Osama Who? When No News Is 'Bad News'

[struggle4progress]

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 24, 2005; Page C01

In late 1996, veteran CBS foreign correspondent Tom Fenton pitched his network on a plan to use Saudi connections to land an interview with Osama bin Laden.

"Our bosses saw him as an obscure Arab of no interest to our viewers," Fenton says. "More concerned with saving dollars than pursuing the story, they killed the project."

Months later, Fenton says, he sat down with an Arab journalist who had interviewed bin Laden and described his violent designs on America, but "our navel-gazing executives" left that part of the piece "on the cutting-room floor." He says CBS executives asked that all references to bin Laden be cut because the story had "too many foreign names." <snip>

Fenton still has a copy of his 1978 script that CBS would not air after his reporting in Iran convinced him the shah was in trouble. But his New York producers had read more "upbeat" accounts "and did not believe" him. The shah was toppled less than three months later. <snip>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31306-2005Jan23.html

[Oversea Visitor]

1. And

who really topple the Shah of Iran.

[HawkerHurricane]

2. Well, since the CIA were the ones propping him up...

I'd say it was either the people he was shooting, tortureing and oppressing, or a KGB op.

[Oversea Visitor]

4. Ouch

he was shooting ,torturing and oppressing. Looks like Tyrant to me and hey I know Chimp went back in time to bring freedom and liberty to Iran. Wait a moment aaah oops he talking about bringing the same thing again.

[Robbien]

3. Did you see further in the column about reporters having minders

at the coronation?

Reporters at some of the inaugural balls are steamed that they could not interview the partygoers without an official minder trailing them, lest they get insufficiently fulsome praise from President Bush's supporters. Washington Post reporter Peter Carlson, who was escorted to and from the men's room, likens the restrictions to "Saddam-era Iraq."

"It's hard to get people to be frank with you," says Chicago Tribune reporter Jeff Zeleny, who gave up at one ball. "It seems like a baby-sitting exercise. It's just one more example of how the Bush administration likes to control the story."

[Robbien]

5. And Walter Cronkite says he does not regularly watch the newscast

he once headed because "there's nothing there but crime and sob sister material . . . tabloid stuff."

Then there was the part of the column which talked about Hannity's conflict of interest.

The whole column is full of interesting items this time.