CNN's Christiane Amanpour grilled bosses over network's 'double standards' on Israel coverage: Report
Veteran CNN journalist Christian Amanpour reportedly confronted her new boss Mark Thompson and other executives over what she says are "double standards" when it came to the network's Israel-Hamas coverage.
On Friday, The Intercept reported on an internal meeting at CNN's London bureau last month that got tense while discussing the network's protocols for covering the ongoing war and the alleged "hostile climate for Arab reporters."
A recurring issue among the CNN journalists attending the meeting was the process of running their reporting through CNN's "SecondEyes" verifying program at the network's Jerusalem bureau, which according to The Intercept's report "slows down reporting on Gaza and filters news about the war through journalists in Jerusalem who operate under the shadow of Israel's military censor."
"You’ve heard from me, you’ve heard my, you know, real distress with SecondEyes — changing copy, double standards, and all the rest," Amanpour said, according to a leaked recording of the meeting. "So you’ve heard it, and I hear what your response is and I hope it does go a long way."
Several staffers reportedly panned CNN's coverage of the war, saying it has "weakened the network’s standing in the region and has led Arab staffers… feeling as though their lives are expendable."
"I was in southern Lebanon during October and November… And it was more distressing for me to turn on CNN, than the bombs falling nearby," one CNN journalist told their bosses. "I find that my colleagues, my family, are platforming people over and over again, that are either calling for my death, or using very dehumanizing language against me … and people that look like me. And obviously, this has a huge impact in our credibility in the region."
That journalist then asked Thompson directly, "What have you done, and what are you doing to address the hate speech that fills our air and informed our coverage, especially in the first few months of the war?"
According to The Intercept, Thompson initially responded by touting CNN's coverage of the war, though he added "it is impossible to do this kind of story where there are people with incredibly strong opinions on both sides" without "sometimes making mistakes."
"I think the fact that it’s been very difficult for us until relatively recently, and even today, to get fully on the ground inside Gaza, has made it hard for us to deliver the kind of individualized personal stories of what it’s been like for the people of Gaza, in the way it has been more possible for us with the story of the families of those murdered and kidnapped by Hamas in the original Hamas attack on Israel," Thompson said.
Thompson went on to insist CNN would give the "same" sympathetic coverage to the victims in Gaza as the families of Israeli hostages if it didn't have access restraints.
"I think that we have for the most part tried very hard to capture the … our job is not to be moral arbiters, it is to report what’s happening," Thompson told staff.
THE LEGACY MEDIA DECRIES ‘BOTHSIDESISM’ EXCEPT WHEN IT INVOLVES ISRAEL AND HAMAS
A separate CNN staffer complained how "very senior anchors" are not challenging Israeli officials enough on air and that CNN's Muslim and Arab journalists are "made to feel that they must denounce Hamas to clear their names and be taken seriously as journalists."
"I’ve heard this, where a number of younger colleagues now feel that they didn’t want to put their hands up to speak up even in the kind of the local Bureau meeting," the staffer told Thompson. "People were taking their names off bylines."
Per The Intercept, "Thompson interjected, saying that people seemed to be speaking up now and that he welcomes editorial discussions. Another staffer disputed that characterization and noted that Arab and Muslim journalists walk a difficult line between feeling proud of working for CNN while facing pressure from their families and communities over working for a network with a pronounced pro-Israel bias."
Amanpour also urged Thompson to have "experts" of the region to be reporting on the ground, telling him "It isn’t a place, with due respect, to send people who we want to promote or whatever, or teach. Maybe in the second wave, maybe in the third wave — but in the first wave, it has to be the people who know, through experience, what they’re seeing, and how to speak truth to power on all sides. And how to recognize the difference between political or whatever or terrorist attack, and the humanity, and to be able to put all of that into reporting."
"For me, video is not a talking head on a balcony in a capital. It just isn’t. To me, video is reportage," she added.
A spokesperson for CNN declined to comment to Fox News Digital.
Amanpour certainly isn't afraid to speak her mind to her bosses. Last year, she confronted ousted CNN honcho Chris Licht over her disapproval of the network's handling of the Trump town hall.