Here's the link. Interesting to see how other journalists view the issue. And it wasn't limited to CNN by any means, but CNN may have been the worst. The last few paragraphs are:

Many of Arraf's colleagues commit the same egregious errors, treating regime-organized demonstrations as if they were genuine expressions of public opinion. NBC's man in Iraq, Ron Allen, filed a report from Saddam's birthday bash last April that noted, "[T]he huge crowds in the streets suggest Saddam still has firm control of his country. Iraqi officials defiantly insist the celebration sends a clear message, especially to the U.S., that the people will stand behind their leader." Introducing a tour of an Iraqi nuclear facility north of Baghdad last month, he said, "The propaganda war really heated up here in Iraq," but then never hinted at the many indications--the fact, for instance, that Iraq isn't allowing inspectors to visit the site--that the tour was a sham. The point, he told viewers, was "to show that, in fact, this site is virtually harmless. ... 'It's a peaceful place,' [the Iraqis] said, 'a place for peaceful research.'" He even refers at length to former weapons-inspector-turned-Saddam-apologist Scott Ritter, without an allusion to Ritter's well-documented change of heart about the Iraqi threat. Unlike Allen and Arraf, even the three Democratic congressmen--Jim McDermott, Mike Thompson, and David Bonior--who recently returned from a peace mission to Baghdad, grasped that a cursory inspection by nonexperts could serve no purpose except to further Saddam's propaganda.



In part, reporters spin these bogus tours into stories because the risks of airing meaningful material are just too high. A TV journalist told me about the time he interviewed a respected Baghdad politico on camera. The journalist was shocked by his subject's candid criticisms of the government. But as the reporter left the interview, his minder told him, "I can't tell you what to do. But if he says that on camera, he'll be in severe trouble--and so will I." Worried about putting lives at risk, the journalists never aired his footage. Even innocuous conversations can result in reprisals. Witt, who traveled to Iraq last spring, says, "Most journalists don't want to put anyone at risk. The potential price is too horrible. Either you get your tongue cut out and then you're executed, or you're just executed. You have your choice."

There are alternatives to mindlessly reciting Baghdad's spin. Instead of desperately trying to keep their Baghdad offices open, the networks could scour Kurdistan and Jordan, where there are many recently arrived Iraqis who can talk freely. "Amman is the place to find out what's really going on in Iraq," says ex-CIA officer Robert Baer, who spent the mid-'90s working in and around Iraq. (To CNN's credit, it has sent reporter Brent Sadler to Kurdistan despite Baghdad's furious objections.) Or they could use their access to depict the harsh realities of life under Saddam--even if it means never returning to Iraq. It's a method used by Soler in his documentary Uncle Saddam, to be aired on Cinemax next month. After spending a month ingratiating himself with Saddam's entourage, Soler convinced the Iraqis to grant him camera time with His Excellency's inner circle. His film shows Saddam to be a lunatic, devoid of morality or humanity. It captures images of Saddam's unique style of fishing-hurling grenades into a pond and then sending aides to retrieve the kill. It documents Saddam's megalomania: Iraq's biggest paper features Saddam in a new pose on the cover each day. "I don't need a relationship with Iraq," he explains of his decision to bare all. "It was my one shot. Every day it was how can I push the limits."

To be sure, after screening his documentary for film festivals and Iraqi opposition groups in the U.S., Soler found red paint splattered on his Los Angeles home, his trash can set on fire, and a death threat in his mailbox. But with the film he smuggled out of Iraq via courier, Soler gives more psychological insight into Saddam than ten years of American TV reportage.

When I asked CNN's Jordan to explain why his network is so devoted to maintaining a perpetual Baghdad presence, he listed two reasons: "First, because it's newsworthy; second, because there's an expectation that if anybody is in Iraq, it will be CNN." His answer reveals the fundamental attitude of most Western media: Access to Baghdad is an end in itself, regardless of the intellectual or moral caliber of the journalism such access produces. An old journalistic aphorism holds "access is a curse." The Iraqi experience proves it can be much worse than that.