What You Should Know About Sarin Gas Cnn
The News vs. The Newsroom: Was There a Real 'Genoa' Written report? Yes—in 1998
Comparison the HBO series' depictions of Mitt Romney'due south campaign staff gaffes and the investigative reports on "Operation Genoa" to what actually happened
How does The Newsroom'due south version of news events from last year fit in with the style those events really unfolded in the media? Not always perfectly -- just not always incorrectly, either. Here's how the 6th episode of Aaron Sorkin's HBO series' second season compares to the real-life news coverage of the fourth dimension menstruation it portrays.
The Newsroom: Business reporter Sloan Sabbith mentions to Will that she'south thinking of doing a story on Disney's colossal 2012 box-office flop John Carter.
"Information technology's projected to lose about $200 million for Disney," she says to Will. "Say what you desire, simply they're ane of the few American industries notwithstanding making a product people want to buy. Nobody'southward gonna ask for a bailout, and Disney's stock is relatively safety. Amusement is one of our highest acquirement-generating exports, and they employ members of 17 different unions, all of which have excellent minimum basic contracts. They may accept information technology in the teeth on John Carter, merely no one's going to get hurt."
The news: Dennis Kneale of Fox Business concern News delivered a like story in May of 2012. He pointed out that while the mega-failure of John Carter was, of course, a large-scale loss for Disney, the studio'due south stock prices, still excellent predictors of growth in Americans' disposable-income spending habits, hadn't taken a hit -- in fact, their stock prices were up nigh 30 percent over the last six months. Disney's bottom line, according to Kneale -- especially with the assistance of The Avengers, released the same summer -- would be just fine.
The Newsroom: On March 21, Hand Romney spokeswoman Taylor crashes Jim'south date with Hallie while she and the remainder of the Romney campaign are in New York. "I know you lot had a special nighttime planned, so of form I'one thousand coming along," Taylor says smugly. "Y'all know why?"
"Because we spent six minutes and xx seconds--" Jim sighs.
"On Etch-a-Sketch," she finishes.
The news: On the morning of March 21, CNN'south John Fugelsang asked Eric Fehrnstrom, a senior adviser for the Romney entrada, whether competition with the other Republican presidential nominees had pushed Romney's platform so far to the correct that it could injure his chances in the general election. Fehrnstrom replied that the governor could "striking a reset button" for the fall campaign. "Everything changes," he said. "It's similar an Etch-a-Sketch. You tin can kind of shake information technology up and we start all over once again."
While the moment did create a media frenzy amidst those eager to weigh in on Romney's evidently adjustable political beliefs -- Etch-a-Sketches were brandished by commentators and rival politicians alike in the days following -- 6 minutes and 20 seconds is a pretty startling effigy for a nightly news evidence.
ABC's evening circulate just assigned the story nearly two minutes and twenty seconds. "Mitt Romney and his campaign had wanted to talk most his victory in the Illinois primary," said Washington correspondent Jake Tapper. Merely then, he said, holding upward an Etch-a-Sketch, "debate over this iconic children's toy, the Etch-a-Sketch, threatened to erase all that."
NBC'south segment on the gaffe lasted two and a half minutes; Fox News gave it three minutes and v seconds. Just Rachel Maddow, in a nearly xv-minute segment on her MSNBC show, took Romney'due south entire political career to task when she dug deep into the implications of the "Romney as Etch-a-Sketch" metaphor. "The shake-everything-up-and-invent-your-ain-reality side of him has an even more serious implication," she said. "He lies all the time."
The Newsroom: This week'due south episode concluded on an ominous cliffhanger note: Charlie Skinner admits to a team of lawyers investigating ACN's story on a black op chosen Functioning Genoa that "None of information technology was true." We tin likely expect, and so, that more of the fallout from the story, in which the ACN news team reports on American troops' alleged use of sarin gas on civilians while performing an extraction in a small village in Pakistan in 2009, will be explained side by side week.
For now, though, we know two things:
-
that producer Jerry Dantana has edited an on-camera interview in such a way that General Stanislaus Stomtonovich appears to admit that U.S. military used chemic weapons in Pakistan when he made no such admission in the existent interview, and
-
that despite having six seemingly credible sources (a Twitter user in the Pakistani hamlet, two soldiers from the unit, the general, an aid worker stationed in the region, and an bearding high-level source), the story turns out to exist simulated.
The news: As other news sources accept pointed out this summer, the Performance Genoa storyline borrows heavily from a 1998 CNN report called "The Valley of Expiry." CNN accused American soldiers of having used sarin gas in Lao people's democratic republic in an extraction nicknamed Functioning Tailwind during the Vietnam War, then later retracted the story on the grounds that it was untrue.
Like the ACN News Night team, CNN had a seemingly credible cast of sources when they aired the segment. Co-ordinate to contained chaser Floyd Abrams's written report on his after-the-fact investigation of CNN's "Valley of Death" story,
There were three highly placed confidential sources that were understood to have confirmed both the use of sarin gas and that defectors were targeted in Performance Tailwind. One, especially knowledgeable virtually chemic weaponry, was intimately familiar with nerve agents. Another was a senior intelligence source with access to records of Operation Tailwind. A third was a erstwhile high ranking officeholder intimately familiar with SOG. All were said to take validated the conclusions of the broadcast. Two of the iii, news direction was told, had reviewed the text of the broadcast earlier it was shown and canonical information technology. ... There were participants in Tailwind itself, Robert Van Buskirk, Mike Hagen, Jimmy Lucas, Craig Schmidt, Jay Graves, James Cathey, and Ike Isola.
CNN producers were accused of having flatly disregarded show and testimonies that ran contrary to their intended storyline and edited interviews, as Jerry does in The Newsroom, in such a way that the meanings of certain subjects' statements were manipulated.
In an interview with u.s.a. (and in numerous other interviews since the circulate) [operation ground leader Captain Eugene] McCarley has denounced his treatment on the broadcast. He states that later on saying that the use of the nerve gas "was possible," he and so said that it had never been used by whatsoever of his troops, in fact, was not in the Vietnamese Theater at all. He said, likewise, that the mission had zero to practice with killing American defectors. ... What McCarley said to the CNN producer [Apr Oliver] and she to him is a affair of credibility most which nosotros are unable to pass judgment. This is one of the few cases in which the producer'south notes which totally back up her version of what was said to her off camera are flatly inconsistent with what an private who has been interviewed claimed he said.What we can estimate, however, is the unacceptability of minimizing McCarley'south views on the broadcast. Given the fact that he led the mission, we do not believe that McCarley'due south views, even if rejected by CNN, were given sufficient prominence. In an 18 minute segment (the producer had asked for an 60 minutes) dealing with complicated matters, information technology is ever difficult to provide "enough" time for everyone'due south views. Simply McCarley was the leader of the unit being described and had flatly denied the thrust of the broadcast. His views were entitled to more prominent treatment.
The aforementioned is truthful of others who repeatedly rejected the notion that nerve gas had been used. Both Don Feld and Fine art Bishop, the two pilots who flew the A-1s that dropped the gas in question, denied that they dropped nervus gas. Bishop even found a journal notation he had written the day after Tailwind's conclusion that stated his aeroplane was stocked with CBU-30 tear gas on the Tailwind drop. The sole reference to this in the broadcast is Arnett's statement that "fifty-fifty a pilot who dropped gas to get the commandos out said he was briefed it was just tear gas," suggesting implicitly that the pilots themselves had been misled.
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/08/the-news-vs-i-the-newsroom-i-was-there-a-real-genoa-report-yes-in-1998/278795/
Post a Comment for "What You Should Know About Sarin Gas Cnn"