CNN Journalist Voices Admiration for Terrorist Inciter

by RH (CAMERA)

Several journalists have noted that CNN's senior editor of Middle East affairs, Octavia Nasr, proclaimed her respect for Hezbollah's spiritual guru, Ayatollah Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah after his recent death. On her Twitter page, Nasr wrote:

Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah.. One of Hezbollah's giants I respect a lot.

Daniel Halper points out on the Weekly Standard blog that Fadlallah "famously justified suicide bombing."

Aaron Klein of World Net Daily gives examples of Fadlallah's "long history of supporting terrorism against the U.S. and Israel" including the seizure and hostage-taking at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979. Both point out that Fadlallah is believed to have masterminded the 1983 U.S. Marine barracks which killed 241 U.S. Marines, and was a Holocaust minimizer.

HonestReporting questions whether "Fadlallah's praise for the massacre of eight Israeli students at Mercaz Ha-Rav Yeshiva in Jerusalem on March 6, 2008," his "fatwa to the suicide bomber who attacked the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983," his support for "the seizure and hostage-taking at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979," his backing of "suicide bombing attacks in 2002", or his praise for "Iran's efforts to build long-range missiles...in 2008" are among the actions that Nasr admires?

According to CNN, Nasr "serves as an on-air and off-air analyst across all platforms of CNN Worldwide" and is a "leader in integrating social media with newsgathering and reporting." And her twitter page demonstrates how Nasr integrates social media with reporting. By expressing her admiration for a terrorist inciter, she provides a public display of the bias that cannot help but inform her analysis of events in the Middle East – a display that should be disturbing to all who value objective reporting.

RH (CAMERA) at July 6, 2010 04:42 PM
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