Wednesday, April 02, 2003
On Peter Arnett, recently fired by NBC and NatGeo for speaking his mind ...-------
Corn said Arnett was in a tough spot because if he refused to do the interview he risked being expelled from Iraq. And yet, Corn added, "There is a question to be raised whether anybody who likes democracy and freedom of the press should sit for an interview with a state-controlled media entity unless you're going to try to engage and use it to bring your values to its audience. Doing it in a time of war seems even more perilous from a political perspective."
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If Arnett believed in what he said, why is he contrite? Secondly, why can't journalism be about opinions? All journalists working for US media corporations have to toe the line so why be contemptuous of "state controlled media entities"? What values is CNN espousing to its audience? Freedom of the press is a myth. At least state-controlled media doesn't claim to uphold the pillars of journalism through honest reporting. Everyone knows that they are propoganda vehicles and they don't spend millions of bucks telling you that it isn't so. The ultimate purveyors of truth, CNN, Fox, NBC, and countless other free entities are only in the business of doing what Washington tells them to so it really doesn't have anything to do with "liking democracy".
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