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CNN STAFF SAY NETWORK’S PRO-ISRAEL SLANT AMOUNTS TO ‘JOURNALISTIC
MALPRACTICE’  
[[link removed]]


 

Chris McGreal
February 4, 2024
The Guardian
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_ Insiders say pressure from the top results in credulous reporting
of Israeli claims and silencing of Palestinian perspectives _

Pro-Palestinian protesters rally outside CNN’s headquarters in
Atlanta, Georgia, on 14 October 2023., John Arthur Brown/ZUMA Press
via Alamy

 

CNN is facing a backlash from its own staff over editorial policies
they say have led to a regurgitation of Israeli propaganda and the
censoring of Palestinians perspectives in the network’s coverage of
the war in Gaza.

Journalists in CNN newsrooms in the US and overseas say broadcasts
have been skewed by management edicts and a story-approval process
that has resulted in highly partial coverage of the Hamas massacre on
7 October and Israel’s retaliatory attack on Gaza
[[link removed]].

“The majority of news since the war began, regardless of how
accurate the initial reporting, has been skewed by a systemic and
institutional bias within the network toward Israel,” said one CNN
staffer. “Ultimately, CNN’s coverage of the Israel-Gaza war
[[link removed]] amounts to
journalistic malpractice.”

According to accounts from six CNN
[[link removed]] staffers in multiple
newsrooms, and more than a dozen internal memos and emails obtained
by the Guardian, daily news decisions are shaped by a flow of
directives from the CNN headquarters in Atlanta that have set strict
guidelines on coverage.

They include tight restrictions on quoting Hamas and reporting other
Palestinian perspectives while Israel government statements are taken
at face value. In addition, every story on the conflict must be
cleared by the Jerusalem bureau before broadcast or publication.

CNN journalists say the tone of coverage is set at the top by its new
editor in chief and CEO, Mark Thompson, who took up his post two days
after the 7 October Hamas attack. Some staff are concerned about
Thompson’s willingness to withstand external attempts to influence
coverage given that in a former role as the BBC’s director general
he was accused of bowing to Israeli government pressure on a number of
occasions, including a demand to remove one of the corporation’s
most prominent correspondents from her post in Jerusalem in 2005.

Mark Thompson. Photograph: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP

CNN insiders say that has resulted, particularly in the early weeks of
the war, in a greater focus on Israeli suffering and the Israeli
narrative of the war as a hunt for Hamas and its tunnels, and an
insufficient focus on the scale of Palestinian civilian deaths and
destruction in Gaza.

One journalist described a “schism” within the network over
coverage they said was at times reminiscent of the cheerleading that
followed 9/11.

“There’s a lot of internal strife and dissent. Some people are
looking to get out,” they said.

Another journalist in a different bureau said that they too saw
pushback.

“Senior staffers who disagree with the status quo are butting heads
with the executives giving orders, questioning how we can effectively
tell the story with such restrictive directives in place,” they
said.

“Many have been pushing for more content from Gaza to be alerted and
aired. By the time these reports go through Jerusalem and make it to
TV or the homepage, critical changes – from the introduction of
imprecise language to an ignorance of crucial stories – ensure that
nearly every report, no matter how damning, relieves Israel of
wrongdoing.”

CNN staff say that some journalists with experience of reporting the
conflict and region have avoided assignments in Israel because they do
not believe they will be free to tell the whole story. Others
speculate that they are being kept away by senior editors.

“It is clear that some who don’t belong are covering the war and
some who do belong aren’t,” said one insider.

Edicts from on high

At Thompson’s first editorial meeting, two days after the 7 October
Hamas attack, the new network chief described CNN’s coverage of the
rapidly moving story as “basically great
[[link removed]]”.

Thompson then said he wanted viewers to understand what Hamas is, what
it stands for and what it was trying to achieve with the attack. Some
of those listening thought that a laudable journalistic goal. But they
said that in time it became clear he had more specific expectations
for how journalists should cover the group.

In late October, as the Palestinian death toll rose sharply from
Israeli bombing with more than 2,700 children killed according to the
Gaza health ministry, and as Israel prepared for its ground invasion,
a set of guidelines landed in CNN staff inboxes.

Palestinians mourn their loved ones in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza, on 31
October 2023. Photograph: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images

A note at the top of the two-page memo pointed to an instruction
“from Mark” to pay attention to a particular paragraph under
“coverage guidance”. The paragraph said that, while CNN would
report the human consequences of the Israeli assault and the
historical context of the story, “we must continue always to remind
our audiences of the immediate cause of_ this current
conflict, _namely the Hamas attack and mass murder and kidnap of
civilians”. (Italics in the original.)

CNN staff members said the memo solidified a framework for stories in
which the Hamas massacre was used to implicitly justify Israeli
actions, and that other context or history was often unwelcome or
marginalised.

“How else are editors going to read that other than as an
instruction that no matter what the Israelis do, Hamas is ultimately
to blame? Every action by Israel – dropping massive bombs that wipe
out entire streets, its obliteration of whole families – the
coverage ends up massaged to create a ‘they had it coming’
narrative,” said one staffer.

The same memo said that any reference to casualty figures from the
Gaza health ministry must say it is “Hamas-controlled”, implying
that reports of the deaths of thousands of children were unreliable
even though the World Health Organization and other international
bodies have said they are largely accurate. CNN staff said that edict
was laid down by Thompson at an earlier editorial meeting.

Broader oversight of coverage from the CNN headquarters in Atlanta is
directed by “the Triad” of three CNN departments – news
standards and practices, legal, and fact checking.

CNN’s headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2019. Photograph:
Raymond Boyd/Getty Images

David Lindsay, the senior director of news standards and practices,
issued a directive in early November effectively barring the reporting
of most Hamas statements, characterising them as “inflammatory
rhetoric and propaganda”.

“Most of it has been said many times before and is not newsworthy.
We should be careful not to give it a platform,” he wrote.

Lindsay said that if a statement was deemed editorially relevant “we
can use it if it’s accompanied by greater context, preferably a
package or digital write. Let’s avoid running it as a standalone
soundbite or quote.”

In contrast, one CNN staffer noted that the network repeatedly aired
inflammatory rhetoric and propaganda from Israeli officials and
American supporters, often without challenge in interviews.

They noted that other channels have carried interviews with Hamas
leaders while CNN has not, including one in which the group’s
spokesman, Ghazi Hamad, cut short questions
[[link removed]] from the BBC when he
was challenged about the murder of Israeli civilians. One staffer said
there is a view among correspondents that it is “agony to get a
Hamas interview past the Triad”.

Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Qatar, Doha, 20 Dec 2023 Photograph:
Iranian Foreign Ministry/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock

CNN sources acknowledged there have been no interviews with Hamas
since the 7 October attack, but said the network does not have a ban
on such interviews.

But CNN news desks and reporters have been instructed not to use video
recorded by Hamas “under any circumstances unless cleared by the
Triad and senior editorial leadership”.

That position was reiterated in another instruction on 23 October that
reports must not show Hamas recordings
[[link removed]] of
the release of two Israeli hostages, Nurit Cooper and Yocheved
Lifshitz. Two days later, Lindsay sent an additional instruction that
video of the 85-year-old Lifshitz shaking hands
[[link removed]] with
one of her captors “can only to be used when specifically writing
about her decision to shake hands with her captor”.

Yocheved Lifshitz, who was held hostage in Gaza after Hamas’s 7
October attack, speaks in Tel Aviv on 24 October 2023, a day after
being released. Photograph: Ariel Schalit/AP

In addition to the edicts from Atlanta, CNN has a longstanding policy
that all copy on the Israel-Palestine situation must be approved for
broadcast or publication by the Jerusalem bureau. In July, the network
created a process it called “SecondEyes” to speed up those
approvals.

The Jerusalem bureau chief, Richard Greene, told staff in a memo
announcing SecondEyes – first reported by the Intercept
[[link removed]] –
that, because coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is subject
to close scrutiny by partisans on both sides, the measure was created
as a “safety net so we don’t use imprecise language or words that
may sound impartial but can have coded meanings here”.

CNN staffers said there is nothing inherently wrong with the
requirement given the huge sensitivity of covering Israel and
Palestine, and the aggressive nature of Israeli authorities and
well-organised pro-Israel groups in seeking to influence coverage. But
some feel that a measure that was originally intended to maintain
standards has become a tool of self-censorship to avoid controversy.

One result of SecondEyes is that Israeli official statements are often
quickly cleared and make it on air on the principle that that they are
to be trusted at face value, seemingly rubber-stamped for broadcast,
while statements and claims from Palestinians, and not just Hamas, are
delayed or never reported.

One CNN staffer said edits by SecondEyes often seemed aimed at
avoiding criticism from pro-Israel groups. They gave the example of
Greene’s intervention to change a headline, “Israel is nowhere
near destroying Hamas” – a perspective widely reflected in
the foreign
[[link removed]] and Israeli
press
[[link removed]].
It was replaced with headline that shifted the focus from whether
Israel could achieve its stated justification for killing thousands of
Palestinian civilians: “Three months on, Israel is entering a new
phase of the war. Is it still trying to ‘destroy’ Hamas?”

Some CNN staff fear that the result is a network acting as a surrogate
censor on behalf of the Israeli government.

“The system results in chosen individuals editing any and all
reporting with an institutionalised pro-Israel bias, often using
passive language to absolve the [Israel Defense Forces] of
responsibility, and playing down Palestinian deaths and Israeli
attacks,” said one of the network’s journalists.

CNN staff who spoke to the Guardian were quick to praise thorough and
hard-hitting reporting by correspondents on the ground. They said
those reports are often given prominence on CNN International, seen
outside the US. But on the CNN channel available in the US, they are
frequently less visible and at times marginalised by hours of
interviews with Israeli officials and supporters of the war in Gaza
who were given free rein to make their case, often unchallenged and
sometimes with presenters making supportive statements. Meanwhile,
Palestinian voices and views were far less frequently heard and more
rigorously challenged.

One staffer pointed to the appearance of Rami Igra, a former senior
official in the Israeli intelligence service, on Anderson Cooper’s
show, where he claimed that the entire Palestinian population of Gaza
could be regarded as combatants.

Anderson Cooper before the start of a Republican presidential debate
in Des Moines, Iowa, on 10 January. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/AP

“The non-combatant population in the Gaza Strip is really a
nonexistent term because all of the Gazans voted for the Hamas and as
we have seen on the 7th of October, most of the population in the Gaza
Strip are Hamas,” he said.

“Nonetheless, we are treating them as non-combatants, we are
treating them as regular civilians, and they are spared from the
fighting.”

Cooper did not challenge him on either point. By the time the
interview aired on 19 November, more than 13,000 people had been
killed in Gaza, most of them civilians.

Another CNN staffer picked out anchor Jake Tapper’s programme as an
example of an anchor too closely identifying with one side while the
other gets only a restricted look in. In one segment, Tapper
acknowledged the death and suffering of innocent Palestinians in Gaza
but appeared to defend the scale of the Israeli attack on Gaza.

“What exactly did Hamas think the Israeli military would do in
response to that?” he said
[[link removed]],
referring to the attack on 7 October.

A CNN spokesperson said: “We absolutely reject the notion that any
of our journalists treat Israeli officials differently to other
officials.”

Another presenter, Sara Sidner, drew criticism for her excitable
report on unverified Israeli claims that Hamas beheaded dozens of
babies on 7 October.

“We have some really disturbing new information out of Israel,”
she announced
[[link removed]] four days after
the attack.

Sara Sidner in New York on 10 December 2023. Photograph: Evan
Agostini/Invision/AP

“The Israeli prime minister’s spokesman just confirmed, babies and
toddlers were found with their heads decapitated in Kfar Aza in
southern Israel after Hamas attacks in the kibbutz over the weekend.
That has been confirmed by the prime minister’s office.”

Sidner called the claim “beyond devastating”.

“For the families listening, for the people of Israel, for anyone
that is a parent, who loves children, I don’t know how they get
through this,” she said.

Sidner then put it to a CNN reporter in Jerusalem, Hadas Gold, that
the decapitation of babies would make it impossible for Israel to make
peace with Hamas.

Gold replied: “How can you when you’re dealing with people who
would do such atrocities to children, to babies, to toddlers?”

Gold, who was part of the SecondEyes team approving stories, again
said the report was confirmed by Netanyahu’s office and she drew
parallels with the Holocaust. She responded to a Hamas denial that it
had decapitated babies as unbelievable “when we literally have video
of these guys, of these militants, of these terrorists doing exactly
what they say they’re not doing to civilians and to children”.

Except, as a CNN journalist pointed out, the network did not have such
video and, apparently, neither did anyone else.

Hadas Gold in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2019. Photograph: Eóin
Noonan/Sportsfile for Web Summit/Getty Images

“The problem was that yet again the Israeli government’s version
of events was promoted in an emotional way with very little scrutiny
by someone who is supposed to be a neutral news presenter,” they
said.

By the time of Sidner’s broadcast there were already good reasons
for CNN to treat the claims with caution.

Israeli journalists who toured Kfar Aza the day before said they had
seen no evidence
[[link removed]] of such a
crime and military officials there had made no mention of it. Instead,
Tim Langmaid, the Atlanta-based CNN vice-president and senior
editorial director, sent an instruction that President Biden’s
claims to have seen pictures of the alleged atrocity “back up what
the Israeli government said”.

Even as the questions grew, Langmaid sent out a memo saying: “It is
important to cover the atrocities of the Hamas attacks and war as we
learn them.”

CNN insiders said senior editors should have treated the story with
caution from the beginning because the Israeli military has a track
record of false or exaggerated claims that subsequently fall apart.

Other networks, such as Sky News, were considerably more sceptical
[[link removed]] in
their reporting and laid out the tenuous origins of the story which
began with a reporter for an Israeli news channel who said soldiers
told her that 40 children were killed
[[link removed]] in the
Hamas massacre and that one soldier said he had seen “bodies of
babies with their heads cut off”. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF)
then used the claim to liken Hamas to the Islamic State.

Damaged houses are marked off with tape in the Kfar Aza kibbutz,
Israel, on 14 January. Photograph: Amir Cohen/Reuters

Even after the White House admitted that neither the president nor his
officials had themselves seen pictures of beheaded babies, and that
they had been relying on Israeli claims, Langmaid told the newsroom it
could still report the Israeli government assertions alongside a
denial from Hamas.

CNN did report on the rolling back
[[link removed]] of
the claims as Israeli officials backtracked, but one staffer said that
by then the damage had been done, describing the coverage as a failure
of journalism.

“The infamous ‘beheaded babies’ claim, attributed to the Israeli
government, made it to air for roughly 18 hours – even after the
White House walked back on Biden’s statement that he had seen the
nonexistent photos. CNN had no access to photographic evidence, nor
any ability to independently verify these claims,” they said.

A CNN spokesperson said the network accurately reported what was being
said at the time.

“We took great care to attribute these claims across our reporting,
and we also issued very specific guidance to this effect,” they
said.

Some CNN staff raised similar issues with reporting on Hamas tunnels
in Gaza and claims they led to a sprawling command centre under
al-Shifa hospital.

Insiders say some journalists have pushed back against the
restrictions. One pointed to Jomana Karadsheh, a London-based
correspondent with a long history of reporting from the Middle East.

“Jomana has really pushed to shine a spotlight on the Palestinian
victims of this war and she has had some success. She’s done some
really important stories putting a human face on it all and in looking
at Israeli actions and intent. But I don’t think it’s been easy
for her. These stories don’t get the prominence they deserve,” one
said.

CNN producer Jomana Karadsheh in Tripoli, Libya, on 24 August
2011. Photograph: Paul Hackett/Reuters

The push for more balanced coverage has been complicated by Israel’s
block on foreign journalists entering Gaza except under IDF control
and subject to censorship. That has helped keep the full impact of the
war on Palestinians off of CNN and other channels while ensuring that
there is a continued focus on the Israeli perspective.

A CNN spokesperson rejected allegations of bias.

“Our reporting has confronted Israel’s response to the attacks,
including some of our most detailed and high-profile investigations,
interviews and reports,” they said.

CNN faced similar accusations of partiality in the wake of the 9/11
attacks in 2001 when the network’s chair, Walter Isaacson, ordered
that reports on the killing of Afghan civilians by US forces be
balanced with condemnation of the Taliban for its links to al-Qaida.

“As we get good reports from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, we must
redouble our efforts to make sure we do not seem to be simply
reporting from their vantage or perspective. We must talk about how
the Taliban are using civilian shields and how the Taliban have
harbored the terrorists responsible for killing close to 5,000
innocent people,” he wrote in a memo, according to the Washington
Post
[[link removed]].

Some staffers say that after the first few weeks in which CNN reported
the Hamas attack “like it was 9/11”, more space was made for the
Palestinian perspective given the escalating death toll
[[link removed]] and destruction
[[link removed]] from Israel’s
retaliatory attack on Gaza.

The only foreign journalist to report from Gaza
[[link removed]] without
an Israeli escort has been CNN’s Clarissa Ward, who entered for two
hours with a humanitarian team from the United Arab Emirates.

Ward acknowledged the challenges in the Washington Post last week.
She wrote
[[link removed]] that
her reporting from Israel allowed her “to create a vivid picture of
the monstrosities of Oct 7” but she was being prevented from
conveying a fuller picture of the tragedy unfolding in Gaza because of
the Israeli block on foreign journalists, putting the burden solely on
a limited number of courageous Palestinian reporters who are being
killed in disproportionate numbers.

“We must now be able to report on the horrific death and destruction
being meted out in Gaza in the same way – on the ground,
independently – amid one of the most intense bombardments
[[link removed]] in
the history of modern warfare,” she wrote.

“The response to our report on Gaza in Israeli media suggests an
unspoken reason for denying access. When asked on air about our piece,
one reporter from the Israeli Channel 13 replied
[[link removed]],
‘If indeed Western reporters begin to enter Gaza, this will for sure
be a big headache for Israel and Israeli hasbara.’ Hasbara is a
Hebrew word for pro-Israel advocacy.”

Clarissa Ward, CNN’s chief international correspondent, at an event
in New York on 19 September 2023. Photograph: John Lamparski/Getty
Images for Concordia Summit

Some at CNN fear that its coverage of the latest Gaza war is damaging
a reputation built up by its reporting of Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine, which led to a surge in viewers. But others say that the
Ukraine war may be part of the problem because editorial standards
grew lax as the network and many of its journalists identified clearly
with one side – Ukraine – particularly at the beginning of the
conflict.

One CNN staffer said that Ukraine coverage set a dangerous precedent
that has come back to haunt the network because the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict is far more divisive and views are much
more deeply entrenched.

“The complacency in our editorial standards and journalistic
integrity while reporting on Ukraine has come back to haunt us. Only
this time, the stakes are higher and the consequences much more
severe. Journalistic complacency is an easier pill for the world to
swallow when it’s Arab lives lost instead of European,” they said.

Another CNN employee said the double standards are glaring.

“It’s OK for us to be embedded with the IDF, producing reports
censored by the army, but we cannot talk to the organisation that won
a majority of the votes in Gaza whether we like it or not. CNN viewers
are being prevented from hearing from a central player in this
story,” they said.

“It is not journalism to say we won’t talk to someone because we
don’t like what they do. CNN has talked to plenty of terrorists and
America’s enemies over the years. We’ve interviewed Muammar
Gaddafi. [[link removed]] We’ve
even interviewed Osama bin Laden
[[link removed]]. So what’s different
this time?”

Years of pressure

Journalists working at CNN have varied explanations.

Some say the problem is rooted in years of pressure from the Israeli
government and allied groups in the US combined with a fear of losing
advertising.

During the battle for narrative through the second Palestinian
intifada in the early 2000s, Israel’s then communications minister,
Reuven Rivlin, called CNN ‘‘evil, biased and unbalanced”. The
Jerusalem Post likened the network’s correspondent in the city,
Sheila MacVicar, to “the woman who refilled the toilet paper in the
Goebbels’ commode”.

Then Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, right, talks with Maj Gen
Yoav Gallant, center, and Reuven Rivlin, left, in Jerusalem on 14
October 2004. Photograph: Muhammed Muheisen/AP

CNN’s founder, Ted Turner, caused a storm when he told the Guardian
in 2002 that Israel was engaging in terrorism 
[[link removed]]against
the Palestinians.

“The Palestinians are fighting with human suicide bombers, that’s
all they have. The Israelis … they’ve got one of the most powerful
military machines in the world. The Palestinians have nothing. So who
are the terrorists? I would make a case that both sides are involved
in terrorism,” said Turner, who was then the vice-chairman of AOL
Time Warner, which owned CNN [[link removed]].

The resulting storm of protest resulted in threats to the network’s
revenue, including moves by Israeli cable television companies to
supplant the network with Fox News.

Ted Turner in Anaheim, California, in 1995. Photograph: Kevork
Djansezian/Associated Press

CNN’s chair, Walter Isaacson, appeared on Israeli television to
denounce Turner but that did not stem the criticism. The network’s
then chief news executive, Eason Jordan, imposed a new rule that CNN
would no longer show statements by suicide bombers or interview their
relatives, and flew to Israel to quell the political storm.

CNN also began broadcasting a series about the victims of Palestinian
suicide bombers. The network insisted that the move was not a response
to pressure but some of its journalists were sceptical. CNN did not
produce a similar series with the relatives of innocent Palestinians
killed by Israel in bombings.

By 2021, the Columbia Journalism Review public editor for CNN, Ariana
Pekary, accused the network of excluding Palestinian voices and
historical context
[[link removed]] from
coverage.

Thompson has his own battle scars from dealing with Israeli officials
when he was director general of the BBC two decades ago.

In the spring of 2005, the BBC was embroiled in a very public row over
an interview with the Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu,
who was released from prison the year before.

Mordechai Vanunu leaves Shikmain prison in Ashkelon, Israel, on 21
April 2004. Photograph: Uriel Sinai/Getty Images

The Israeli authorities barred Vanunu from giving interviews. When a
BBC documentary team spoke to him and then smuggled the footage out of
Israel, the authorities reacted by effectively expelling 
[[link removed]]the acting head of
the BBC’s Jerusalem bureau, Simon Wilson, who was not involved in
the interview.

The dispute rolled on for months before the BBC eventually bowed to
an Israeli demand
[[link removed]] that
Wilson write a letter of apology before he could return to Jerusalem.
The letter, which included a commitment to “obey the regulations in
the future”, was to have remained confidential but the BBC
unintentionally posted details online before removing them a few hours
later. The climbdown angered some BBC
[[link removed]] journalists who were enduring
persistent pressure and abuse for their coverage.

Later that year, Thompson visited Jerusalem and met the Israeli prime
minister, Ariel Sharon, in an effort to improve relations after other
incidents.

Pro-Palestinian protesters outside CNN’s office in Washington DC on
17 December 2023. Photograph: Probal Rashid/LightRocket via Getty
Images

The Israeli government was particularly unhappy with the BBC’s
highly experienced Jerusalem correspondent, Orla Guerin. The Israeli
minister for diaspora affairs at the time, Natan Sharansky, accused
her [[link removed]] of
antisemitism and “total identification with the goals and methods of
the Palestinian terror groups” after a report by Guerin about the
arrest of a 16-year-old Palestinian boy carrying explosives. She
accused Israeli officials of turning the arrest into a propaganda
opportunity because they “paraded the child in front of the
international media” after forcing him to wait at a checkpoint for
the arrival of photographers.

Within days of Thompson’s meeting with Sharon, the BBC announced
that Guerin would be leaving Jerusalem. At the time, Thompson’s
office denied he acted under pressure from Israel and said that Guerin
had completed a longer than usual posting.

_CHRIS MCGREAL writes for Guardian US and is a former Guardian
correspondent in Washington, Johannesburg and Jerusalem. He is the
author of American Overdose, The Opioid Tragedy in Three Acts_

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