News Octavia Nasr tweets her way out of CNN

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The discussion centers on the controversy surrounding CNN's senior Middle East correspondent Octavia Nasr, who faced backlash for her tweet expressing respect for Hezbollah leader Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah upon his death. Critics argue that her comments reveal a bias that undermines journalistic integrity, suggesting that CNN should have dismissed her sooner for her apparent admiration of a figure labeled as a terrorist by the U.S. State Department. Some participants contend that CNN's firing of Nasr was a necessary response to public outcry, while others criticize the network for hiring her in the first place, implying that it reflects a broader issue of bias within the organization. The conversation also touches on the challenges of maintaining objectivity in journalism, with participants debating whether personal biases can be effectively separated from professional reporting. Overall, the thread highlights tensions between perceived bias in media coverage and the expectations of impartiality in journalism.
  • #51
aquitaine said:
NPR is far less biased than any other american news outlet, since their programming often has partnerships with the BBC. Just because they report things you don't want to hear doesn't mean they are biased. And of course the BBC isn't american, it's too good to be one of ours. :P

So what we really conclude is that your bias for the BBC is stronger than any single media outlet's bias for anything. Seriously, your claim is that NPR is the least biased American news outlet, period, because it is affiliated with the BBC?
 
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  • #52
aquitaine said:
NPR is far less biased than any other american news outlet, since their programming often has partnerships with the BBC. Just because they report things you don't want to hear doesn't mean they are biased. And of course the BBC isn't american, it's too good to be one of ours. :P

I like the BBC a lot. But your claim that NPR is less biased on account of their occasional partnerships with them is risible.
 
  • #54
Gokul43201 said:
That is not what you said, and I did not misrepresent what you said. It may not have been what you meant, but that's a different matter.

What you said: "They made the mistake [hiring a terrorist sympathizer as a mid-east correspondent] and they are rightly damned for it when it becomes public, regardless of whether they would have tried to avoid firing her or not."
(bolding mine)
Clearly you misunderstand the difference between:
1. Hiring a terrorist sympathizer.
2. Knowing they hired a terrorist sympathizer.

You also apparently misunderstand the logic. The fact that they didn't know she was a terrorist sympathizer doesn't mean it wasn't still a mistake. This is similar to your cop-out in the compassionate release thread. Again, not knowing when they've made a mistake doesn't make it not be a mistake. The issue here is your worldview doesn't seem to allow you to follow the logic. And the problem with that worldview is that it is wrong. You may not like it, but it is the way the law and ethics really do work. For example, don't try that logic to get out of a speeding ticket: not knowing the speed limit doesn't excuse speeding.

Speculation, but stated as fact.
I am speculating, but I'm not stating it as fact. What I'm trying to do, Gokul, is get you to be reasonable. Your speculation that her colleagues at CNN didn't know of her beliefs is not reasonable. If you can't be reasonable, then there can't be a reasonable discussion. I'm out.
 
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  • #55
Office_Shredder said:
I think the essential claim that no person in charge of anything will promote executives with differing political views needs to be backed up with some evidence here
No one made that claim.

CNN is an organization who'se success depends on the appearance of impartiality (contrasted with Fox, which doesn't depend on the appearance of impartiality). As such, employing/promoting someone who has a strong bias carries considerable risk of damaging the company (and the higher in the company they get, the bigger the risk).

The claim is:

1. It is unreasonable to believe that in 20 years, she never revealed her feelings to her colleagues/superiors.

The logical conclusion folowing it is:

2. Her colleagues/superiors were not distressed enough by her extreme bias to do something about it (fire her).

The opinion is:

3. Not firing her sooner was a mistake that they consciously made.

And:

4. Hiring her in the first place was a mistake whether they knew of her bias then or not. And if they didn't, they probably didn't look hard enough or care enough about it.
 
  • #56
Gokul43201 said:
Sorry, I was not sufficiently clear in the second part. By "organization", I was referring to "media organizations" such as CNN or any such WXYZ. But additionally, I should have also stipulated the mechanism of meritocratic promotions to higher and higher levels of responsibility and reward within the organization.

I must also be sorry, because my "rather through meritocratic mechanisms"-option was unclear, in particular it would be natural for you to think that I regard media organizations as some sort of archetypical organization in which strict meritocracy reigns.
I do not; apart from milieux of university geeks, I think strict meritocracy is fairly rare, because for most jobs, above minimal requirements, there really aren't any objective merit standards (surgeons on hospitals constitute probably another highly meritocratic pecking order).

As for media organizations, remember that apart for professional political parties, you'll never come across a bunch of people as intensely, and devotedly attached to politics, questions of what good society is and so on.
If views are <i>extremely</i> divergent within a media organizations, (and those views WILL show themselves through endless discussions about what cases should be pursued, and which one not, which angle to have here, and which there, and who's going to get it, and how long should the reportage be within the news package), then the organization will blow apart from internal dissension and bickering.

Thus, an effective media organization cannot escape from becoming internally politicized, otherwise, it would spend too much time on what THEIR type of news ought to be.
Remember, they get thousands of potential news each day, they have to go for an extremely tough selection of "newsworthy" cases to fit into a consumer friendly product.

In particular, on the editorial level, this type of regime will be tight.
 
  • #57
russ_watters said:
No one made that claim.

CNN is an organization who'se success depends on the appearance of impartiality (contrasted with Fox, which doesn't depend on the appearance of impartiality). As such, employing/promoting someone who has a strong bias carries considerable risk of damaging the company (and the higher in the company they get, the bigger the risk).

The claim is:

1. It is unreasonable to believe that in 20 years, she never revealed her feelings to her colleagues/superiors.

The logical conclusion folowing it is:

2. Her colleagues/superiors were not distressed enough by her extreme bias to do something about it (fire her).

The opinion is:

3. Not firing her sooner was a mistake that they consciously made.

And:

4. Hiring her in the first place was a mistake whether they knew of her bias then or not. And if they didn't, they probably didn't look hard enough or care enough about it.
It's also entirely possible she concealed her views. That isn't without precedent, after all reverend haggard, who used to rail about how "evil" homosexuality was, turned out to have concealed that he actually was a homosexual for a great many years.
 
  • #58
aquitaine said:
It's also entirely possible she concealed her views. That isn't without precedent, after all reverend haggard, who used to rail about how "evil" homosexuality was, turned out to have concealed that he actually was a homosexual for a great many years.
Haggard didn't casually announce himself on the internet as did Nasr; he was brought out by the allegations of others. The latter indicates secrecy, the former not so much.
 
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  • #59
aquitaine said:
It's also entirely possible she concealed her views.
Possible, not probable.
That isn't without precedent, after all reverend haggard, who used to rail about how "evil" homosexuality was, turned out to have concealed that he actually was a homosexual for a great many years.
Eeh?
Relevance??
 
  • #60
russ_watters said:
The issue here is your worldview doesn't seem to allow you to follow the logic. And the problem with that worldview is that it is wrong.
Thanks for the pop-psychology. When you are ready to discuss the facts here, let me know.

Your speculation that her colleagues at CNN didn't know of her beliefs is not reasonable.
I've made no such speculation. Quote the post where I do so.
 
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  • #61
arildno said:
Eeh?
Relevance??

It's possible for someone to spend years talking about a subject without anyone knowing where they really stand on the issue

I can't make heads or tails of this sympathetic affinity thing anymore. We have russ pretending arildno's posts never happened, and arildno posting contradictory information

Arildno,

Neither for enterprises where the top echelons are largely recruited through positions of inheritance, rather than through meritocratic mechanisms.

The way your post is worded, you were responding to us saying your claim boils down to all organizations having only one political affiliation at the top. You gave counterexamples; one was the university thing, another seems to be enterprises filled through inheritance as opposed to meritocracy. This means that in a meritocracy positions will be filled based on political affiliation according to you. I'm assuming that's not what you meant since by definition that's not how a meritocracy works.

Your explanation of internal politicization of a media group makes more sense, but relies on the assumption that people choose what stories are important based on political affiliation only.
 
  • #62
arildno said:
Possible, not probable.
1. What is the basis for that specific quantification?

2. While this is one of many issues here, this possibility has never (until now) been admitted by those who claim that the existence of one terrorist-sympathizer implies the existence of a pack of sympathizers at the top of CNN.

3. What is the likelihood that her sympathy is new-found? Impossible ... improbable ... likely ... who knows? Have those that asserted a 20-year terrorist fondness provided any evidence for such a claim? Not yet.

This is a burden-of-proof issue.

When anyone asserts that only one specific mechanism can explain a given observation, there is a huge burden of proof on the claimant, to either exhaustively and methodically reject all other conceivable mechanisms, or to otherwise demonstrate that the particular model proposed enjoys wide success in correctly explaining a large number of similar situations, with a negligible failure rate, and that it can account for all the characteristics observed in this particular case with no conflicts.
 
  • #63
Gokul43201 said:
1. What is the basis for that specific quantification?
arildno said:
As for media organizations, remember that apart for professional political parties, you'll never come across a bunch of people as intensely, and devotedly attached to politics, questions of what good society is and so on.
If views are <i>extremely</i> divergent within a media organizations, (and those views WILL show themselves through endless discussions about what cases should be pursued, and which one not, which angle to have here, and which there, and who's going to get it, and how long should the reportage be within the news package), then the organization will blow apart from internal dissension and bickering.

Thus, an effective media organization cannot escape from becoming internally politicized, otherwise, it would spend too much time on what THEIR type of news ought to be.
Remember, they get thousands of potential news each day, they have to go for an extremely tough selection of "newsworthy" cases to fit into a consumer friendly product.

In particular, on the editorial level, this type of regime will be tight.



But then again, you can go on believing the blank slate is a great model by which to understand human psychology.
 
  • #64
Gokul43201 said:
3. What is the likelihood that her sympathy is new-found? Impossible ... improbable ... likely ... who knows? Have those that asserted a 20-year terrorist fondness provided any evidence for such a claim? Not yet.

Can't be sure, but this sounds like a relatively long time familiarity:
Nasr said:
Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah… One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot
 
  • #65
mheslep said:
Can't be sure, but this sounds like a relatively long time familiarity:

How many people were Michael Jackson supporters
1) Before he died
2) After he died

Obviously people can change their opinions about things quickly
 
  • #66
mheslep said:
Can't be sure, but this sounds like a relatively long time familiarity:
The entirety of the proposition here has a string of these unstated "can't be sure" conjectures (whose error bars add up) that all have to be accepted first. Yet the conclusion, that "CNN is a cesspool of terrorist supporting scum" is presented as a virtual certainty.
 
  • #67
It should be noted that the dead cleric was the most liberal leader of his sect. He issued bans on honor-killings and female circumcision as well as condemning physical beatings of women by their husbands. He espoused higher education for Muslim women and founded numerous schools and orphanages, as well as a learning center for women. As a Lebanese woman that grew up in Beirut, it is a no-brainer that Nasr should respect his socially-liberal actions in what can be a brutal and misogynistic society if religious fundamentalism is allowed to dominate.

Iraq offered unprecedented freedoms (and responsibilities) to women under Saddam, and allowed women to serve in all parts of society. The US's invasion and removal of Saddam took a lid off what has turned out to be a tinder-box of ethnic/religious conflicts. Christians remain refugees in neighboring states and will never return, Shiites and Sunnis are at each other's throats often, and Turkey feels threatened by a relatively stable Kurdish population on their southern border. The lot of women in Iraq has not improved since the invasion. Nothing in the ME is black-and-white. Nasr's crime was trying to express a rational opinion in 140 characters or less.
 
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  • #68
A horse is a horse, of course, of course. If he was so "liberal" and "just" why was he a member of a terrorist organization?
 
  • #69
KalamMekhar said:
A horse is a horse, of course, of course. If he was so "liberal" and "just" why was he a member of a terrorist organization?

Everybody's a member of a terrorist organization in the middle east
 
  • #70
KalamMekhar said:
A horse is a horse, of course, of course. If he was so "liberal" and "just" why was he a member of a terrorist organization?

The irony of you questioning someone's liberal credentials while having that as your avatar is apparently lost on you.

By the way, how that avatar has escaped the moderators' attention is baffling. Are those who knowingly conduct aggressive war on behalf of anti-Semitic despots not verboten?
 
  • #71
shoehorn said:
The irony of you questioning someone's liberal credentials while having that as your avatar is apparently lost on you.

By the way, how that avatar has escaped the moderators' attention is baffling. Are those who knowingly conduct aggressive war on behalf of anti-Semitic despots not verboten?

Apparently you've never had a history class, but let's keep useless banter to a minimum (like you commenting on an avatar, when it has nothing to do with this thread).

Until something comes out that states that Mr. Fadlallah did not compare the settling if Israel to the Holocaust, he is still terrorist scum, and is one less Hezbollah agent to deal with.
 
  • #72
KalamMekhar said:
Apparently you've never had a history class, but let's keep useless banter to a minimum (like you commenting on an avatar, when it has nothing to do with this thread).

Indeed. However, given that many people find images of Nazi Germany and those who waged illegal war on its behalf to be offensive, it would be nice if you'd change it to something less provocative.
 
  • #73
Gokul43201 said:
The entirety of the proposition here has a string of these unstated "can't be sure" conjectures (whose error bars add up) that all have to be accepted first. Yet the conclusion, that "CNN is a cesspool of terrorist supporting scum" is presented as a virtual certainty.
Not by me.
 
  • #74
shoehorn said:
Indeed. However, given that many people find images of Nazi Germany and those who waged illegal war on its behalf to be offensive, it would be nice if you'd change it to something less provocative.

I'm not sure how the NA campaign, or the 7th Armored crashing the maginot, was "illegal" but, please explain your logic in a new thread.
 
  • #75
A former Lebanese government minister said last week that he likes Germany because “they hate Jews and burned them.” He was speaking on Al-Jadid/New TV in Lebanon on July 4.

The clip was found and translated by MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute), and screened on its MEMRITV.org television monitor project.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/138532"

The more of these bastards dead the better.
 
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  • #76
arildno said:
Possible, not probable.

Eeh?
Relevance??

It's relevant because it demonstrates how a person can hide something about themselves for a great many years without suspicion.
 
  • #77
aquitaine said:
It's relevant because it demonstrates how a person can hide something about themselves for a great many years without suspicion.
Can, is going to?

She was a political journalist, and a senior editor.

She will have expressed sympathies with the Hezbollah as possibly miguided, but having a just cause, while denouncing Israel as imperialist at numerous staff and editorial meetings.
 
  • #78
arildno said:
Can, is going to?

She was a political journalist, and a senior editor.

She will have expressed sympathies with the Hezbollah as possibly miguided, but having a just cause, while denouncing Israel as imperialist at numerous staff and editorial meetings.

Ted Haggard is a reverend, whose job it is to discuss morality.

He will have expressed sympathies with gay people as possibly misguided, but having a just cause, while denouncing homophobes as un-Christian at numerous sermons and Bible discussions.
 
  • #79
Office_Shredder said:
Ted Haggard is a reverend, whose job it is to discuss morality.

He will have expressed sympathies with gay people as possibly misguided, but having a just cause, while denouncing homophobes as un-Christian at numerous sermons and Bible discussions.
No, why?
Many self-haters out there, being unable to come to grips with their own sexuality.
That is quite a different thing from adoring a terrorist preacher, as Nasr did, and does.
 
  • #80
KalamMekhar said:
I'm not sure how the NA campaign, or the 7th Armored crashing the maginot, was "illegal" but, please explain your logic in a new thread.

The entire German campaign was a war of aggression, hence illegal according to the Nuremburg principles. Hope that helps.
 
  • #81
shoehorn said:
The entire German campaign was a war of aggression, hence illegal according to the Nuremburg principles. Hope that helps.

Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but the Nuremberg Principles were written after WW2. I'm no lawyer, but I think declaring something illegal due to a law that was enacted after the event is just a tad bit unfair.
 

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