CNN staff say network’s pro-Israel slant amounts to ‘journalistic malpractice’

Insiders say pressure from the top results in credulous reporting of Israeli claims and silencing of Palestinian perspectives

Guardian, Chris McGreal, 4 Feb 24

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 Palestinian 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.

“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 amounts to journalistic malpractice.”

According to accounts from six CNN 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.

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

………………. 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.

……………….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.

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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.

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”.

………. 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 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

…………………………………………………….. 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.

…………… 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……………………………..

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.

……………………………………………………………. 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 four days after the attack.

“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.”

………………… Gold, who was part of the SecondEyes team approving stories, again said the report had been 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………………………………….

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 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”.

…….. 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 in their reporting and laid out the tenuous origins of the story, which began with a reporter for an Israeli news channel saying soldiers had told her that 40 children had been killed in the Hamas massacre and that one soldier had 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.

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 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.

……….. 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.

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………………………………

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

……………. 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 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, ‘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.

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…………………………………………………

Years of pressure

Journalists working at CNN have varied explanations……………………………………………………….. more https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/feb/04/cnn-staff-pro-israel-bias

February 7, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, media