Danny Schechter On The CNN Tailwind Story

CNN has not disavowed the story totally, only saying it now believes the evidence shown was insufficient. All of CNN's charges were not proven, but how about some independent analysis from war scholars, including critics, not just the findings of high-priced lawyers on a mea-culpa face-saving mission? Fired producer April Oliver, who I know personally as ethical and responsible, said there's been a "deliberate attempt to mischaracterize me=8AIt's part of killing the messenger." Don't forget: she was probing the secrets of covert teams skilled in the art of plausible deniability. Or as she put it, "these shadow warriors don't like us looking into their dark spaces."

Credit CNN with the guts to go after them, but why cram this blockbuster into 18 minutes, not the hour the producers sought and were denied? CNN has plenty of airtime. They know that compression requires cuts that simplify a story. Crucial nuance, other views and context get dropped. If the story was bogus, why was it run? Let's hear Oliver's full account. She is being accused of too much passion, as if that's a crime. Investigative reporting usually has a strong point of view. Open mindedness is not empty mindedness; getting facts right is essential, getting their meaning right more so. Increasingly, reporting important stories is discouraged or dumped on in this age of NewsLite. TV needs more passion, not just jaded pundits like the boring deadheads we see nightly, blathering with the pretense of objectivity.

So was nerve gas used? I'm still not clear, perhaps because I remember past cover-ups of bombings, burnings, napalm, lethal chemical agents, the CIA's use of poisons in assassination attempts, deadly herbicides, white phosphorous, the murders of civilians, the My-Lais, war crimes and blatant lies that made for a fifteen year credibility gap. Should we just "Forget about it!" as Al Pacino playing Donnie Brasco repeated in that movie about the Mafia?

I don't know about you, but when the Pentagon starts denying Vietnam horrors, I reach for my truth detector. The only way we will get real facts is when we establish a South Africa - style Truth Commission with subpoena power. Then we can discover what the military brass knew and when they forgot they knew it. Update of the Pentagon Papers anyone? By the way, who were those defectors? What do the Vietnamese say? Did anyone ask? CNN's post-mortem says point blank the report was not fabricated. It says continued investigation is justified. Will there be more? I doubt it.

And look who's bashing CNN? None other than that paragon of truthful journalism, Rupert Murdoch. Within minutes of the retraction, Roger Ailes, the uberboss of Murdoch's rightist Fox News Channel circulated an internal memo praising his staff's "meticulous reporting efforts" investigating CNN's investigation. "We were the first major news organization," he boasted, "to raise questions about the accuracy of that story." Murdoch's Post went further, giving CNN, the channel Rupert has denounced as 'too liberal" a fullscale tabloid trouncing, demanding that all top network executives resign. His frontpage screamed: "WHAT NERVE!" Make no mistake: CNN is being targeted for prying into Pentagon secrets. This incident conjures up General Westmoreland's losing battle with CBS to discredit another powerful Vietwar expose. Is this attack orchestrated? It sure feels like a rerun of The Empire Strikes Back.

Behind this scandal are rarely reported institutional forces. There are few TV shows about what's really driving the fever to get sensational news on the air before it is checked carefully. The Columbia Journalism Review exposed the problem the very week the CNN brouhaha broke in its cover story, "Money Lust: How Pressure for Profit is Perverting Journalism." It details the ways that corporate media strategies are sabotaging serious journalism by diverting resources away from reporting to enrich shareholders, and fund obscenely high executive salaries.

Cost-cutting and marketing mania leads to cutting corners. Pressures for the Big Scoop are evident in CNN's exploitation of this story to launch its NewsStand newsmagazine series in a collaboration with TIME. It was about satisfying demands for profitable cross-promotional "synergy" within the TimeWarner media empire. This market logic is also driving the feeding frenzy on the over-saturated Monica Lewinsky sit-com. To prime the profit pump, news is turning into a stew of half-truths, speculation, and tantalizing tit-bits gussied up with slick packaging --- "News Goo," in the words of musician Polarity l's hip-hop dissection.

CNN has been a leader in covering Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Hopefully, out of this episode, my colleagues will focus more attention on "weapons of mass distraction"--TV News itself.