Monday, February 13, 2012

CNN Falls Victim to Internet Smear


CNN Falls Victim to Internet Smear

BY 
Any Israel supporter has seen his or her share of phony reports about alleged Israeli crimes spread like wildfire through the Internet. Before anyone has the chance to correct the record, the public has already been irrevocably exposed to the false report.
Well, this week, it happened to CNN. Two weeks after the Israeli Walla news site(Hebrew) reported that CNN had downsized its Jerusalem bureau, the blogosphere suddenly erupted with suspicions that CNN had deliberately laid-off the Jewish Israeli staff, leaving only Arab employees.
According to the blog site where the story appeared to originate:
CNN has fired four Israeli Jewish journalists (out of a crew of 8), and has retained only Arab journalists. Where, until now, CNN always sent a Jewish and an Arab journalist to cover information, now there will be only an Arab journalist. The local chief editor of the News Chanel is now a non Jewish (when we first learned that the new bureau chief was not Jewish, we misconcluded that he was an Arab, but he is neither Jewish or Arab).
From here it was only a small step towards serious accusations of anti-Semitism. But since bloggers are not held to the same professional standards of fact checking as the mainstream media, we at HonestReporting felt ethically bound to dig deeper into the story.
From our own base in Jerusalem, we have seen for ourselves many foreign media outlets downsizing, mainly due to budgetary considerations but also as the Middle East story starts to move elsewhere. We contacted our own sources in the local media and through CNN itself to get to the bottom of the story.
A little fact-checking led us to the original downsizing story, published as far back as January 23. The Walla article raised legitimate concerns about potential consequences for balanced reporting in the CNN bureau but did not cross the line into accusations of anti-Semitism.
If CNN really had deliberately targeted Jewish employees based solely on their ethnicity, surely this would have been a scandal that would have made far bigger waves in the Israeli press at the time as well as beyond?
CNN itself responded to the allegations with a boiler plate denial, later updated with more details, possibly as a result of HonestReporting’s questions:
To counter misinformation reported on various websites, the company has confirmed:
“CNN currently has seven employees working in CNN’s Jerusalem bureau, four of whom are Jewish. There is no basis in fact for these reports.”
“Some website reports also state that CNN’s Jerusalem bureau chief is Arab, which is also untrue.”
“CNN strongly rejects any suggestion that the reorganization in the Jerusalem bureau is in any way based on the small number of contract employees concerned being Israeli, particularly given CNN’s long history of working with locals in the region.”
Indeed, anyone with any cursory knowledge of media operations in Israel would know that Kevin Flower, whom we personally contacted concerning this story, is the CNN bureau chief.
In addition, we spoke directly with representatives of CNN who told us:
There is further incorrect speculation that the Jewish employees we have are in low level positions. The highest level positions after the bureau chief are our two producers, one of whom is an Israeli Jew.
We know as well that at least one of those former CNN employees has taken legal counsel, which would imply that someone believes that CNN may have wrongly dismissed some of its staff.
This, however, raises a possibility that some bloggers have failed to consider. In Israel, the rights of contract workers (or lack of) have recently come to the fore. In any downsizing of an organization or company, it is the higher paid workers who may be most at risk. It is entirely possible that CNN’s Jewish employees were on higher salaries than their Arab co-workers.
This raises other issues of inequality within Israel, which is a genuine problem – but not the one that CNN is accused of.
HonestReporting holds the media to account when it promotes stories based on hearsay, speculation or faulty analysis that fits a preconceived framework. Faced with the evidence that we have seen and our own conversations with media professionals based in Jerusalem, we have concluded that the charges laid at CNN’s door are speculative at best.
This doesn’t mean that we are giving CNN a free pass. As always, we will continue to shine a spotlight on any journalistic indiscretions committed by CNN and others. We will, however, do so by sticking to our own guiding principles and values and the same high standards that we hold the media to.

http://honestreporting.com/cnn-falls-victim-to-internet-smear/

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