By Reuven Koret
June 25, 2002
Last week Ted Turner, in an interview with The Guardian, equated Palestinian terrorism with Israeli attempts to defend against terrorism. Turner's remark, coinciding with terror atrocities against Israel, served as a lightning rod for pent-up resentment for what many perceived was a legacy of equivocation by CNN, especially in the Israeli context, with respect to the distinction between terrorists and their victims.
I and many others were outraged by the remark, which came on the heels of a journalistic gaffe earlier in the month, when CNN International did not, as promised, screen an interview with the bereaved Israeli mother, Chen Keinan, who had lost her daughter and mother in the Petach Tikva bombing, but instead showed the proud mother of a suicide bomber. CNN later apologized for what it explained, credibly, as a technical error. But this instance of adding insult to injury, even unintentionally, contributed to accumulated outrage here and abroad at CNN's perceived callousness to Israeli terror victims.
The Israel Insider team shared these feelings, and by day's end we had put together an online petition to AOL Time Warner, CNN's parent company, and made it easy for users to write to Ted Turner (or at least his organization, since he himself does not use e-mail) as well as AOL-TW Investor Relations, and several senior CNN executives.
The result was extraordinary. The volume of instant responses was overwhelming. Hundreds, and eventually thousands, signed our petition. Many hundreds wrote personal e-mails, all received by the high-level execs at CNN and AOL-TW.
Within 24 hours, CNN Chief News Executive Eason Jordan had responded to me in an email, saying that he would be coming to Israel on the weekend, and asked to meet with Israel Insider. Jordan, a journalistic veteran who has been to Israel 50 times, was not content with a courtesy call or a firefighting mission. By the time Jordan met with us, he had done something significant in fact and in deed, not just in fleeting and forced words.
Jordan acted in specific and concrete ways. He ordered a revision of policy with respect to the screening of video statements of suicide bombers and their families. But more importantly, he initiated a series of constructive steps to demonstrate in a concrete way that CNN was willing to tell the story of Israeli victims. That was expressed in a five-part series of television reports, the first broadcast on Monday, with the Israeli survivors of terror attacks, and the families and friends of those who perished. (Yet reports indicate that the series will not be broadcast in the U.S., an omission that would undermine its impact.)
The change was also expressed on the CNN.com website, which featured hundreds of stories, with photos, of Israeli victims of terrorism. Perhaps most remarkable is the attempt to convey the impact of terror on the small nation of Israel: "If you went to a baseball game tonight and looked around, and say, half the stadium was filled, you would see about 25,000 other fans. If you were living in Israel, it is likely that one of you would be killed in a terrorist attack in the next six months."
A comparison chart helps foreign readers grasp the impact of terror relative to their own countries. In the United States, the site tells us, Israeli deaths from Palestinian terror would be the equivalent of 10,888 Americans (the toll of more than three 9/11 attacks). In China, it would be equivalent to 48,239.
Even this understates the impact, since the count is for only the first half of 2002. The toll does not include the more than 330 additional victims killed by Palestinian terror since the launching of the "Al Aqsa Intifada" by Yasser Arafat in September 2000. You would need to multiply the equivalent numbers by 2.5 (25,000 Americans, 100,000 Chinese) to grasp the full impact of terror on Israel over the past 21 months.
Still, this effort by CNN to contextualize, to make the horror of terror graspable by non-Israelis, is exceptional, perhaps unprecedented by foreign media. There was no attempt to rationalize, or offset, the awful impact of terror with references to Palestinian suffering.
There remains much to criticize in the accompanying timeline of terror attacks, which omits whole months of violence and does not include the scores of Israelis gunned down on the roads in drive-by shootings. The timeline, at this point, is far from comprehensive, or useful, as a tool for either research or understanding. But even the evident haste with which the materials were assembled testifies to the seriousness with which CNN responded to the expressed concerns of constructive critics.
I am less impressed by the reaction of CNN's parent company, AOL Time Warner. The Turner comment was offensive enough, not just to Israelis but to Americans and others victimized by terror, to warrant not a legalistic formulation from a company spokesman but a personal statement by the Chairman. I hope Dick Parsons will yet step up to the plate and act to restore stakeholder confidence in AOL-TW's moral stance against terror.
But we must also give credit where it is due. Above all, to the Israel Insider readers who, forcefully but (in most cases) constructively and politely, expressed their views on Turner and CNN, creating an e-mail and petition effect network executives could not ignore.
Yet credit should also be extended to CNN's Jordan, and his executive team. First, for taking real corrective steps, creating valuable content rather than resting content to mouth the usual corporate newspeak. Second, for having the guts to come personally to Israel, face the critics, admit mistakes, accept suggestions, while at the same time calling attention to his network's overall pursuit of fair reporting. That's what we call: a mensch.
Time will tell if Jordan's changes stick, and the born-again sensitivity to Israeli terror victims at CNN endures. But for now I suggest this: Let's give the CNN team a chance to prove themselves, and let's give the inboxes of these guys a deserved rest. And as for the jerks who think it helps our cause to send threats and curses to CNN executives and reporters: get a life. There is such a thing as email terrorism, and you are perpetrating it.
This week's remarkable exercise in media activism proves two points: One: Israel media have supporters and allies ready to act effectively. And two: Foreign media are ready to listen, and respond, if we give them a chance. Readers of Israel Insider made a difference. So did Jordan at CNN.
Ted Turner still may not know who is a terrorist. But he is outnumbered and shunned by embarrassed colleagues. He has been isolated, and put out to pasture to lick his wounds. AOL TW and Turner have both been so impoverished by the market, it almost seems cruel (if not to them, then to loyal shareholders and employees) to punish the company.
As for CNN, I suggest Jordan's policy innovations are significant and deserve scrutiny. Let's work constructively to ensure the series on Israeli terror victims is screened in the U.S., and that the related terrorism specials on the web site continue to be developed.
Over the coming weeks, let's not boycott the network. Let's watch it.
Carefully.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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