More Bad Reporting (I'm Looking At You CNN)

Okay, one final, final note on sloppy reporting for today. On today's “American Morning” on CNN, they did a little story about how 8-to-12-year olds were becoming the “face” of the site Facebook – since there are now 7.5 million Facebook users in that age bracket. Ok, 7.5 million sounds like a lot, but not when you compare it to Facebook's total user base of roughly 500 million people, then 7.5 million works out to be a whopping 1.5% of all users. This is about the same as saying that elderly Hawaiians are the “face” of the United States of America.

I can only assume that no one on the “American Morning” staff either bothered to take 30 seconds to do the math or even knew how many Facebook users there were in the first place. It reminded me of this piece from the satirical newspaper The Onion from a few years ago about Ted Turner sending himself back in time to prevent the TimeWarner/AOL, which was suppose to vault CNN into the age of "new media". If only Ted, if only...

Tweet Your Way To Unemployment

CNN fired one of their key foreign correspondents on Thursday, after Octavia Nasr used her CNN Twitter account to express her sadness over the news of the death of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah. But Fadlallah is often referred to as the spiritual head of the group Hezbollah, and Nasr’s tweet quickly raised the ire of supporters of Israel, since Israel not only views Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, but also as a prime threat to their national security. Nasr replied that her comment about Fadlallah was driven by his “pioneering” work on women’s rights in the Arab world and her admission that the 140-character limit of a tweet probably wasn’t the best place to express a complex idea such as this, but that explanation wasn’t enough for her bosses at CNN, who quickly caved into pressure and fired her.

This has sparked some discussion in the blogosphere about free speech and First Amendment rights in reaction to Nasr’s firing. I think this is a little misguided – the First Amendment gives you the right to express yourself without pre-censorship, it’s not a blanket protection against action after the fact, and Nasr apparently did use her CNN Twitter account to post the message in question, which would give CNN the right to react in whatever way they think is reasonable to a use of their resources they view as unfit. The real question should be whether the tweet in question was a firing offense, and here I think CNN comes out on the short end of the argument.

During her 20-year career with the network, Nasr gave excellent and objective analysis on issues in the Middle East and was something increasingly rare on CNN – an analyst who actually knew something about global affairs (considering CNN made its reputation on its coverage of world events that’s pretty sad). Perhaps her tweet was poorly conceived or expressed an unpopular (to some) idea, but it’s a rather small offense weighed against the body of Nasr’s work on CNN. In their official explanation of Nasr’s firing, CNN said that her tweet “did not meet CNN’s editorial standards.” But the “editorial standards” argument is a pretty weak one to make considering CNN’s recent decision to hire former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, a man who transported a prostitute across statelines for an illicit affair – breaking several laws in the process, to revive CNN’s flagging ratings by hosting an hour-long program at 8pm (that is assuming Campbell Brown, who quit two months ago, ever stops doing her eight o’clock show…).

It seems that CNN is more than willing to overlook the personal failings of their on-air talent, so long as they believe they can deliver the ratings; it’s ok if they break the law, just as long as they don’t upset influential special interest groups; and that once again, foreign affairs coverage is taking a backseat at what use to be the world’s news channel. Sad really.

UN Shuts Haiti Medical Center – WTF?

The news out of Haiti last night was too much to believe. CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta was reporting from a small, makeshift medical center operating out of a tent in Port-au-Prince where more than two dozen badly wounded Hatians were finally receiving at least some medical care. That is until a group of UN peacekeepers arrived and ordered the doctors to abandon the field hospital over concerns for their safety. They were ordered to take the doctors away, but not the patients, who apparently were suppose to fend for themselves.

Dr. Gupta was dumbstruck, so too were CNN’s Anderson Cooper and retired General Russel Honore, who helped to bring order back to New Orleans in the days following Hurricane Katrina. To his great credit, Dr. Gupta stayed as the other medical staff were evacuated to tend to the patients they left behind, he even enlisted his camera crew to serve as healthcare aides. They had no problems with “security” during the night (seriously, with the entire city crying out for medical care, why would anyone attack one of the few places providing it?)

By morning, there was a change of heart somewhere and the medical staff was allowed to return to the medical center. The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon even issued a statement saying that the UN had not ordered the medical staff to leave, blaming the evac order on “other agencies” – Ban’s story is hard to believe though since the medical staff specifically told Gupta they were being ordered to leave by the United Nations, the CNN film crew has video of a UN-marked vehicle arriving at the tent site and of UN peacekeepers talking with the staff.

I have to say that I support the mission and ideals of the United Nations, and I know that they employ many bright and compassionate people. But incidents like last night at the clinic in Haiti give credence to some of the biggest criticisms of the UN – for example that it is such a massive bureaucracy that it often undermines the good work it is trying to do. Granted, the UN headquarters in Port-au-Prince was destroyed in the earthquake, killing many members of the staff and plunging the UN mission into chaos (it was the largest single-day loss of life ever suffered among UN staff). But Haiti is a disaster-prone nation, in addition to the threat of earthquakes, Haiti is often struck by hurricanes – it was hit by four tropical storms in less than two months in 2008 that caused widespread damage. It would only make sense then for the UN to have had a contingency plan in place should the PAP headquarters be knocked out (the northern city of Cap Haitien for example was not affected by the quake).

Another critique the health clinic debacle is bound to bring up again is the charge that UN peacekeepers are often little more than blue helmeted bystanders. Rather than evacuating the doctors, why couldn’t a few UN peacekeepers have provided security for the clinic instead? It’s worth noting again that Dr. Gupta and crew passed the night without incident in this allegedly “dangerous” place. Surely a few peacekeepers would have been more than enough of a show of force to keep order and it is hard to argue, given the health care situation in Haiti at the moment, that they could have been better used elsewhere.

The bottom line is that United Nations projects and programs do great things in many neglected corners of the world. But if they are overmatched in Haiti – and given the losses at their headquarters it’s understandable that they may be – and they are more of a hindrance than a help, then they should step aside and let those who can provide aid in these very difficult times do just that.