Octavia Nasr tweets her way out of CNN

arildno

Senior Middle East correspondent Octavia Nasr took a great leap into obscurity by praising Hezbollah's leader Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah on occasion of his death.

She is quoted as saying:
"Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah… One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.”

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/breaking-...versial-tweet/

KalamMekhar

What else can you expect from CNN?

arildno

What do you mean?
Other than dismissing at once an adulator of a terrorist in their midst?

KalamMekhar

The only reason she is gone from CNN is because she f***** up, tweeted something she shouldn't have, and it got attention. If she wouldn't have tweeted this, do you think she would still be working for CNN with her blatantly bias view? Of course she would be. This is mere posturing by CNN to make itself seem fair and balanced.

Gokul43201

CNN - damned if they do, damned if they don't!

russ_watters

Damned if they do or don't what? If they made a serious effort to be unbiased and pick quality people who could uphold that, they wouldn't have gotten into this mess! Sure, mistakes happen, but their mistake is their mistake: they're damned for making the mistake ant that's perfectly reasonable!

Gokul43201

Fire her.

If that was the argument provided above, it may have been reasonable, but it wasn't. The argument was based on speculation about what CNN may have done had the tweets not been public (i.e., they were damned for a hypothetical).

But in any case, a defining characteristic of good journalism is the ability to not let your personal biases creep into your professional output. A good organization is not one that is staffed by people devoid of personal biases (i.e., with no value judgments), but one that hires people that can keep their personal opinions out of their articles/newscasts.

arildno

Well, and it is an objective truth, rather than a personal bias, that Fadlallah was an evil terrorist enabler.

Thus, that should have been the view dominating CNN reports from the Middle East. It does not, thanks to people like Octavia Nasr and her personal biases about "neutrality" and simplistic moral equivalence.

Gokul43201

Granted (I'm not intimately familiar with the background).

You are making two distinct claims here, that both need to be substantiated:

1. You are saying that the majority of CNN reports present a view that Fadlallah is not a terrorist enabler.

2. You claim that these reports are a direct result of people like Octavia Nasr allowing their personal biases to dominate their reporting.

2* (corollary). Nothing here directly relates to what ought to be the primarily relevant question: Whether Octavia Nasr herself (as opposed to say, people like her) allowed her personal biases to infringe upon her reporting.

3. There is also an implicit assertion (not necessarily in your post arildno) that this creeping of personal bias into news reporting is more prevalent at CNN than most other news media outlets.

arildno

As to 1, I am not a professional media watcher, and hence, cannot watch everything CNN produces.
I recognize that in order to make my claim valid in a well-researched sense, then that could only happen by vast, time-consuming research.
Thus, I should have been precise in saying this is my <i>impression</i>, but that I haven't seen anything counter-acting that.

2&2*
This is by sound psychological deduction:
A person like Nasr who regards Fadlallah as a hero is much less likely to present him as a terrorist than even somebody who couldn't care less about him. That would be to make your brain into a conscious contradiction, a condition most individuals shy away from.


Professed neutrality is only a mask to hide your own biases behind, letting them shape your reporting, while having immunized yourself from criticism of your biases by not revealing them in the first place.

arildno

To get an idea of what vile slime Octavia Nasr thought of as a hero and a giant, Coughlin in the Telegraph has the following obituary:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/co...ostage-crisis/

A few incidents adduced to Fadlallah:

1. 2. 3.
Good riddance to Ms. Nasr and her idol; ding dong a witch is dead (along with a Lebanese ogre)

mheslep

I don't see how CNN is damned for firing Nasr; instead they earned criticism for having her on staff for 20 years in the first place.

Gokul43201

Not according to post #4 (which doesn't mention anything besides the firing). Also, while I didn't specifically say they were damned "for" firing her, if you read that post, it does look like they are, since the firing is interpreted as an act of posturing, and therefore a damnable offense.

arildno

Reply or post 3??

Gokul43201

My "damned" post was in response to the post immediately preceding it - KM's second post in the thread.

arildno

Well, I read KM's post as being an indicting CNN for doing a minimalist, cosmetic act, rather than condemning them for having dismissed her (being the absolute minimum reaction)

But, KM can probably answer for himself

KalamMekhar

This is just one person who made the mistake of showing her intentions. If there is one lion in the midst, there is bound to be a pack.