Was CNN & Larry King Involved in a Murder Plot? (fwd)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 09 Jul 1999 02:42:03 +0000
From: Mitchel Cohen <mitchelcohen@mindspring.com>
Subject: Was CNN & Larry King Involved in a Murder Plot?

Was CNN & Larry King Involved in Murder Plot?

The following report covers details of a report from
the British newspaper The Independent. Not only was CNN
ordered to evacuate all CNN personnel and facilities from
a Serbian TV station that had become targeted for bombing, but CNN
apparently also attempted to lure a high Serbian official to the doomed TV
station for an interview that would put him in the building just as the
cruise missiles struck. Since the Serbian official was late for his
appointment with CNN, that murder failed. However, the murder of the many
Serbian journalists and workers was a complete success.

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/jul1999/cnn-j08.shtml
=======================================================

8 July 1999
World Socialist Web Site

Was CNN involved in a NATO effort to assassinate
the Serbian information minister?

Chris Marsden

On Friday, July 2 the Independent newspaper in Britain
ran an article by its Belgrade war correspondent Robert
Fisk entitled "Taken in by the NATO line". The article
presents a devastating picture of the role of the press
corps in the war against Yugoslavia.

Fisk shows how, with rare execptions, reporters abandoned
any standpoint of objectivity and adopted uncritically
the official rationale for the war. For the most part
infected themselves with the anti-Serb hysteria of US,
British and NATO officials, they sought to justify the
bombing campaign by reporting NATO propaganda as fact
and accepting without question the statements of NATO
spokesman Jamie Shea, President Clinton and Prime
Minister Blair.

He cites the example of a CNN reporter in Belgrade who
"astounded one of his English colleagues after NATO had
bombed a narrow road bridge in the Yugoslav village of
Varvarin, killing dozens of civilians, many of whom fell
to their death in the River Morava. 'That'll teach them
not to stand on bridges,' he roared".

Fisk notes, "This was not the kind of language he used
on air, of course, where CNN's report on the bridge
killings was accompanied by the remark that there had
been civilian casualties 'according to the Serb
authorities'--all this when CNN's own crew had been
there and filmed the decapitated corpse of the local
priest".

The Independent correspondent goes on to suggest that
the collaboration of major media outlets with the NATO
military campaign went beyond dishonest and unethical
journalistic practices. At the end of the article he
suggests that CNN and the network's Larry King Live
show may have been complicit in an attempt to
assassinate Serbian Information Minister Aleksander
Vucic.

Fisk writes: "Two days before NATO bombed the Serb
Television headquarters in Belgrade, CNN received a
tip from its Atlanta headquarters that the building
was to be destroyed. They were told to remove their
facilities from the premises at once, which they did.

"A day later, Serbian Information Minister Aleksander
Vucic received a faxed invitation from the Larry King
Live show in the US to appear on CNN. They wanted him
on air at 2:30 in the morning of 23 April and asked
him to arrive at Serb Television half an hour early
for make-up.

"Vucic was late--which was just as well for him since
NATO missiles slammed into the building at six minutes
past two. The first one exploded in the make-up room
where the young Serb assistant was burned to death.
CNN calls this all a coincidence, saying that the
Larry King show, put out by the entertainment
division, did not know of the news department's
instruction to its men to leave the Belgrade building".

The World Socialist Web Site has sought to obtain
a response from the Larry King Live program in
Washington and CNN headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia
to the description of events provided by Fisk. The
publicist for Larry King Live and the press spokes-
person for CNN News have failed to return repeated
calls.

Meanwhile, Fisk has come under attack from sections
of the British media. On July 4 Henry Porter of the
Observer, one of the newspapers most fervent in its
support of NATO's war, published a reply to Fisk's
piece, all but accusing the Independent reporter of
being a stooge of Yugoslav President Milosevic.
Porter asserts that Fisk "was undeniably aided by
the Serb authorities" and filed reports on the war
"refracted through the lens of Serbian interest".

Porter grants there was "almost universal concern
among editors and reporters about the level of
accuracy of NATO briefings" and admits there is
good reason to conclude that "the alliance was bent
on an almost racist crusade against the Serbs". This,
however, does not prevent him from indulging in a bit
of anti-Serb racism of his own, noting that Fisk was
given the sobriquet "Fiscovic" by some of his
colleagues.

Porter is outraged that Fisk appears to believe "NATO
is motivated by congenital imperialist tendencies,"
but even more intolerable is Fisk's decision to bring
a dispute within the media to the attention of the public.

The attack on Fisk indicates that his exposure of the
deplorable performance of the press corp has hit a
raw nerve, and, in particular, his revelations
concerning CNN's role in the bombing of the Serb TV
center have provoked considerable concern in high places.
[end of report]

=======================================================
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/jul1999/cnn-j08.shtml
=======================================================

Earlier Report From Robert Fisk of The Independent:
http://users.otenet.gr/a/adgeki/rep02/legtar.htm

A Highly Recommenced Page For Yugo-War Analysis:
http://www.fair.org/international/yugoslavia.html

The Massive Toxic-Gas Cloud That The U.S. Media Did Not
Report Even As US Reporters In Belgrade Should've Seen It:

http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/99/04/19/timfgnkos02002.html?1124027

which suggests that employee-health-insurance policies of the US networks
must provide no coverage for optical exams.


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