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Is CNN faithfully citing its news sources?

Probably it’s a minor glitch, but it’s worth noting here anyway given the deteriorating reputation of CNN in the world of news report. If we look at this report on CNN: first CNN claims that they were denied permission to visit Tibet with a group of foreign reporters, then the fact came that the news on that page was cited from Associated Press. Apparently this news report was written by Charles Hutzler, Beijing bureau chief for The Associated Press. However, if we examine the details of the news on this page, there are quite a few discrepancies with the actual AP report found elsewhere: if we do a Google search using the first sentence of this report “Police closed off Lhasa’s Muslim quarter on Friday“, 11900 search results are found. Interestingly, every link (for example, the report from Time) contain exactly the same content except that on CNN website. Interested readers should check it out and sense the words CNN used on its news page in addition to the original AP report and it would be interesting to know where CNN obtained this extra information since they were not allowed to get in Tibet since March 14th. Now the only thing is whether CNN’s act here is a breach of the copyright by AP in terms of adulterating their own opinions and interpretations and blending them into the AP report.

Below are some quotes from CNN page but not found elsewhere, is this what CNN had claimed “CNN’s reputation is based on reporting global news accurately and impartially“, is it a joke?

A woman who answered the phone at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said she did not know about the trip. She would not give her name, as is common among Chinese bureaucrats. (As if anonymity of commentators or alike doesn’t exist elsewhere, is this CNN’s opinion or fact?)

“They killed many people. They killed many people,” another monk said, referring to Chinese security forces.

vs. Time report: “They killed many people,” another monk said, referring to Chinese security forces. (lies, even repeated a thousand times, won’t become reality”.

A vice-governor of Tibet, Baima Chilin, later told reporters the monks would not be punished. “We will never do anything to them. We will never detain anyone you met on the streets of Lhasa. I don’t think any government would do such a thing,” he said.

And a whole section here, pay attention to the words that CNN used (underlined)

Other than the incident at the Jokhang, one of Tibetan Buddhism’s holiest shrines, most of the second day of the tour went according to plan, with officials sticking to the government line that the most violent anti-Chinese protests in nearly two decades were plotted by supporters of the Dalai Lama.

The Dalai Lama has denied the accusations and threatened to resign as head of the India-based Tibetan government-in-exile if the violence continued.

The government says at least 22 people have died in Lhasa; Tibetan rights groups say nearly 140 Tibetans were killed, including 19 in Gansu province.

One of the monks protesting Thursday said the death toll was far higher than the government was saying, but did not give the source of his information.

“The cadres and the army killed more than 100 Tibetans. They arrested more than a thousand,” he said.

After the violent 1989 uprising in Lhasa, Tibetans claimed many more Tibetans died than the official toll of 16 because families feared punishment if participants went to hospitals.

Fu Jun, head of the News Affairs Office of the Propaganda Department of the Tibet Communist Party, said Friday the monks were spreading rumors.

“We are keeping an open mind about their complaints. The rumor is misleading the media without a shred of evidence … We will clear up facts in a few days time when appropriate,” Fu said.

The Chinese-installed vice governor of Tibet, Baima Chilin, told the reporters late Thursday that the monks would not be punished for their outburst. (CNN is implying Tibet government is a puppet of the central government)

vs. Time “A vice governor of Tibet, Baima Chilin, later told reporters the monks would not be punished. “

State TV, which has widely covered the foreign journalists’ tour, showed the Jokhang visit on its evening newscast, but not the monks’ outburst.

Journalists were taken Friday morning to interview members of the Communist Party-run Buddhist Association, who reiterated standard Chinese accusations against the Dalai Lama.

“This was premeditated,” said Drubkang, a reincarnated lama and member of Beijing’s top government advisory body, who like many Tibetans uses just one name.

Last but not least, every other news sources attached the authors info:

Charles Hutzler, Beijing bureau chief for The Associated Press, was among a group of foreign journalists taken on a government-arranged trip to the Tibetan city of Lhasa.

What did CNN do? Nothing! Maybe CNN shouldn’t have used the AP as the gee-string to hide its own subjective dirty “news synthesis”.

Rebuttal of CNN statement

CNN has denied allegations by Anti-cnn.com and claim what they did was justifiable. Here is an article that was published on mitbbs and more details will be released in the future.

Quote:

It’s good to know that CNN has realized the tremendously negative publicity it had earned itself over the Internet recently, and it has abandoned its usual “keep silent” way of dealing with credibility charges by putting out a statement clearing itself on its Tibet coverage, which had been criticized for distorting facts and taking side by many bloggers and news agencies all over the world. The pressure must have been huge that CNN the experienced defendant against credibility accusations (number speaks, googling “CNN lies” returns 653,000 results, more than double of the 305,000 results for “Spitzer prostitution”, the hottest news this year) has to respond.

As witnesses of the false reports from CNN, we recognize the effort CNN makes to polish its stained image, however, we find the statement in whole an evasive piece trying to make excuses. We feel pity for CNN again being such a dishonest and unapologetic news agency.

Let’s take a quick look at what CNN has to say, we will find CNN’ s excuse for cropping picture laughable. Web based publication has great deal of freedom in presenting multimedia materials including pictures. CNN could have posted the picture in its entirety while moving text to the rest of the area without any trouble at all. Web pages are not printed materials, resizing and reframing paragraphs are virtually costless and effortless. In fact, after being attacked for cropping the picture, CNN modified the page to put a resized version of the entire original photo, without having to move text format at all. Then we have a further question, why did CNN have to crop it in the first place? Also, CNN argues in the statement that the picture was captioned “Tibetans throw stones”, then by what motive would a rational editor crop out the exact part of people throwing stones? No excuse can possibly be found to justify the discrepancy between what CNN d
id and what CNN claims. Besides, CNN’s factual mistakes are not limited to the picture or calling Tibet as a country. During it TV airing until as late as March 21st, when multiple sources had confirmed Tibet riot violent and deadly, CNN anchors repeated called Tibetan turbulence a “peaceful protest”. It was exceptionally misleading and was a major distortion of fact. Even after www.anti-CNN.com had published the mistakes of CNN and other news outlets, Lou Dobbs of CNN continued to use the same wrong descriptions in his TV show. Even an unprofessional team would not be a strong excuse to make up for this.

CNN also repetitively refused to identify the dead as victims of the riot, and in their context spread the impression that they were protesters left dead by government actions, while in fact, they were murdered by those CNN-called “peaceful protesters”.

CNN’s distortions and lies are not sparse editorial or technical mistakes. They are consistent and still on-going, in favor of their side of the stories.

In addition, CNN has in its reports repetitively excluded Tibetan ethnics from the Chinese. This is unacceptable. It is just similar to calling African American and Caucasian American as Blacks and American.

While the German new agency RTL had quickly acknowledged and apologized for its mistake after www.anti-cnn.com pointed it out, professionals in journalism at CNN still refuse to acknowledge mistakes and redeem trust. We have to say, the denial issued today was just a weak and pathetic attempt to weasle away from the systematic lying campaign CNN had conducted in the past weeks.