The InstaMan links to Bruce Fierstein’s discussion of CNN World Report, a lovely program mostly consisting of English-language propaganda clips from third-world state-run broadcasters. Unlike Fierstein, I distinctly remember it being broadcast on U.S. CNN until fairly recently (well into the 1990s), probably until CNN International was forked off to become a separate network (instead of a jumbled amalgam of CNN’s domestic network and CNN Headline News, which it was in the early 1990s).

CNN International does get some domestic play, running on CNNfn during the overnight hours. The best I can tell of it is that it’s a bad imitation of BBC World, basically redoing CNN with Commonwealth accents and commercials while doing a mid-Atlantic hybrid of American-style and British-style reporting and succeeding at neither.

As for World Report, it always struck me as relatively harmless so long as the viewer was consciously aware that it was basically government propaganda. Unfortunately, CNN never made much of an effort to identify it explicitly as such, only billing it as “uncensored and unedited” but not mentioning that it was CNN who wasn’t doing any of the censoring or editing and that the production choices weren’t CNN’s. In other words, not unlike CNN’s behavior in Baghdad, where you got “uncensored and unedited” reports from the events and places Baghdad Bob wanted you to broadcast; since nobody in Atlanta was leading the reporters around by the nose, it was apparently perfectly legitimate reportage in CNN’s eyes.

Franklin Foer (author of last October’s expose of CNN’s “propaganda hut” coverage of Iraq in The New Republic) writes in today’s Wall Street Journal on CNN’s record of obsfucation and lies in its Iraq coverage under the Saddam regime. He particularly lays into “Baghdad” Jane Arraf, the network’s longtime Iraq bureau chief:

When Saddam won his most recent “election,” CNN’s Baghdad reporter Jane Arraf treated the event as meaningful: “The point is that this really is a huge show of support” and “a vote of defiance against the United States.” After Saddam granted amnesty to prisoners in October, she reported, this “really does diffuse [sic] one of the strongest criticisms over the past decades of Iraq’s human-rights records.”

For long stretches, Ms. Arraf was American TV’s only Baghdad correspondent. Her work was often filled with such parrotings of the Baathist line. On the Gulf War’s 10th anniversary, she told viewers, “At 63, [Saddam] mocks rumors he is ill. Not just standing tall but building up. As soon as the dust settled from the Gulf War, and the bodies were buried, Iraq began rebuilding.” She said little about human-rights violations, violent oppression, or festering resentment towards Saddam. Scouring her oeuvre, it is nearly impossible to find anything on these defining features of the Baathist epoch.

And Victor David Hanson in NRO is hardly impressed with the rest of the media in Baghdad either (via Trent Telenko).

CalPundit isn’t very impressed with Rupert Murdoch either; nor am I.

Need an explanation for the behavior of Robert Fisk and Eason Jordan? Look no further than Bitter Bitch’s interesting catalog discovery. Suddenly, it all makes sense!

Winds of Change.NET is carrying a guest entry by C. Blake Powers that thinks CNN may have revealed some things about its apparent collaboration with the Saddam regime to try to divert attention from others:

Somebody wants the obvious story pursued. Somebody is willing to live with the howls of outrage and calls for boycotts and such that will be generated. Why? Why are they willing to live with this? What scares them so badly that this is preferable?

Well, in addition to preemptive ass-coverage for when it comes out that CNN has been collaborating for access in other world capitals (and anyone who’s heard a CNN Havana bureau report knows they’re toeing Castro’s line as closely as Jane Arraf toed Saddam’s), it’s possible—and I stress possible—they’ve been complicit in identifying opposition figures within Iraq, thus endangering them, or have provided information streams beyond broadcast information to enemy forces. One possibility: it’s hard to believe that CNN didn’t know where its embedded reporters were located, although that information wasn’t aired, and that information could have been covertly passed to Baghdad, either through Iraqi moles or deliberate acts by CNN employees.

Then again, maybe there isn’t really more to the story (beyond the widespread, and valid, critique of CNN’s so-called “sanctions coverage”). But some enterprising reporter may want to start digging, nonetheless.

CNN’s chief news executive, Eason Jordan, reports on 13 years of intimidation, torture, and attempted murder of CNN reporters and photographers on Friday’s New York Times Op/Ed page. A stomach-turning sample (apparently reported at the time; however, I don’t remember reading about it):

Then there were the events that were not unreported but that nonetheless still haunt me. A 31-year-old Kuwaiti woman, Asrar Qabandi, was captured by Iraqi secret police occupying her country in 1990 for “crimes,” one of which included speaking with CNN on the phone. They beat her daily for two months, forcing her father to watch. In January 1991, on the eve of the American-led offensive, they smashed her skull and tore her body apart limb by limb. A plastic bag containing her body parts was left on the doorstep of her family’s home.

But remember, kids, since Saddam’s thugs didn’t rip babies from incubators he’s actually not a bad guy.

Andrew Hagen has an excellent post on this story.

I will say (snarky comments on the BBC aside) that I’m not sure what CNN could have done differently; it’s not fair for critics to expect them to hang innocent people out to dry in a totalitarian state. Maybe if Bernie and Peter hadn’t been so enthusiastic about hanging out in Baghdad twelve years ago some of it might have been avoidable, but it’s a big might.

Jeff at Caerdroia calls CNN’s behavior a “betrayal of trust,” and he makes a credible, damning case:

Yet through all of this behavior, for over a decade, CNN would have us believe that they did everything they could to bring us the truth? Shame! Shame on CNN. They cannot now be trusted with any news from any nation willing to brutalize its own people, because they have shown that in such a situation, they will sell out any principle for the opportunity to get stock footage and meaningless interviews. Worse yet, by not reporting these events, CNN encouraged them to continue, and thus became complicit in torture, attempted murder and suppression of the truth.

If they had avoided all local entanglements, they wouldn’t have gotten themselves in this mess in the first place. A policy like that might kill the market for local stringers in totalitarian states, but it would beat the alternative of getting the local stringers killed by a mile.

The more I think about this (including reading the Glassman piece), the more pissed off I am at CNN. I'm with D.C.—they’re coming off the dial at the Lawrence household. By TNR’s account, it appears that CNN reporters were lucky not to be caught on-air fellating Saddam Hussein. If Gulf War I put CNN on the map, Gulf War II should take them off it.

Links via the Command Post. More linkage via Technorati.

Glenn Reynolds reports that Sean-Paul Kelley, a.k.a. The Agonist, has apparently plagiarized some of his war updates from Stratfor’s paid reports. He has since apologized and, according to him, worked out an arrangement with Stratfor that allows him to continue posting some of their proprietary content.

(I’ve butted heads with Kelley in the past, so I’m hardly an objective observer. Suffice it to say that certain aspects of his writing—amply catalogued by Colby Cosh, or in my referenced posts—rub me the wrong way. However, I was charitable in linking him at the beginning of the war, and honestly thought he was providing a valuable service.)

A larger issue is raised by Daniel Drezner in his reaction:

As a graduate student in international relations, Kelley knew (or should have known) he was in the wrong as he was lifting Stratfor’s content, and he was in the wrong again when he initially tried to deny the plagiarism.

The problem Kelley faces now, as he admits in his apology post, is his loss of credibility (which, at least in my judgment, is pretty severe). As a member of the academic community, few things will damage one’s reputation more than presenting someone else’s ideas as your own. The big question is: if Kelley has fabricated and fibbed in his weblog, can the academic community trust him to be an honest researcher? That’s a very tough question, and it’s one that Kelley will need to have a good answer for—not just for his readers, who rightfully will question whether his reporting on the war effort can still be trusted, but also for his professors and potential employers, whether he decides on an academic or professional career.

Meryl Yourish, a Command Post contributor, has more:

Kelley's plagiarism is a blow to the credibility of the blogosphere. And it should be big news in the blogosphere. The Agonist has been a high-profile, high-visibility blogger since the start of the war. The war has caused his popularity surge. His seemingly uncanny line to information (now revealed to have been lifted whole cloth from Stratfor) helped him achieve that high visibility. And he still has it. The blogosphere has barely mentioned this.

Even more coverage is out there via Feedster and ThreadTrack, including takes from Dean Esmay (whose site was later DOSed by an Agonist reader), Andrea Harris (who, like me, recalls the “bloodthirsty warbloggers” incident), Grasshoppa, Amish Tech Support, Acidman, Letter from Gotham, Nicholas Jon, N.Z. Bear, Andrew Hagen, Gregory Harris, The Blogs of War and the Washington Post’s Filter column.

More reaction: Bill Middleton has a lengthy essay on his personal experiences with both Stratfor and Kelley; it doesn’t reflect very well on either. Also, Greg Greene notes that Kelley ought to be happy he’s not at Virginia.

Even more: Donald Sensing reviews the situation. Also, Meryl is planning to watch Kelley’s ecosystem rankings over the next few days; the morbidly curious can also monitor his traffic stats, which appear to be down sharply today (although there remain several hours to go, so take that with a grain of salt; an hourly report from yesterday doesn’t appear to be available for comparison purposes).

Yet more: somehow I forgot to link Ken Layne, and Wylie in Norman explains why people should care. And, The Fat Guy thinks Dean Esmay was being too nice.

Meryl subsequently, and correctly, points out that Tuesdays are often slower than Mondays for blogs; however, a look at his monthly traffic doesn't show as big of a Tuesday dropoff last week, and his week-on-week traffic has dropped substantially. However, there are plenty of other explanations: people could be bored with the war, for example, or they may have switched to getting their news from the better-sourced and more prolific Command Post, or the half-eyewitness, half-unsourced statements accompanied by wild speculation of the Beeb warblog, to name just two. Meryl also links to Mac Diva’s reaction, who raises an important point:

Technocrati [sic] currently lists The Agonist with 547 inbound blogs and 850 inbound links. His numbers dwarf those of all but the most popular blogs. They nudge the hard-working and honest Josh Marshall and DailyKos down in the ratings.

Indeed.

Dean Esmay has more to say; he makes some important points about copyright law (which, if people are going to learn from this mess, might be the one bit of good to come out of this), and he largely echos Mac Diva's reaction, in that a lot of other people’s honest work has been overshadowed by his meteoric rise to fame, much of it on the back of plagiarized material.

Someone has started an Agonist Watch weblog; it has a good roundup of links. In particular, he(?) links to a good discussion at TinyLittleLies. Also of note: RadioFreeBlogistan’s roundup.

Via Agonist Watch: MSNBC’s weblog central picks up the story. Also, Mac Diva is incredibly unimpressed with A Clever Sheep’s defense of Kelley, and notes that USA Today’s web column has picked up the story.

“VodkaPundit” Stephen Green thinks Venomous Kate “has this one exactly wrong.” And Agonist Watch links to Jim Bassett’s take, which makes you wonder if Dean Esmay was so far off the mark. Because, remember kids, it’s OK to take advantage of someone else stealing—just as long as you don’t do it yourself.

Joe Katzman at Winds of Change.NET explains why he still links to the Agonist, and the Inscrutable American reacts too.

Yet more, via Agonist Watch: CalPundit weighs in, and Matthew Yglesias has a second post on “Plagiarism in the Age of Google”; meanwhile, Tiny Little Lies has a vicious takedown of the state of liberal thought in the Blogosphere (*cough* Atrios)—which IMHO paints too broad a brush, but one can only read the latest Dem (or GOP, for that matter) talking points so many times without vomiting.

Meryl Yourish still thinks Kelley is ducking the issue. For your edification, compare Kelley’s stats with The Command Post’s; there’s a definite drop-off between the trends that can’t be attributed just to the war.

Via AW: The People’s Republic of Seabrook apparently received an email from Kelley that suggests WaPo media columnist Howard Kurtz is looking into the situation.

Atrios Hesiod is involved now. Happy happy, joy joy. (It’s not really about the plagiarism, you see—it’s really all about the stats.)

(Note Blogger archive breakage on some of the links; hack up the URLs accordingly. Also, I'm limiting my links to those that seem to have a particularly original take; however, Agonist Watch seems to be collecting everything.)