacy and even getting up again and supporting him. Not to mention that Fox and CNN were ridiculing Scott Ritter, the truth teller, and anyone else who questioned the lies. I would sit before my TV and scream in anger and frustration, “Don’t you see what’s going on? They are going to get us into a mess beyond belief. They are going to make fodder out of our troops and kill thousands of Iraqis and destroy their country and make us hated in the world.” All this and much more. I can still taste and feel the rage. Why did the media treat the Bush gang as if they were the regular kind of administration when it was so very obvious that they were faux?
16. Why won’t CNN broadcast Lou Dobbs several times during the evening? Most of us can’t get to a TV set by 5:00 PM. Or are you trying to keep him off prime time? The same question for Jack Cafferty.
17. In his March 10, 2006 show, CNN’s Lou Dobbs disclosed that the Dubai organization trying to purchase management of our ports had made large investments in CNN’s parent company. Will anyone follow up on this?
18. Mr. Klein gave an extensive interview to the L.A. Times, when he first took over at CNN. In that interview he defines a journalist as “someone who asks questions.” In the same paragraph he goes on to explicitly include Larry King and Nancy Grace as journalists stating that they ask questions, “don’t they?” I would like to know why Mr. Klein has watered-down the definition of journalism and where he stands on infotainment/sensationalism versus journalism in the strictest sense. I believe the way he views journalism and journalists speaks about the type of programming he plans for the network.
19. Why did the investigation into the leaking of Valerie Plame as a CIA operative basically end when Bob Woodward — a man with extraordinary ties to both George Bush and Dick Cheney — stated that he was the “first” reporter the leak was given to? Could it be that this version of how the leak occurred was more convenient for CNN than the alleged involvement of CNN’s (at the time) own Robert Novak?
20. After the next terrorist attack–which will most likely kill a million Americans or more and destroy some city in the U.S. proper–and the subsequent declaration of martial law, how will CNN go about reporting the secession from The Union of all peoples to the west of 117 degrees longitude?
Thank you Mr. O’Connor for including my question (the last one, #20) in your list. It’s a lot more cogent than some people think.
March 16th, 2006 at 12:32 pmThe aforementioned 20 questions are obvious utterances from the vile sludge occuping the lower half of a yet immature mudula-oblongota. Said organ being possessed of immeasurable anger (anger being amoung the primary functions of said M-O) - envious that it was not included in the fray. Pray tell… how will you become part of something more than the “green with envy” angry puss that permiates your very pores and mindset? I pray your propensity to pontificate speculation as fact perish as quickly as the radiant rings that follow a lump of dung carlessly tossed into the mind-dead cesspool from whence your ilk previously crawled or slitherted as the case may be. Your further desirious effectation that a million innocent American souls be lost to despotic terrorism,(Think about how wonderful that would be for you) thus allowing your brain continued restfull and self-rightous slumber ad-nausium. However, it also provides a candle-wat of light upon the dark recesses that occupy the
“Conspiritorial Wing” of the organic porcelian depository referred to as your cranium. The previous noted porcelian vessel having been filled with maggot pudding in a light fluffy pastry, for actual substance eludes you at an earth shattering quickness that is felt more that heard. For who, in a sane world, could hear when the whinning is so loud? Please continue fomentting ill conceived perceptions as it provides great entertainment, however said perceptions may find themselves loungeing in an enviroment devoid of the incumberences of intelligence. Have a hearty day and if you please … return to the pool facilities as soon as reptillianly possible.
Your friend in free speech
GP
P.S. Please check my spelling, I’m sure with all of your free time a spell check is within your capacity and it will allow you to perform a useful task!
March 17th, 2006 at 1:26 pmOh , and a Post Script…
You dare to promote criticism of the Clinton News Network.. have you lost your mind man! How will you be invited back into the warm embrace of said network when Her Hillaryness is apponited Queen of the Americas by the former presidents (Sir William) network? That ought to be question # 21!!!!
March 17th, 2006 at 1:35 pmat long last, i thought i would never see such a list of 20 (could have been much longer) questions relating to the rightward swing of Cnn.I would like to see more focus on cnn by ‘media matters’ and ‘ huffington post’.They are irretrievably connected to the jingoism for war and i don’t think short of new management and a truth and reconciliation committee they can ever regain their credibility. Thanks for your efforts.
March 18th, 2006 at 6:56 amGood afternoon, Mr. O’Connor.
It is my understanding from reading several foreign news publications that there is an allegation that the intelligence being used to construct the case for war with Iran is in no small part the product of a shadowy Iranian dissident group in exile. This would follow the pattern set by Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress in the years and months leading up to Desert Storm.
The extent to which the current policy directions are being shaped by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, Paris, is certainly in doubt, but at least some of their public Website documents clearly comport with later pronouncements by those favoring or at least hinting at military intervention by the West.
That policy is again being shaped by interests not in alignment with those of the nations that would have to prosecute a new war could be catastrophic: although Iraq has been a debilitating and somewhat unsuccessful campaign from the standpoint of long-term American interests, the difficulties Coalition forces have encountered there are nothing compared to what awaits those who would presume to attack a far more dangerous country like Iran, which recovered fully and without sanctions from its 1980s war with Iraq and has far more conventional military capability.
What troubles me is that, at least in the current affairs, the European Union Group of Three nations negotiating with Iran seems to be less than deadset against a military “solution,” having summarily dismissed a recent, six-point proposal set forth through Russian intermediaries. What troubles me most about this is the possibility that such a mindset might give a window not so much on the future of Iran as it does an emerging picture of what happened behind the scenes in Iraq. It is in no small measure disturbing to entertain the possibility that certain of the European nations, while publicly condemning the United States for its attack on Baghdad, might have tacitly supported the conflagration.
Should that have been the case, and should it now be the case that Iran is part of a systematic Western policy to disassemble the current structure of the Middle East in favor of something less threatening to Western economic interests, then our concerns with media coverage are misplaced; but more importantly, our efforts to stop this progressive madness are wholly to be lost in the tide of change sweeping through this first part of the 21st Century.
The Dark Wraith wishes you well, Mr. O’Connor.
March 19th, 2006 at 1:33 pmI wish I would’ve submitted this before the article was posted, oh well. My question for the media is this: if the Bush administration was so convinced that Iraq had WMDs, why didn’t they tell the UN weapons inspectors where they were (they had to know where they were to take the satellite photos later presented to the security council)? And why didn’t the media ask them this question? Why are the media still not asking this question? Why has the fact that a weapons inspection team was in Iraq immediately before the war been completely forgotten? Did all that shock and awe cause a loss of memory? Remeber, the last person to kick weapons inspectors out of Iraq was GWB, not Saddam.
March 21st, 2006 at 2:55 pmOh, and GP: you have quite a talent for verbose drivel. Your ability to make so many words say so little is rare, indeed. Since you seem to have an extreme dislike for “Billary,” maybe you wouldn’t mind explaining why he was so wrong to go to war in Bosnia without an exit strategy, but GWB was right to go to war without an exit strategy? You do remember, don’t you? Or did you fry your memory binging on booze and blow with your hero?
March 21st, 2006 at 3:04 pmagree with #6 i want answers
March 22nd, 2006 at 4:28 amDear Devnullian,
March 23rd, 2006 at 12:35 pmThe drivel I speak is many times more comprehendable that the wish list of falsehoods your ilk espouse so vehemently. Oh I know … what about the alledged LIES GW used to support his illegal war in Iraq, and how about GW’s corporate buddies that are raking in billions of dollars in profits illegally on the backs of the american taxpayer. …Oh and I almost forgot about how the US Military in Iraq is nothing more than a gang of thugs guilty of abusing everything from terror suspects to the outright murder for pleasure of innocent lives each and every hour of each and every day. These are the lies you should concern yourself with instead of providing aid and comfort to the enemy. If thats as adept a defense you can muster for your weak-ass suppositions and the outright lies told by the left ( See DAN RATHER for catalogs of examples) then I suggest you study the United Nation Security Counsel Resolutions and the deliberations of the US legislative branch prior to the war in Iraq. One conspicuous voice of support came from the previosly mentioned Hillary Rob’em Clinton. your hero and Anti-Christ. You may find guidance in the conduct of the affairs of state and how positions are promulgated. GW did not unilateraly go to war no matter what your freinds in the mainstream media say… Yes even CNN. Shocker there huh! The extensive deliberation sought out by GW in preperation for the regime change required in Iraq to secure the safty of American citizens and the Iraqi population from a true world class thug in the name of Saddam Hussin. I know it is much easier for you to change the subject to Bill Clinton than it is to rationally analyse any issue put forth by the Bush Administration. I thank goodness that GW doesn’t propose we celebrate sunshine with a national day of sunshine awareness … because I know with 100% certainty that your Anti-American camp would be dead set against all sunshine from that day forward. You should sign off as DILLUSIONAL not Devnullian!
Have a nice Sunny Day
GP
Gavin - you are rong
March 24th, 2006 at 2:59 amHey Divnullian,
How did you get the impression that I have an extreme dislike of Billary?
March 24th, 2006 at 10:02 amGP
Regarding the morning shows on CNN, why is it that, with all the excesses, lies and gutting of American freedoms by the current Administration, CNN seems to feel that the issue I am most concerned about is who has the best coffee:
March 26th, 2006 at 9:12 pm1) Dunk Donuts
2) Burger King
3) McDonald’s
Please bring on some real news.
unbelieve bullshit from the wingnut troll above.. do they pay you to do this trolling or are you just such a fucking loser you do it on your own?
regardless of the questions, i think the answers from Klein are the most revealing.. his tendency to go on the attack and level the oh so common and tiresome ‘political extremists’ bullshit against anyone who questions the party line..
thanks for your persistence to get this article written and getting your questions answered..
March 27th, 2006 at 5:40 amJust one question - why don’t get rid of Blitzer and give Cafferty the show. It would at least be a beginning in attempting to be a balanced network.
May 4th, 2006 at 12:19 pmUgh… I just googled my name for shits and giggles and I see someone with my name writing ridiculous rants. I hate the internet…
September 10th, 2006 at 2:17 amWhy have CNN producers and other execs ignored the dozens of outspoken MODERATE Muslim leaders and imams?
They, not Bush or Blair or even Il Papa, present the most important counterpoint to jihadists. They are the most effective weapon against the growing ranks of terrorists.
Yet, apart from the editorial instincts (recently) of The NYer’s Remnick and Packer, the message of moderate Muslims is left in isolation. They speak widely, throughout the world. I can understand why Al Jazeera ignores them, but CNN?
What’s worse, the only time the networks seek out moderate Muslims is when they’re chasing a bias story… who’s hating you now? kind of inquiry, when the biggest threat to all Muslims is from the fundamentalists. Talk about bias? When Zawarahiri issues a warning, I want to hear from the likes of Imam Rauf, not from some parrot in the Administration or some overexposed pundit. Why has that kind of coverage been ignored?
September 20th, 2006 at 10:11 am