CNN's Chief Middle East correspondent fired for a tweet

July 7, 2010 3:46 PM

Octavia Nasr Canned at CNN. CNN's Chief Middle East correspondent for 20 years, Octavia Nasr tweeted “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah... One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.” She was fired by CNN shortly afterward because they believed "her credibility in her position as senior editor for Middle Eastern affairs has been compromised going forward".
posted by falameufilho (130 comments total)

jeez, twenty year career ended because of a tweet. fucked up.
posted by angrycat at 3:48 PM on July 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

I don't know much about Nasr, but this kind of thing usually ends up with Al Jazeera English netting yet another first-rate journalist.
posted by stammer at 3:49 PM on July 7, 2010 [40 favorites]

CNN is a joke, anyway.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:50 PM on July 7, 2010 [38 favorites]

Where to place outrage?
posted by fixedgear at 3:52 PM on July 7, 2010

CNN, fire a journalist? Who will fill all that airtime on Situation Room now? A monkey?

oh wait...
posted by GuyZero at 3:55 PM on July 7, 2010 [3 favorites]

CNN is a joke, anyway.

No shit. I watched it for the first time in ages a few days ago, and it appears to have turned into the Lindsay Lohan network.
posted by brundlefly at 3:56 PM on July 7, 2010 [11 favorites]

Some information about Hussein Fadlallah, from Wikipedia. This is just one fact about what is probably a complicated man, but may serve to indicate what Octavia Nasr found admirable about him:

Fadlallah also issued a fatwa on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women that supports the right of a woman to defend herself against any act of violence whether social or physical. The fatwa reaffirms the rights of women, both at their workplace and at home, and states that Islam forbids men from exercising any form of violence against women and forbids men from depriving women of their legal rights. In his words "physical violence in which women are beaten, proves that these men are weak, for only the weak are in need of unjust violence". He also issued fatwas (religious edicts) forbidding female circumcision and honour killings.
posted by JHarris at 3:56 PM on July 7, 2010 [100 favorites]

I think I'll add a link to Al Jazeera for stammer.

Careful what you tweet. Careful what you email, for that matter.

I bet if she had been wishing Benjamin Netanyahu a very happy birthday, she wouldn't have been canned.
posted by Xoebe at 3:58 PM on July 7, 2010 [17 favorites]

The problem here is tweeting about it, not the fact that she has a nuanced view of Hezbollah. The fact is that she really ought to realize that her audience has no comprehension of Hezbollah's multiple roles and complex internal makeup — they just think it's 100% comprised of a bunch of mean-faced terrorists intent on Destroying The World — and you can't possibly provide the necessary context, caveats and extra information in 140 characters.
posted by game warden to the events rhino at 3:59 PM on July 7, 2010 [13 favorites]

I still don't think that's worthy of firing though. And of course the general view will become that she was fired for sympathizing with evil.
posted by game warden to the events rhino at 4:00 PM on July 7, 2010

Doesn't she realize that it's Hezbollah that's running the terrorist ships full of kitchen knives into the totally awesome country of Israel?
posted by Artw at 4:01 PM on July 7, 2010 [6 favorites]

Having a deep and nuanced knowledge of the area you are covering is exactly the kind of thing that will destroy your credibility as a modern American journalist.
posted by Jimmy Havok at 4:04 PM on July 7, 2010 [121 favorites]

And yet Rick Sanchez still works there.
posted by Ironmouth at 4:04 PM on July 7, 2010 [7 favorites]

Ugh. Will the business-speak term "going forward" go away already?
posted by zsazsa at 4:06 PM on July 7, 2010 [15 favorites]

The fact is that she really ought to realize that her audience has no comprehension of Hezbollah's multiple roles and complex internal makeup... because, at least in part because their world-view is wholly informed by cable news, they have the intellectual sophistication of an angry gorilla.

she's better off, rather than continuing to work at CNN and think she isn't contributing to a spectacle which leaves her audience less informed and less able to comprehend a complicated world than if they had never turned on the TV in the first place.
posted by ennui.bz at 4:08 PM on July 7, 2010

CNN is a joke news organization. WTF CNN? indeed.

And this provides yet further proof that the idea of subjective reporting by American mainstream news agencies is bullshit. I can almost hear the keys pounding on Glenn Greenwald's keyboard as he types up another damning critique of them from here.
posted by formless at 4:09 PM on July 7, 2010 [2 favorites]

And this just a few months after they pushed Michael Ware into leaving.
posted by homunculus at 4:11 PM on July 7, 2010

Oh. And Nancy Grace. I need say nothing more.
posted by formless at 4:11 PM on July 7, 2010 [7 favorites]

Let this be a lesson to all of you: Be careful who you respect. I shall make it a personal goal to never respect anyone again. Yo, fuck y'all!
posted by Kirk Grim at 4:12 PM on July 7, 2010

CNN is a joke, anyway.

And not a particularly funny one.
posted by MattMangels at 4:12 PM on July 7, 2010 [2 favorites]

OH MY GOD SHE HAD RESPECT FOR SOMEONE WHO WE ARE TELLING PEOPLE SHOULDNT BE RESPECTED WTF IS SHE A SERIOUS PERSON WHO PAYS ATTENTION TO MORE THAN A SOUNDBITE


BURN THE WITCH!!
posted by paisley henosis at 4:14 PM on July 7, 2010 [3 favorites]

Seriously, fuck CNN for yet another reason.
posted by paisley henosis at 4:14 PM on July 7, 2010 [2 favorites]

Nasr responds.

I don’t see anything for her to deeply regret here at all; then, I don’t see any reason whatsoever for having fired Dave Weigel, either. I want my journalists to have “off-duty” opinions. I want them to express them. Twitter is precisely the place for such stuff, to say nothing of private emails to private off-the-record listservs. If you’re wondering why someone would offer 140 characters of respect for someone like Fadlallah, well, THAT’S WHAT MOTHERFUCKING GOOGLE IS FOR
posted by kipmanley at 4:15 PM on July 7, 2010 [12 favorites]

"CNN is the McNuggets of McNews."

--Stephen Geller, middle of my afternoon screenwriting class, Boston University, sometime in late 1996 or early 1997.

He wasn't wrong, then or now.
posted by fairytale of los angeles at 4:17 PM on July 7, 2010 [7 favorites]

I bet if she had been wishing Benjamin Netanyahu a very happy birthday, she wouldn't have been canned.

Doesn't she realize that it's Hezbollah that's running the terrorist ships full of kitchen knives into the totally awesome country of Israel?

Oh, if only CNN could be more nuanced and sophisticated in its understanding, like we at Metafilter undoubtedly are!!
posted by thegreatfleecircus at 4:21 PM on July 7, 2010 [2 favorites]

What the hell, CNN? President Reagan was an equally complicated historical figure with an equal amount of innocent blood on his hands. If she had tweeted something similar when he died, would they have even fucking blinked?

Personally, I shed no tears for Fadlallah, a Holocaust denier. He advocated suicide bombing and armed resistance against Israel, including taking up arms against *unarmed* Israeli civilians and familes.

At the same time, he also spent his life working tirelessly for humanitarian purposes within Lebanon. He founded orphanages. Schools. Spiritual centers. He was a rare progressive Shiite Ayatollah when it came to women's civil rights and equal treatment under Sharia law.

Is there no room in the CNN worldview for depth of understanding? Is it not fucking possible that Nasr could be praising the man's positive qualities with an understanding that she wasn't advocating or somehow justifying suicide bombers? Idiots.
posted by zarq at 4:24 PM on July 7, 2010 [10 favorites]

Sad to hear of the passing of independent, objective journalism... One of democracy's necessities I respected a lot.
posted by DU at 4:25 PM on July 7, 2010 [2 favorites]

Fuck idiots who tweet inane crap nobody is interested in on twitter.
posted by fire&wings at 4:26 PM on July 7, 2010

Chicken or egg? Western public opinion has been distorted in favor of one party of a conflict. As a result, Western governments also favor the same party. As a result of which, the public supports whomever their governments support and oppose whomever their governments oppose. As a result, the governments continue to reflect the wishes of their publics and continue supporting one party in the conflict while opposing the other. As a result, the party that is being opposed grows hostile. As a result of that hostility, Western public opinion grows ever more hostile.

And then someone comes along who tries to break this cycle of misinformation and misdeeds. And then she is immediately removed from any position which might allow her to be effective.

Cycle continues.
posted by VikingSword at 4:30 PM on July 7, 2010 [5 favorites]

Nasr responds.

Good for her.

I want my journalists to have “off-duty” opinions. I want them to express them.

Agreed.


Twitter is precisely the place for such stuff,

Disagree. We've seen this before. Twitter's 140 character restriction lends itself too easily to misinterpretation. If she has something to say and it needs to be nuanced, then she should take the time to write an actual essay that gets her complete point across, not try to convey complexity and depth in a soundbite. IMO, she shouldn't have been fired. But she's a journalist and should know better than the average person that if she's going to weigh in on a story, she needs to do so with clarity.

If you’re wondering why someone would offer 140 characters of respect for someone like Fadlallah, well, THAT’S WHAT MOTHERFUCKING GOOGLE IS FOR

The average American who googles him will most likely see "Holocaust denier" and "Hezbollah spiritual leader" and think, "Terrorist." We can see from the essay you linked to that she obviously knew this. I'm sincerely not trying to blame the victim here -- CNN should never have fired her. But by making a short comment on Twitter, she had to know she'd be inviting disagreement.
posted by zarq at 4:32 PM on July 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

Fuck idiots who tweet inane crap nobody is interested in on twitter.

Nice comment. I notice it is fewer than 140 characters. Shall I retweet it?
posted by shii at 4:32 PM on July 7, 2010 [9 favorites]

I can almost hear the keys pounding on Glenn Greenwald's keyboard as he types up another damning critique of them from here.

He's already been going after the media today, so yeah, add this to the list.
posted by homunculus at 4:39 PM on July 7, 2010

You guys make it seem like she tweeted and seconds later, a fat white guy pressed a red button on his phone, which triggered some functionary to hand her a pink slip without any comment or discussion.

It's was almost certainly a complex discussion. I'm not saying CNN did the right thing. But any time I hear something like this, I usually think, "Wow, for whatever reason, they hated that person so much, they were just itching to find a reason -- any reason -- to fire them."
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 4:39 PM on July 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

What the hell, CNN? President Reagan was an equally complicated historical figure with an equal amount of innocent blood on his hands. If she had tweeted something similar when he died, would they have even fucking blinked?

i don't know, in my mind, ronald reagan is a portrait in evil and this country was spared untold horrors, the world possibly a nuclear apocalypse, because the alzheimers and john hinckley's bullet gave Ronnie him the gift of grace before the end of his first term. I hear alzheimers works that way sometimes....

so, if i were, for the sake of argument, ted turner and some employee of mine expressed her deep respect for this evil man, I would be sorely pressed to wonder why she was my employee. on the other hand, this would say a lot about my political convictions.
posted by ennui.bz at 4:45 PM on July 7, 2010 [2 favorites]

If anyone's credibility has been compromised, it is CNN's. If they had any left at this late date.
posted by browse at 4:47 PM on July 7, 2010

It's was almost certainly a complex discussion.

Which probably also involved a rather frank conversation about whether she had now permanently lost the ability to appear an objective network reporter in the minds of not only their current viewers, but also the audience they have lost to (mostly) right-wing FoxNews and (mostly) left-wing MSNBC.

I would bet real money that they thought the story of her tweet would alienate lots and lots of people.
posted by zarq at 4:49 PM on July 7, 2010

> The average American who googles him will most likely see "Holocaust denier" and "Hezbollah spiritual leader" and think, "Terrorist."

"Holocaust denier" is quite enough, isn't it?
posted by poorlydrawnplato at 4:54 PM on July 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

Ugh. Will the business-speak term "going forward" go away already?

Seriously. One of my favorite old Dilbert strips basically goes:

BOSS: I'll need you to tackle this issue on a going-forward basis.
DILBERT: Thanks for ruling out time travel. You're usually not that helpful.
later
WALLY: So you're saying he understands the concept of time now?
DILBERT: Or he just got lucky on this one.
posted by Navelgazer at 4:56 PM on July 7, 2010 [12 favorites]

I would bet real money that they thought the story of her tweet would alienate lots and lots of people.

That doesn't ever seem to stop them when I'm one of the people they're alienating, though. Surely I am not that special a snowflake.
posted by enn at 4:56 PM on July 7, 2010 [3 favorites]

That doesn't ever seem to stop them when I'm one of the people they're alienating, though. Surely I am not that special a snowflake.

I suspect you (and I) are in the minority.

FoxNewschannel consistently has the largest audience of all three major news networks. Their shows dominate the ratings.

CNN lost that audience many years ago, and has been doing their best to gain them back.
posted by zarq at 5:01 PM on July 7, 2010

No link to the offending tweet? Or her stream?
posted by cjorgensen at 5:05 PM on July 7, 2010

CNN is very rapidly becoming a vapid parody of news programming. Has been for a long while now. If they're reporting the weather or sports highlights, I'll stay my hand on the remote (same goes for FOX News, actually), but if they have a report with any kind of "substance", then forget it.
posted by zardoz at 5:10 PM on July 7, 2010

For those who skipped Nasr's blog post:

"To me, as a Middle Eastern woman, Fadlallah took a contrarian and pioneering stand among Shia clerics on woman’s rights. He called for the abolition of the tribal system of ‘honor killing.’ He called the practice primitive and nonproductive. He warned Muslim men that abuse of women was against Islam...

This does not mean I respected him for what else he did or said. Far from it.”
posted by foxy_hedgehog at 5:11 PM on July 7, 2010

I had no idea Hezbollah had giants. This has thrown my whole take on the Middle East situation out of whack.
posted by Kirk Grim at 5:12 PM on July 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

Her blog post was fantastic, and yes, showed the kind of nuance that we apparently can't handle on network news. Kind of made the guy out to be like Hezbollah's own Trotsky.

Why oh why can't we have a news network that caters to the minority who craves nuance and actual education? Why do we have to satisfy ourselves with The Daily Show to call other news outlets out on their bullshit?
posted by Navelgazer at 5:15 PM on July 7, 2010 [2 favorites]

And yet Lou Dobbes and his "Mexicans are giving us leprosy" bullshit went unpunished.
posted by nestor_makhno at 5:19 PM on July 7, 2010 [12 favorites]

And there I was thinking that CNN's entire schtick these days was based upon contentious opinions pulled from Twitter.

(It used to be the case that you could distinguish between CNN's domestic and international coverage, with the latter giving more time and respect to international correspondents, but that's less evident these days.)
posted by holgate at 5:30 PM on July 7, 2010

Nice comment. I notice it is fewer than 140 characters. Shall I retweet it?

I did.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:31 PM on July 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

Don't forget "Mexicans are shooting at my wife!".
posted by stavrogin at 5:32 PM on July 7, 2010

I'm going to fail to avoid cliche here, but I don't have a TV, and I don't miss TV, and I say that as someone who loves TV. I get everything online. Cable news dreck and ear-piercing commercial breaks are no longer things I experience, and I recommend it with all my heart. BBC and PBS and NPR are good major sources of news, blogs and newspapers too, and if something major happens it's normally broadcast live online anyway.

But stay away from CNN.com. They stretch 4:3 into 16:9 at CNN.com. It is a dark and perverted place.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 5:33 PM on July 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

Considering the intellectual level of CNN and most of its viewers, I wouldn't be surprised if they shitcannned someone for saying (s)he admired Kareem Abdul Jabbar.
posted by FelliniBlank at 5:35 PM on July 7, 2010 [13 favorites]

cnn is truly degenerate. nothing but idiocy piled upon idiocy (cf the story about the girl giving up plastic who kept using 99% of the plastic in her life)
posted by r_nebblesworthII at 6:01 PM on July 7, 2010

You guys make it seem like she tweeted and seconds later, a fat white guy pressed a red button on his phone, which triggered some functionary to hand her a pink slip without any comment or discussion.

Well, that is a pretty funny image.

Why oh why can't we have a news network that caters to the minority who craves nuance and actual education? Why do we have to satisfy ourselves with The Daily Show to call other news outlets out on their bullshit?

Why would those people get their news from TV in the first place?
posted by delmoi at 6:26 PM on July 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

CNN can go fuck themselves going forward.
posted by Camofrog at 6:29 PM on July 7, 2010 [3 favorites]

CNN is very rapidly becoming a vapid parody of news programming. Has been for a long while now.

A few years ago I was idly watching CNN on a restaurant TV and they headlined a story "She bit him, drank his blood." They had an artist's rendering that looked like it was of a villain from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The only thing keeping me from unreservedly consigning CNN to the flames of the pit are that Fox News proves handily that things could be worse. Why the heck is it that they figure the way to compete with FOX is to get just as stupid as they are? Why does no one in TV news see that there must be a market for non-stupid news reporting?
posted by JHarris at 6:39 PM on July 7, 2010

Why would those people get their news from TV in the first place?

If it were good, solid news, then why the hell not?
posted by JHarris at 6:40 PM on July 7, 2010 [3 favorites]

People like that don't get fired for a single Tweet. It may have been the final straw or something. Not saying CNN was in the right, just don't know all the politics behind the scenes.
posted by stbalbach at 6:44 PM on July 7, 2010

a market for non-stupid news reporting?

Wow. There are tons of great news sources. Stop watching TV.
posted by stbalbach at 6:52 PM on July 7, 2010 [2 favorites]

People like that don't get fired for a single Tweet.

Sure they do, if you have bloggers baying for blood,. Or if the top brass have been thinking about closing down their Middle East bureau or letting go of a correspondent who's a relic from a time when CNN was in the news business, and want a reason to terminate with cause.
posted by holgate at 7:06 PM on July 7, 2010 [2 favorites]

If it were good, solid news, then why the hell not?

I dunno, I find reading a much more efficient way to get news. I mean, if something doesn't interest you, you can skip it. Or you can skim something. Whatever. You can't really do that with TV yet, and if there is something where video is key to understanding, you can just watch it on YouTube.

What exactly would this highbrow news network have on it that I can't get on regular TV? I do watch the Daily Show and Colbert Report, but for most of the political news they do, I've already heard about it.
posted by delmoi at 7:08 PM on July 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

Revise and extend: this isn't a bureau thing, since Nasr lived and worked in Atlanta. But the point about her being a holdover from the days when CNN felt obligated to employ someone in that position.
posted by holgate at 7:08 PM on July 7, 2010

all the media is fucked up, no good, right? so let us get our news and views from...?MSNBC (GE owned), Fox? etc?

the guy she praised was a mixed bag. He was a social critic as noted in defending women, but he also said and did some other stuff:

"A fierce critic of the United States, which formally designated him a terrorist, Fadlallah used many of his Friday prayer sermons to denounce U.S. policies in the Middle East, particularly its alliance with Israel.

But he was also quick to denounce the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States which killed some 3,000 people."
posted by Postroad at 7:30 PM on July 7, 2010

CNN is a shadow of its former self. I blame HDTV for giving them the screen real estate to slather widgets all over everything and transform the basic format from 'cable news' to 'spastic multimedia billboard.' Even in the frame containing the actual television image the "presenters" are typically standing in front of a wall of monitors, operating a glorified PowerPoint featuring business-speak keyword bullet points.

It'd be nice if there was a broadcast market for something higher-minded in the 24 hour cable news world, but I'm afraid there probably isn't.

CNN's only saving grace is Fareed Zakaria GPS. Which they'll probably get around to canceling sooner or later too, to make room for OMG! with Cooper & Sanchez (brought to you by Facebook and Twitter. And Taco Bell, or course.)
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:31 PM on July 7, 2010 [2 favorites]

Take a moment to pause from your online outrage. It is time to enter the post network manifesto. Turn off the TV, put down the laptop. Open your window and scream to the world right now, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to watch you anymore." Put your television out on the street, cancel cable and consider for a moment how many hours of your life have been spent laboring so that you could sit around on you butt and watch some jerk on CNN tell you how smart you are, or how wrong your politics are or say something to totally stupid that you found yourself yelling at the television, to some electrons that can't hear you or interact with you in any meaningful way. You spent your time working day after day, to pay to endure that while you downed some rubbery microwaved chicken Lean Cuisine so you wouldn't get too fat from the fact that you were sitting there. You paid for CNN with every hour you sat at work when you could have been with your family, your garden, your neighbors. Then you wasted what free time you had left watching them on the television, rather than living your life. Once we sat on our front porches talked with neighbors, and watched the grass grow, while listening to children practice piano or just play in the yard. This cost us nothing and refreshed our souls, but now we pay to sit and be incited to rage against whatever Emanual Goldstein our demographic profile and viewer preferences indicate will hook us into longer and longer stints sitting there. Do not fret for Octavia Nasr, whilst you have sat there these last 20 years; she has been out there living and working to make the world better. She is now free of this menacing CNN and can perhaps do something even grander. Yet you will sit there in the dark, in your living room enraged at her departure, when in fact you should be filled with regret and sorrow that you ever came and stayed tuned to that channel.
posted by humanfont at 7:31 PM on July 7, 2010 [6 favorites]

Newshour is pretty good. It's the only good (American) TV news I can think of, but it exists.
posted by wildcrdj at 7:35 PM on July 7, 2010 [3 favorites]

(and it's way better than The Daily Show as a news program -- obviously TDS is much funnier :) )
posted by wildcrdj at 7:35 PM on July 7, 2010

In the early 1990's there was a new 24-hour news channel on cable television. I had presumed then that this channel would broadcast different reports and various insights and in-depth documentaries from around the world, seeing as they were no longer restricted by the narrow time-frames of traditional network news shows. I was most disappointed to see a 5-minute shit-clip looped for 24 hours during the first Gulf War.
posted by ovvl at 7:35 PM on July 7, 2010

Well, the Daily Show is mostly good for either hearing about something you hadn't come across or else seeing what the networks are saying about a story you've already come across, and then having Stewart & Co. destroy the version of the story the networks are trying to sell.

Which makes it more valuable than all of the networks combined. And Colbert is fun, but full of diminishing returns these days, if you ask me.
posted by Navelgazer at 7:55 PM on July 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

I've always liked to watch all of the broadcast news channels as well as the cable news channels. As well I read the NY Daily News and the New York Times.

It's interesting to compare them to various online sites such as HuffPo, DKOS and the like.

As a person that does not trust anyone, it gives me a general idea of what those that do trust these sources think about.

I, myself, get all my trusted news from the voice in my head. I used to have several voices in my head but I un-subscribed to all but one. The rest were obviously not objective.

And news has to be objective. Right?

Yes. Of course.
posted by Splunge at 8:13 PM on July 7, 2010

I bet if she had been wishing Benjamin Netanyahu a very happy birthday, she wouldn't have been canned.

She might have offered a job at the White House.
posted by homunculus at 8:15 PM on July 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

have been offered...
posted by homunculus at 8:43 PM on July 7, 2010

If it were good, solid news, then why the hell not?

Getting good news from television is like getting good nutrition from Coca-Cola. No matter how they dress it up, it's still killing you. The medium is the message, etc.

I get my news from cuneiform.
posted by allen.spaulding at 9:05 PM on July 7, 2010

William Barr is on the board of directors of Time Warner, the parent company of CNN. Barr was a senior advisor in the Reagan administration, which attempted to assassinate Fadlallah, missing him and killing more than eighty bystanders.
posted by the duck by the oboe at 9:30 PM on July 7, 2010 [10 favorites]

Interesting, I just came across this link about kos being banned from MSNBC over a 'tweet'. Apparently his post was that Garry Condit got kicked out congress over a dead intern, while Joe Scarborough didn't. His point was media double standards, but it's obviously not a place for nuance.
posted by delmoi at 9:51 PM on July 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

wildcrdj wrote: "Newshour is pretty good. It's the only good (American) TV news I can think of, but it exists."

What? Have they finally gotten rid of the pervasive right wing bias that the CPB forced on the show some years back?
posted by wierdo at 10:24 PM on July 7, 2010

ChurchHatesTucker, I'm so glad that got retweeted.
posted by quarsan at 10:30 PM on July 7, 2010

This isn't chicken feed, but it's not uncommon either. Israel - and its supporters - have been waging a cold war on the BBC for years.

Barbara Plett, for example, was accused of all manner of bias for admitting that the sight of a dying Yasser Arafat affected her: "when the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose above his ruined compound, I started to cry... without warning."

It's a game. Orla Guerin was hounded out of Israel for "bias". Jeremy Bowen is hounded in the UK for "bias" where the worst finding against him in 26 years of BBC reporting and thousands of broadcasts is that he breached the BBC's strict guidelines.

Ironically, Haaretz and other Israeli media has a much freer hand to criticize policy or action.

The rules are: nothing less than either the blandest "he said, she said" journalism or positioning from an Israeli approved position is allowed to pass. Deviate from that the noise machine is cranked up to exert pressure.
posted by MuffinMan at 12:42 AM on July 8, 2010 [5 favorites]

You have to remember that CNN was an offspring of old, hoary Headline News. Hard as it tries to hide those origins, when times get tough, CNN goes running home to its genetic roots. Its been wallowing in the family gene pool for a good long time now.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:22 AM on July 8, 2010

You have to remember that CNN was an offspring of old, hoary Headline News.

Headline News was a spinoff of CNN
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 6:23 AM on July 8, 2010

I like how in her response, she doesn't really regret her comments, just that she didn't take the time to give the man the proper send of she felt he deserved.
posted by chunking express at 8:03 AM on July 8, 2010

No link to the offending tweet? Or her stream?

Her Twitter Stream. I believe the offending tweet has been deleted. This is her current status message.
posted by zarq at 9:11 AM on July 8, 2010

So, here's Greenwald's go at it.

And this is the takeaway bit to my mind:

The network -- which has employed a former AIPAC official, Wolf Blitzer, as its primary news anchor for the last 15 years -- justified its actions by claiming that Nasr's "credibility" had been "compromised."

File under: You've got to be fucking kidding
posted by Trochanter at 9:52 AM on July 8, 2010 [4 favorites]

Juan Cole: US Ally Maliki & Octavia Nasr Both Praised Fadlallah
posted by homunculus at 12:03 PM on July 8, 2010

I can't say I'm a huge fan of her comment - and what Helen Thomas said was pretty much inexcusable, but it seems to me that the take home from this is that if you're a prominent woman journalist, you really cannot afford to mess up. Is there a double standard for male and female journalists?
posted by Salamandrous at 1:50 PM on July 8, 2010

Newshour...

What? Have they finally gotten rid of the pervasive right wing bias that the CPB forced on the show some years back?

This is the weird thing. As an Australian, the US news I get consists of all those awful cable channels, and the Newshour. The Newshour always seems so sensible and normal to me. Just people talking seriously about the news. Like they should. In fact, it feels positively liberal. And when I mention this to Americans they start telling me how "PBS are the Conservative Establishment, man!" I'm sorry, I just can see it. I can stand to watch the Newshour, in fact I quite enjoy it. Where as more than 5 seconds of MSNBCFOXCNN makes me fill ill, just with all the garish graphics and over-makedup bimbos.
posted by Jimbob at 1:56 PM on July 8, 2010

Jimbob wrote: "This is the weird thing. As an Australian, the US news I get consists of all those awful cable channels, and the Newshour. The Newshour always seems so sensible and normal to me. Just people talking seriously about the news. Like they should. In fact, it feels positively liberal."

They do treat it seriously, but in an uninquisitive way. It's a much more subtle bias than with Fox News. In the past, they were more interested in getting at the objective truth. Now they uncritically accept it when guests say things that are widely known to be factually incorrect, just like almost every other news show out there.

Modern news reporting infuriates me. While there is a lot in this world that is a matter of opinion, there are also objective facts. Allowing people to get away with making statements contrary to fact in support of that opinion is not OK. Sometimes there is an objective truth that should be reported.
posted by wierdo at 2:52 PM on July 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

what Helen Thomas said was pretty much inexcusable

Gee, Israelis have thrashed the shit out of her country time after time while trying to steal it (and hang onto a prime piece even now), and she's not allowed to wish they would go back where they came from?
posted by Jimmy Havok at 5:29 PM on July 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

Jimmy Havok wrote: Gee, Israelis have thrashed the shit out of her country

Helen Thomas was born in Kentucky, and did not identify as an Arab-American. Her family has been in the USA for well over one hundred years.

time after time while trying to steal it (and hang onto a prime piece even now),

According to the UN and almost everyone else, the Shebaa Farms are actually part of Syria.

and she's not allowed to wish they would go back where they came from?

More than seventy percent of Israeli Jews were born in Israel. Just over a third of them were born in Europe or are of European descent. It is highly unlikely that there are many Polish Jews in Israel, since only about 200,000 of them survived the Holocaust and I expect many of those migrated to Australia, Canada or the USA. The same would go for German Jews.

In summary: Lebanon is not her country; Israel is not "hanging on" to any part of it; and expelling Polish and German Jews from Israel would be quite irrelevant to her grievance. So much for the factual content of your justification. Morally, of course, her comment was beyond the pale, and it was almost universally treated as such.
posted by Joe in Australia at 9:09 PM on July 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

Speak Your Mind. Lose Your Job. Why Octavia Nasr and Dave Weigel shouldn't have lost their jobs.
posted by homunculus at 9:21 PM on July 8, 2010

I can't say I'm a huge fan of her comment - and what Helen Thomas said was pretty much inexcusable, but it seems to me that the take home from this is that if you're a prominent woman journalist, you really cannot afford to mess up. Is there a double standard for male and female journalists?
posted by Salamandrous 7 hours ago [+]

Sorry, what? Check out Glenn Greenwald's piece in which he lists the journalists critical of the U.S. mililtary and/or Israel that have been canned. By my count it's more men than women, but gender isn't really the issue, is it?
posted by zardoz at 9:49 PM on July 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

OK, so the Israelis have lived off the taxes of Helen Thomas's (and my) country, and used the arms they bought with those taxes to attack and kill their neighbors. So she's still got a beef with them, and since some of those the Israelis were killing were her cousins, doubly so.

She named a lot of other places besides Poland and Germany that the Israelis could go to.

Shebaa Farms may be marked as Syrian on a map that idiot French cartographers drew, but the people who lived there before the Israelis murdered them identified as Lebanese, paid taxes to Lebanon and filed their deeds there. One look at Google Earth makes it obious where the cartographers thought they were drawing that line. And pissing about who the Israelis stole the land from is the weakest kind of sophistry imaginable.

You say Helen Thomas doesn't have a legitimate complaint, then you throw down the Holocaust card. You know, because what Europeans did to Jews justifies absolutely anything Israelis may want to do to their neighbors, and therefore she should be hounded out of the press corp.

So much for the moral content of your "rebuttal."
posted by Jimmy Havok at 10:07 PM on July 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

Um.

You're giving a lot of justifications for her remark. The fact is that it was not only stupid but offensive, and it is to her credit that she didn't try offering any of your justifications. I don't know if her ill-considered comment ought to have been a firing offense, but her days as a journalist were long behind her and I think she recognised that it was time for her to go.
posted by Joe in Australia at 10:51 PM on July 8, 2010

CNN can go fuck themselves going forward.

At the end of the day, CNN can take a flying fuck at a rolling donut.
posted by krinklyfig at 12:29 AM on July 9, 2010

By my count it's more men than women, but gender isn't really the issue, is it?

Thanks for the reference to some actual data.

Is gender THE issue? Gender is rarely THE issue. It's usually packed in with a lot of other complicated stuff, and when there is a double standard based on gender, then yeah, it is definitely AN issue.

Jimmy Havok, everyone is allowed to wish whatever they want to wish and believe whatever they want to believe. If they do believe things that I find troublesome, I'd actually rather they say them openly. I'm also allowed to wish and believe whatever I want about their wishes and beliefs. Sheesh.
posted by Salamandrous at 5:26 AM on July 9, 2010

Related: UK envoy's praise for Lebanon cleric draws Israel anger

"Israel has criticised Britain's ambassador to Lebanon for eulogising a recently deceased Lebanese cleric said to have inspired Hezbollah.

Frances Guy wrote on her personal blog that Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah was a "decent man" who rated among the people she most admired.

An Israeli spokesman said Ayatollah Fadlallah was "unworthy of praise".

The UK foreign office says it has taken down the blog after "mature consideration".
posted by MuffinMan at 5:32 AM on July 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

She named a lot of other places besides Poland and Germany that the Israelis could go to.

posted by Jimmy Havok at 1:07 AM on July 9 [1 favorite +] [!]

Disgusting
posted by rosswald at 6:33 AM on July 9, 2010

Helen Thomas is of course wrong. It should of course be up to the Palestinians to go back where they came from.
posted by Artw at 6:37 AM on July 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

I think a couple decades and a couple wars make that pretty unrealistic.
posted by rosswald at 6:45 AM on July 9, 2010

Regarding Greenwald: Helen Thomas retired. She wasn't fired by Hearst. She left her job of her own accord after stating quite clearly on camera that the should Jews leave Gaza and Israel and go back to (among others) two countries whose populations were, just a few decades ago all too eager to toss them into gas chambers and ovens. She was not taken out of context or misinterpreted, nor has she claimed that.

The backlash she experienced for that statement is both understandable and predictable. But though they were no doubt pressured to, Hearst did not fire her.

Thomas had the opportunity to clarify her statement afterwards, and this is what she said:

Helen Thomas issued the following statement today: “I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians. They do not reflect my heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon.” (June 4, 2010)

In that, she's very right.
posted by zarq at 7:42 AM on July 9, 2010

She named a lot of other places besides Poland and Germany that the Israelis could go to.

No, she didn't. She named Poland, Germany and America by name. That's it.

You say Helen Thomas doesn't have a legitimate complaint, then you throw down the Holocaust card.

The topic of the Holocaust is inherent to, and impossible to divest from that discussion. What's more, you're smart and knowledgeable enough to know this.

Israel was created as a refuge for Jews in direct response to their attempted genocide in the Holocaust. One cannot simply say the phrase [Israeli Jews] "should go back where they came from" without also acknowledging the underlying context: Jews went to Israel precisely because they were escaping from countries which had quite literally been slaughtered them by the millions.
posted by zarq at 7:50 AM on July 9, 2010

How did this end up as a discussion about Israel? God damn, people.
posted by chunking express at 7:54 AM on July 9, 2010

How did this end up as a discussion about Israel? God damn, people.

Apparently, it's I/P all the way down.
posted by zarq at 8:03 AM on July 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

Israel was created as a refuge for Jews in direct response to their attempted genocide in the Holocaust.

So you've got displaced Europeans given a homeland by European fiat. Helen Thomas is old enough to have been a thinking adult when it happened. That gives her a sense of perspective that should be valued. Her comments were hyperbolic throw-aways.

But she's called racist. She's compared to your nutty old aunt. She's lost it.

And while she may have been given the opportunity to fall on her sword, to deny she was forced from her job is to be dishonest with yourself.

And now of course, Fox news is lobbying hard to get her seat at the White House.

Bitter victory.
posted by Trochanter at 8:57 AM on July 9, 2010

That gives her a sense of perspective that should be valued.

I agree that she, as with anyone else, should be allowed to speak her mind and be heard on the topic without enduring personal attacks. This statement by her wasn't one I would consider "valuable." It was a deliberately inflammatory sound-bite.

Her comments were hyperbolic throw-aways.

To you. Not to everyone. I found her comments offensive because I lost family in the Holocaust.

She's a journalist. I find it exceptionally hard to believe that she didn't know full well what she was saying at the time and how it would be perceived.

And while she may have been given the opportunity to fall on her sword, to deny she was forced from her job is to be dishonest with yourself.

I did not deny that.

Greenwald said she was fired. That statement is wrong. If he's incapable of distinguising between "may have been forced out" and "fired by her employer" then he's a piss-poor journalist.
posted by zarq at 9:59 AM on July 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

And just to be clear...

Greenwald is not a piss-poor journalist. He writes excellent editorials, that I read religiously.

So I assume from this that he made a conscious choice to describe Thomas as fired when she wasn't, in an attempt to further equate Nasr's situation with hers. There are clear similarities between the two. It's strange. He didn't need to lie in order to make his point. He does this occasionally and it always pisses me off.
posted by zarq at 10:14 AM on July 9, 2010

She left her job of her own accord after stating quite clearly on camera that the should Jews leave Gaza and Israel and go back to (among others) two countries whose populations were, just a few decades ago all too eager to toss them into gas chambers and ovens.

zarq, you do yourself no favors, when you are scrupulous in finding every unfair statement against people you identify yourself with (the Jews), and in the same breath spew vile calumnies against whole nations. If you are going to be outraged at bigoted statements against a people (and you should, as should any decent human being), then make sure you are not guilty of the same.

Germany and Poland. Two different nations. Are you or are you not familiar with the most basic of facts - again, stressing most basic - about WWII? Germany was the aggressor, and Poland was the victim. Poland's population was not "all to eager to toss Jews into gas chambers and ovens". That's a filthy lie, on the same level as the worst of anti-Semitism. Poles were the victims of Nazis in staggering numbers. Poles also happened to have the single largest number of rescuers of Jews of any nation, despite there being larger nations involved, and despite unique penalties placed on Poles for rescuing Jews (death of entire family). Were there instances of murderous Polish anti-Semitism? Yes. As there were pretty much everywhere. There even exist Jewish anti-Semites, but it is a lie and a calumny to say that the Polish population was eager to murder Jews, or to put the responsibility for the holocaust on Poles in any way.
posted by VikingSword at 10:22 AM on July 9, 2010

VS: Yes, I've said as much before. You're right.

when you are scrupulous in finding every unfair statement against people you identify yourself with (the Jews),

Oddly, you seem to be mistaking me for someone else. I am on record here on many, many occasions both criticizing Israel and Jews and defending folks who do the same.
posted by zarq at 10:45 AM on July 9, 2010

By the way, and for whatever it's worth, I let a lot of comments and source materials that bother me go by unchallenged because I am doubtful that I can muster an effective, objective argument against it. If I don't think I can be both objective and accurate, then I try not to comment. Doesn't always happen, though.

Look, Greenwald said something else that bothered me. He said that Blitzer was an AIPAC official. An argument could probably be made that Blitzer was never officially a public representative for AIPAC. He was employed by them as a journalist editing and contributing to their in-house newsletter. He wasn't their publicist, and he wasn't in charge of marketing them to the world.

But let's face it: that doesn't mean he wasn't crafting and disseminating their message. I've never read a single editorial or article he wrote while he was at AIPAC. So I am not in a position to judge his work there.

I bring this up not to debate his "AIPAC Official" status, but more to point out that I'm not a rabid defender of Israel, nor someone who blindly attacks anti-Israel sentiment wherever I see it.
posted by zarq at 10:56 AM on July 9, 2010

Oddly, you seem to be mistaking me for someone else. I am on record here on many, many occasions both criticizing Israel and Jews and defending folks who do the same.

I wasn't criticizing your objectivity or willingness to critique Israel etc. - I know and recognize that. You are a standup guy wrt. to that. That has nothing to do with what one identifies as. I have zero hesitancy about criticizing Sweden - indeed, I take every opportunity to do so, because I think it nationalism is one of the great evils civilization has had to deal with, and I want no part of it. But I'm still Swedish by origin. I thought you identified as Jewish - if I'm wrong, correct me.

And as I have said before, Thomas statements were wrong - and there are no excuses, period, end of story. I don't think many would argue otherwise. I guess what people are arguing over are double standards, not that what Thomas said was defensible.
posted by VikingSword at 11:09 AM on July 9, 2010

Thomas statements were wrong - and there are no excuses, period, end of story.

I don't defend them in any way as a call to action, or a way forward in the present day world. In that sense, her remarks cannot be defended, and it would be absurd to do so. But as a rhetorical statement meant to question the moral immaculacy of Israel's conception, I kind of do defend them.
posted by Trochanter at 11:36 AM on July 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

Then she should have discussed the "moral immaculacy of Israel's conception". She did no such thing. Some things are not suited for soundbites. If you want to discuss complicated historical events and how those impact present day realities and also prescribe what ought to be done to solve extremely fraught problems, then you don't toss off flippant and wrong-headed statements.
posted by VikingSword at 11:43 AM on July 9, 2010

If you want to discuss complicated historical events...

...maybe you don't go up to some old lady at a garden party and stick your handycam in their face.
posted by Trochanter at 11:58 AM on July 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

Two wrongs don't make a right.
posted by VikingSword at 12:07 PM on July 9, 2010

A stitch in time saves nine. ;0)
posted by Trochanter at 12:10 PM on July 9, 2010

I agree with zarq in not liking it when Greenwald overstates his case, because the issues he's dealing with don't need overstating. They're ugly enough.

It also rattles me when I disagree with him, as I did over the Citizens United v. FEC issue. I think it's good. It sits you back and makes you think harder.
posted by Trochanter at 12:35 PM on July 9, 2010

The following is the text of a blog post by Britain's ambassador to Lebanon, Frances Guy, commenting on the death of Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah. It was posted on the Foreign Office blog on 5 July, but then removed on William Hague's orders yesterday.
posted by adamvasco at 1:46 PM on July 9, 2010

How did this end up as a discussion about Israel?

It's called context.
posted by Jimmy Havok at 2:47 PM on July 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

Jimmy Havok wrote: You say Helen Thomas doesn't have a legitimate complaint, then you throw down the Holocaust card.

Actually, no. In your charming way you suggested that Israelis go back to Germany and Poland. I pointed out that there can be very few German and Polish Jews in Israel, what with most of them having been killed. This was a factual criticism, not an attempt to garner sympathy.

But as Rosswald says, your defense of her statement is disgusting. Saying that members of any ethnic group should "go back where they came from" is always a racist statement; in this case it was not merely bigoted, but ignorant.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:13 AM on July 10, 2010

Saying that members of any ethnic group should "go back where they came from" is always a racist statement

Well, we are talking about Israel, which explicitly defines itself as a racist country. Funny that they get a pass on it, but no one else does.
posted by Jimmy Havok at 2:25 PM on July 10, 2010

It looks like CNN has a new field reporter who fits in with their approach to news perfectly.
posted by homunculus at 11:21 AM on July 11, 2010

Michael Tomasky: The CNN firing of Nasr and some global perspective;

It would be nice to think that in an open and free society, a journalist with a commendable track record like Nasr's might have been given the benefit of the doubt and permitted to explain herself. But it's well beyond the imagination of most Americans to think that a "Muslim cleric" could in any remote way be a figure of any measure of nuance.

Previously he quotes at length from an article by Hanin Ghaddar, managing editor of NOW Lebanon.
posted by adamvasco at 12:56 PM on July 13, 2010

Well, we are talking about Israel, which explicitly defines itself as a racist country. Funny that they get a pass on it, but no one else does.

Wait--it's racist to be a Jewish nation-state, but hunky-dory to be an Islamic nation-state?

This is why I avoid all discussion of Israel on MeFi.
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:45 PM on July 16, 2010

hunky-dory to be an Islamic nation-state?

Islam is a religion with members from every ethnicity. Israel only cares about whether your ancestors were Jewish. They don't really care about your religion, unless you're a Jew for Jesus.

I'm not cool with religious states, but there's a very deep irony in someone who supports an openly racist state making accusations of racism. It's especially ironic given that the people who were referenced as needing to go back home chased the original residents of their country out of their homes because they weren't the right race. Saying they should go home is racist, but robbing and killing people because they aren't the same race as you isn't?
posted by Jimmy Havok at 1:28 AM on July 18, 2010

Jimmy Havok wrote: Islam is a religion with members from every ethnicity. Israel only cares about whether your ancestors were Jewish.

Surely you're aware that there are Jews of every ethnicity. One of the kids in my daughter's class is Jewish and Chinese; in my son's creche there were a couple of Jewish kids who came from Africa.

Saying they should go home is racist, but robbing and killing people because they aren't the same race as you isn't?

Robbing and killing is always wrong, even if it's done for non-racial reasons.

Saying that refugees and other immigrants should "go home" is offensive and bigoted; saying that the grandchildren of these migrants should "go home" is racist.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:46 AM on July 18, 2010

You keep ignoring what those "immigrants and refugees" are doing to the original inhabitants of the land they are occupying. They are invaders, not refugees.

There's a standing offer to let them live in peace in Israel, all they have to do is abandon further territorial ambitions. They refuse that offer, which means they are not willing to give up those territorial ambitions. Wishing they would just get out is a reasonable reaction to the ongoing threat of Israel's expansionism. It has nothing to do with racism, it has to do with Israel's constant invasions of its neighbors, and its occupation of more and more land.

Jews of every ethnicity...Jewish and Chinese

If that kid was Chinese and Chinese, would he be in your daughter's class?

couple of Jewish kids who came from Africa

But in the end, all Israel cares about is their Jewish ancestry.
posted by Jimmy Havok at 1:10 AM on July 19, 2010

Jimmy Havok wrote: If that kid was Chinese and Chinese, would he be in your daughter's class?

And I don't think you follow me. She is ethnically Chinese. She has - I presume - Australian nationality. The religion her family follows is Judaism.

But in the end, all Israel cares about is their Jewish ancestry.

Actually, I don't think their parents have any Jewish ancestry.

They are invaders, not refugees.

Of course the Jews fleeing Nazi and post-Nazi Europe were refugees. But there can't be many of them left; an adult leaving Europe in 1948 would be 80 years old today. As I said above, 70% of Israelis were born in Israel.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:55 AM on July 19, 2010

As I said above, 70% of Israelis were born in Israel.

And yet you referred to them as immigrants and refugees. Typically, you want it both ways, and continue to evade the issue of why there is hostility toward Israel: the territorial expansionism they refuse to give up.

Furthermore, while Judaism is a religion which can (with a great deal of difficulty) be converted to, Jewishness (you don't need to be a practicing Jew to immigrate to Israel, you merely need to persuade the authorities that you have the proper ancestry) is not. That's why there is such interest among certain Jews in genetic markers for Jewish ancestry. That's why there is such upset among certain Jews over intermarriage (have a look at the Google search for "threat of intermarriage"). Your pretense that the situation is otherwise is simply more of the typically disingenuous argument that is so vital when defending Israel's criminal past and present.

Most Jews are not racist, but there is a hard core of racists who make the White Power idiots look like gentle souls, and they are allowed to operate openly, without the slightest bit of criticism.
posted by Jimmy Havok at 1:40 PM on July 19, 2010

That's why there is such upset among certain Jews over intermarriage (have a look at the Google search for "threat of intermarriage").

I've been deliberately staying out of this thread, but I'd to mention that at least for most Jews, the concern about intermarriage doesn't seem to have been historically sourced from whether or not someone's offspring might be allowed a right of return to Israel. And knowing many Reform and Conservative Jews, I'm truly not convinced that's an overriding factor today, either.

Intermarriage has been targeted as a threat by rabbis for centuries, even when it wasn't particularly prevalent. Many religious rabbis have fought battles against attrition from forced attrition and voluntary interfaith marriages over the centuries. There is mention in Moses ben Jacob of Coucy's "Sefer Mitzvot Gadol" (13 or 14th century?) that intermarriages should be dissolved. When intermarriage became more popular in the mid to late 1800's -- at the same time as the founding of the Reform movement in Germany and America, -- there were loudly voiced concerns by the Orthodox that the new movement would dilute ritual and traditions and destroy Judaism. (They're still saying this, over 100 years later. It's perfectly possible they may be right. The Orthodox and traditional Judaism have in many ways been marginalized by the rise of the Reform and Conservative movements.) But the Reform movement's CCAR came out against intermarriage in 1909.

I caution you against creating some sort of post hoc correlative fallacy on the subject with regard to Israel. The "right of return" may be used by some Orthodox as a justification to both fight intermarriage and cast judgement upon whether or not someone is Jewish. But this is nothing new, and it certainly predates Israel.
posted by zarq at 3:32 PM on July 19, 2010

I was pointing out that Joe in Australia's presentation of Judaism as Multiculture Pals in yarmulkas was BS. As I said, the upset over intermarriage is simply evidence of a hard core of racism within the Jewish population, a hard core that enjoys an unfortunate degree of power and respect instead of the derision and isolation they deserve.
posted by Jimmy Havok at 9:05 PM on July 19, 2010

CNN anchors attack the scourge of anonymity
posted by homunculus at 11:52 AM on July 25, 2010