Goodbye Octavia Nasr

Philip M. Stone July 9, 2010 Follow on Twitter

CNN has fired Octavia Nasr, its Atlanta-based senior editor of Middle East affairs, because of this Twitter, “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah … One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.” Now just seen by itself with no further explanation and remembering that the U.S. considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization that is a dicey statement given that your American news organization tries to tread the international straight and narrow, and sure enough once the hullabaloo erupted on the Internet she was gone.

She had issued a blog explaining it “was an error of judgment for me to write such a simplistic comment and I’m sorry because it conveyed that I supported Fadallah’s life work. That’s not the case at all.”

But she was cooked anyway. Her boss, Parisa Khosravi, senior vice president of International Newsgathering, wrote to staff saying that after a conversation with Nasr, “she will be leaving the company. As you know her tweet over the weekend created a wide reaction. As she has stated in her blog on CNN.com, she fully accepts that she should not have made such a simplistic comment without any context whatsoever (ed note” what context can you give when limited to 140 letters?) At this point we believe that her credibility in her position as senior editor for Middle Eastern affairs has been compromised going forward.”

Nasr was in Lebanon when Fadallah died and CNN wasted no time contacting her then for her on-air analysis by telephone. As usual, she kept it pretty straight. She is Lebanese, and over the years of watching her reports one actually had to admire her ability to play it straight explaining both sides of a given Middle East incident.

Since so many CNN people publicize they Tweet – encouraged by their bosses? -- it seems rather hard to understand how a news organization fires someone for saying what they think. Isn’t that what Twitter is all about?  No question that any sane CNN or other news organization reporter should now only post inane Twitter remarks, or on blogs, on social network sites etc., because there are people out there in Internetland who are monitoring it all and if it even smells politically incorrect then you’ll be gone. So much for free speech.

American journalists are taught in J-School never to let their bias show through in stories – as opposed, say, to what one will often find in the European press. While there may be no such thing as complete objectivity – there has to be some subjectivity such as deciding the facts in the lead of the story – the American journalistic ideal is to keep the subjectivity to an absolute minimum. When this writer started working for United Press International (UPI) in the early 1970s – light years ahead of the Internet – the standard rule was never to use the word “terrorist” because one reader’s terrorist could well be another reader’s hero. Thus when Arabs blew up American and European-owned passenger planes in the Arab desert this was done by the named organizations, not by generic “terrorists”. True now in today’s politically correct world?

Journalists giving their opinions on Twitter and social networking sites let readers know one’s political views and for journalists that really is no good thing. So, yes, absolutely, journalists have the right to say what they want via such sites, but the more the reader learns about a journalist’s beliefs the more, or less, one might trust that journalist’s reporting. And Nasr’s case, and there have been plenty of other examples, shows that a private posting that the employer believes undercuts the news organization’s own standing can have dire effects.

The Jewish Anti Defamation League supported Nasr’s firing.  Arab-Americans did not. The intelligencia on the Internet seemed to be against; conservatives seemed to be for.

CNN has a history of dumping employees who say, politically, the wrong thing. Remember Eason Jordan who “resigned” back in 2005 as CNN’s chief news executive because he told an international conference that US troops in Iraq had targeted journalists. He backtracked once the Internet furor started, but he was soon gone, too.

It’s really rather scary how careers can come to such a skid. One moment you’re here; the next you can be gone for saying or posting something that is not politically correct.  And obviously past performance has no play here. Khosravi ended her note to staff about Nasr, a 20-year employee, with, “As a colleague and friend, we’re going to miss Octavia every day. She has been an extremely dedicated and committed part of our team. We thank Octavia for all her hard work.” But that, obviously, wasn’t enough to save her in this politically correct world.

Scary!

Ed. note: The BBC faced a flurry of criticism, largely from the right-wing at home and abroad, after Jerusalem correspondent Barbara Plett, in a ‘correspondents notebook’ feature, emotionally described the final journey of terminally  ill Yasser Arafat from his compound. “When the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose above his ruined compound, I started to cry…without warning,” was part of her broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 2004. Nearly a year later the BBC Board of Governors found the comment “breached the requirements of due impartiality.” Plett was transferred to Islamabad where she continues to report. (JMH)

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