October 22, 2001
[b]Rivals Criticize CNN Methods of War Reporting
By JIM RUTENBERG and BILL CARTER[/b]
Last night, a convoy of trucks was to traverse the terrain of Taliban- held Afghanistan with priceless cargo — a satellite uplink that promises to deliver the first clear images from Kandahar, the Afghan city that has seen heavy action since United States bombing raids began on Oct. 7.
The satellite dish is the property of CNN, but it is to be shared with Al Jazeera, the Arab-language news network that has the only Taliban- sanctioned television presence in the area. In return, CNN will get exclusive interviews with an English- speaking Al Jazeera correspondent based in Kandahar — potential journalistic gold in a war that has been woefully short on images and information from the ground.
It is typical of the sort of deal that CNN has struck over the years in its attempts to get war zone pictures and interviews that its domestic competitors cannot, the exclusive material it needs to maintain its image — faded in the United States in recent years — as the dominant global news network. In fact, it has been making them since before the Persian Gulf war.
But by doing so, CNN has perpetually engaged in a kind of geopolitics that its competitors have tried to use against it in times of war, questioning its ethics and implying that it is willing to cozy up to regimes at odds with the United States just to win a competitive advantage.
Certainly, at times like these, CNN calls in chits with governments and foreign news organizations with which it continually maintains ties, even when news is slow, through either news-sharing arrangements or collaboration on its weekly "World Report" program, which features unedited reports from places around the globe, including countries like Iraq that have state-run news agencies.
"CNN would take film from anybody who offered it, including countries like Iraq, and play it exactly as sent, even though it was obvious propaganda," said Reese Schonfeld, the founding president of CNN. "That was considered something of value to these countries, giving them access to a large, American audience."
Competitors have made no specific accusations in this crisis, but as they compete to get exclusive reports out of Taliban-held Afghanistan, they are quietly raising past accusations once again in the clear hope that the network will refrain from reaching the sorts of deals they say they cannot and would not make.
Fresh in their minds is the gulf war. For weeks during that conflict, CNN was the only network the Iraqi government permitted to report live from Baghdad. That gave it an immense advantage over CBS, ABC and NBC. People at those networks still maintain that CNN could have enjoyed such exclusive access to Baghdad only by striking some sort of deal with the enemy.
At the time, they accused CNN of permitting Iraqi officials to use its satellite telephone system for their own purposes. CNN acknowledged that it permitted the officials to use its phone system, but it said it did so only once, in an effort to secure visas for correspondents from other news networks. Rivals called the explanation unlikely.
[i](cont'd)[/i]