CNN Chief Orders Balance in War News-Washington

CNN Chief Orders ¿Balance¿ in War News

In a memo, Rick Davis, CNN¿s head of standards and practices, said it "may be hard for the correspondent in these dangerous areas to make the points clearly," so he suggested language for the anchors:

¿We must keep in mind, after seeing reports like this from Taliban-controlled areas, that these U.S. military actions are in response to a terrorist attack that killed close to 5,000 innocent people in the U.S.¿

By Howard Kurtz

Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, October 31, 2001

The chairman of CNN has ordered his staff to balance images of civilian devastation in Afghan cities with reminders that the Taliban harbors murderous terrorists, saying it "seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan."

In a memo to his international correspondents, Walter Isaacson said: "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."

As more errant U.S. bombs have landed in residential areas, causing damage to such places as a Red Cross warehouse and senior citizens¿ center, the resulting television images have fueled criticism of the American war effort. This has sparked a growing debate, which began
with the Osama bin Laden videotape, about how the media should handle stage-managed pictures from Afghanistan.

"I want to make sure we¿re not used as a propaganda platform," Isaacson said in an interview yesterday.

"We¿re entering a period in which there¿s a lot more reporting and video from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan," he said. "You want to make sure people understand that when they see civilian suffering there, it¿s in the context of a terrorist attack that caused enormous suffering in the United States."

While some CNN correspondents are concerned about having a "pro-America" stamp on their reports, all the networks are clearly sensitive to charges that they are playing into enemy hands. After national security adviser Condoleezza Rice asked the network news chiefs not to show bin Laden videotapes live and unedited, MSNBC and Fox News did not air the next one and CNN showed only brief excerpts.

Jim Murphy, executive producer of the "CBS Evening News," said of the CNN instructions: "I wouldn¿t order anybody to do anything like that.Our reporters are smart enough to know it always has to be put in context."

Murphy said he doesn¿t believe "the danger is extremely high that showing what we know, and covering what the other side purports, is really going to change the mood of the nation. We know a terrible thing happened, it will take time to deal with and mistakes will be made
along the way. That¿s war."