On the heels of CNN’s massive public relations problems regarding its Mideast reporting, The New York Times makes mention of HonestReporting’s efforts in fighting media bias.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/01/business/media/01CNN.html
Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post has published an in-depth report entitled, “When CNN is the Story.” Miriam Shaviv examines CNN’s uneasy history of reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the real reasons it has now decided to make editorial changes.
HonestReporting members are commended for their months of commitment to demanding fairness and objectivity from CNN. Your efforts definitely make a difference!
As the Jerusalem Post reports:
HonestReporting.com readers sent up to 6,000 e-mails a day to CNN executives, effectively paralyzing their internal e-mail system. The consultant, who was present at several meetings with watchdog groups initiated by CNN, says the top CNN executives had, until then, failed to appreciate the strength of public feeling on the issue.
“At the beginning,” says the consultant, “the executives didn’t believe there was a problem, mostly out of ignorance of what was going on [in the field]. They were not aware of how often the big lie [that 500 Palestinians died in Jenin in April] was spread by Palestinian spokesmen, and seemed shocked when we told them there were 30 cases in 10 days. They were not watching this narrow little part of CNN’s operation — they have to watch what’s going in a massive empire, and suddenly this corner started biting them in the backside.”
