Ed Wood "The Right Stuff" Published April 23, 2003

What did they know, and when did they know it?

For years now there has been a running debate between liberals and conservatives concerning bias in the news media. Conservatives say there is a liberal bias. Liberals say there is a conservative bias. The news media say there is no bias. One cable news network claims it is better than all the rest because its news is "fair and balanced." Imagine that!

I suppose it is no more possible for news reporters to be unbiased than it is for the rest of us. We tend to see what we want to see, and believe what we want to believe. But this past week a new type of media bias came to national attention. The refusal of a news organization to broadcast or publish news if it contradicted the organization's political and/or financial interests. The issue is Iraq and CNN.

On Monday, April 11, CNN's chief news executive, Eason Jordan, published an article in the New York Times titled, "The News We Kept to Ourselves." In his soul-cleansing article, Mr. Jordan stated, "Over the past dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I became more distressed by what I saw and heard." Mr. Jordan then went on to describe the type atrocities that we now know were practiced by the Hussein government. An aide to Uday, Saddam's son, had no front teeth because an Uday henchman had ripped them out with pliers for "upsetting his boss." He went on to describe the fate of a 31-year-old Kuwaiti woman, Asrar Qabandi, captured by Iraqi police for undisclosed "crimes."

"They beat her daily for two months, forcing her father to watch. Then they smashed her skull and tore her body apart limb by limb. A plastic bag containing her body parts was left on the doorstep of her family home." Mr. Jordan concluded, "I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me." But he reported nothing, for fear of jeopardizing CNN's cozy relationship with Saddam.

As CNN and others were reporting poll results showing a significant number of U.S. citizens were opposed to President Bush's plan to unseat the Saddam regime, and thousands demonstrated their displeasure, I wonder if Mr. Jordan, and other news executives, ever felt an obligation to inform American readers and viewers of all the facts before asking, and publishing, their opinions. And what would have been our opinions, as reflected in the polls, had we known what they knew, but refused to tell us? And is it still going on? Bet on it!

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Ed Wood is a resident of Sparta, TN. His column is published each Wednesday in the Crossville Chronicle. He can be contacted at edwd@blomand.net