Journalism—CNN’s Sycophants for Saddam Hussein 2003

CNN’s news chief in 2003, Eason Jordan, admitted that the network ignored and suppressed Saddam Hussein’s mass killings of his citizens and other crimes against humanity, to keep their access to the Iraqi thug. Jordan said that telling the truth likely would have meant closing their Baghdad bureau. Franklin Foer of the New Republic wrote in The Wall Street Journal: “CNN could have abandoned Baghdad. Not only would they have stopped recycling lies, they could have focused more intently on obtaining the truth about Saddam.”

CNN lied; Iraqis died.

Human Rights Watch has estimated that 250,000 to 290,000 Iraqis were presumed killed under Saddam.

Eason Jordan resigned from CNN in 2005. It wasn’t possible to discover why he wasn’t fired in 2003 for his efforts to aid Saddam Hussein.

Source: The Washington Post. HRW 2003. Franklin Foer, Wall Street Journal 2003.   Graphic: Iraqi Victims Found in a Mass Grave killed under Saddam’s Rule, GWB Whitehouse Archives, 2003.

Journalism – Scott Thomas Beauchamp

In 2007 The New Republic published three articles by an American Army private, Scott Thomas Beauchamp serving in Iraq titled “Shock Troops”, detailing misdeeds and possible war crimes occurring in and near his forward operating base, Falcon, in Bagdad. The articles were, in part, fact checked by The New Republic Fact-Checker Elspeth Reeve who was also Private Beauchamp’s wife.

Beauchamp claimed that army personnel found mass graves that contained children, and targeted wild dogs for fun, and Beauchamp horribly insulted a woman disfigured by an IED.

The US Army and other news outlets could find no collaboration or substantiation for the events described by Beauchamp. In late 2007 The New Republic stated that they could no longer stand by Beauchamp’s stories.

Reeve is currently a correspondent for CNN. There is no information on the current activities or whereabouts of Beauchamp.

Source:  Fog of War, The New Republic.  Alchetron, 2024. Graphic: Beauchamp by Alchetron, copyright unknown.