Bahrain dictatorship hush money to CNN?

This video is about western public relations corporations, paid by the absolute monarchy in Bahrain for propaganda.

From the Atlanta Paulding County Republican in the USA:

Former CNN reporter alleges CNN accepted money from Bahrain to ignore oppression

November 3, 2012

By: Christopher Collins

Breaking here in the U.S. are allegations that CNN and its international arm engaged in accepting money from oppressive Islamic nations such as Bahrain to promote flattering reporting instead of the oppression the regime has engaged in against its citizens. CNN International also denied showing a documentary about Bahrain and its oppression on its people.

According to the allegations, former Emmy winning CNN correspondent Amber Lyon blew the whistle despite being threatened of being fired by CNN management.

The story first broke by the UK’s “The Guardian” and picked up yesterday by U.S. based, Mario Murillo Ministries presenting the bias lean of CNN’s agenda-based decisions.

Last year when the Arab Spring began and was spreading throughout the Middle East, Lyons and three other CNN crew members went to Bahrain to film a one-hour documentary depicting the use of social media and the internet by pro-democracy activists in the region. Those who spoke with Lyon’s and her crew were dealt with retaliations.

Lyons and her crew were also detained and interrogated for several hours. Their photos from their cameras were destroyed by the Bahrain security forces who detained them. However, the documentary survived.

Lyons also stated that CNN International refused to air their own award-winning documentary, “iRevolution“, a documentary that Lyons and her crew put together exposing Bahrain regime’s brutal suppression against pro-democracy protesters. The documentary is available on YouTube and includes the 13-minute segment focusing on Bahrain.

Lyon’s story was never reported widely reported here in the mainstream news media in the U.S.

In documents posted on the Internet, CNN responded to Lyon’s and Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian‘s accusations.

In one response, CNN stated, “It was never intended to air on CNN International. It was an hour-long program about the impact of social media on the Arab Spring that was commissioned for CNN US, where it ran in June of 2011. The portion of it that concerned Bahrain lasted about 13 minutes. Despite Greenwald’s speculation about the editorial choices that are made when operating multiple networks with different audience profiles, there is nothing unusual about this programming decision.”

Lyon responded, “I was approached by numerous CNN employees, some employed by the network for decades, who told me this programming decision was suspiciously unusual. I’ve produced numerous pieces for CNN U.S. that did not run on CNN International, but this was different. Other factors were at play here…Bahrain was a paying customer.”

She said that a long time executive wrote her and said, “Why would CNNi not run a documentary on the Arab Spring, arguably the biggest story of the decade? Strange, no?”

When CNN continued to deny her reports and the decision to not air the documentary on CNN International, Lyons in-part said, “CNN calls this ‘Journalism 101’. I call it ‘Propaganda 101’.”

“My duty as an investigative journalist is to be a watchdog that finds and exposes the truth to the people, not to ‘be fair’ and habitually include responses from oppressive regimes,” said Lyons. “Including responses that you know are not true undermines the truth, and adds potentially dangerous propagandistic side effects to your reports…think ‘weapons of mass destruction’.”

“CNN repeated that U.S. government-provided response phrase to viewers an indefinite number of times leading into the Iraq war, even though CNN could not independently verify the veracity of the statement.”

“There’s a psychological effect that even if viewers hear something they know to be false, if it’s repeated enough, they begin to categorize it in their minds as truth,” said Lyons.

“Once the pattern of CNN book-ending my work with government propaganda became inevitable, I began to wonder if it was better for the plight of Bahrain’s pro-democracy protesters if I just quit reporting on Bahrain for the network altogether.”

While CNN has defended the accusations, a Facebook page was created “Thank you Amber Lyon CNN reporter“, by some of the people in Bahrain” praising Amber Lyon for her reporting of the oppression.

…

“The “Most Trusted Name in News” must ultimately decide whether it’s in the business of government propaganda or journalism, because despite the network’s claims of objectivity, I learned firsthand CNN is having trouble biting the hand that feeds it,” said Lyons said.

Lyons further said, “I’ll take this time to remind network executives of a quote by George Orwell, “Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.”

Jeff Nall, Truthout: While Hollywood invariably depicts the US and its military as the good guys (or loses access to Pentagon cooperation), the US arms nations with highly questionable commitments to democracy and human rights, like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain: here.

Related articles

• Bahrain dictatorship bans all demonstrations (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Bahrain dictatorship update (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• “Bahrain buys favorable CNN content” (seeker401.wordpress.com)
• Why didn’t CNNi air its own documentary on Bahrain’s Arab Spring repression? | Glenn Greenwald (guardian.co.uk)

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