This is horrible. Eason Jordan,
This is horrible.
Eason Jordan, a reporter for CNN, has an article out today in the New York Times detailing some of the horrific stories he couldn't broadcast -- because to do so would have meant death for any number of people in Iraq.
For example, there's this gut-wrenching story:
I knew that CNN could not report that Saddam Hussein's eldest son, Uday, told me in 1995 that he intended to assassinate two of his brothers-in-law who had defected and also the man giving them asylum, King Hussein of Jordan. If we had gone with the story, I was sure he would have responded by killing the Iraqi translator who was the only other participant in the meeting. After all, secret police thugs brutalized even senior officials of the Information Ministry, just to keep them in line (one such official has long been missing all his fingernails).I'll tell you this: now that the cat's more or less out of the bag, this casts a lot of doubt on the accuracy of reporting from totalitarian countries such as Iraq (or Cuba, for example). Let's just remember this the next time (and there will most certainly be a next time).
Posted by Matt at April 11, 2003 2:19 PM
