CBS News Says It Held Prison Abuse Story

[The_Gopher]

May 3, 2004 | NEW YORK (AP) -- CBS News delayed reporting for two weeks about U.S. soldiers' alleged abuse of Iraqi prisoners, following a personal request from the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.

Gen. Richard B. Myers called CBS anchor Dan Rather eight days before the report was to air, asking for extra time, said Jeff Fager, executive producer of "60 Minutes II."

Myers cited the safety of American hostages and tension surrounding the Iraqi city of Fallujah, Fager said, adding that he held off as long as he believed possible given it was a competitive story.

With The New Yorker magazine preparing to run a detailed report on the alleged abuses, CBS finally broadcast its report last Wednesday, including images taken last year allegedly showing Iraqis stripped naked, hooded and being tormented by U.S. captors at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

more: http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2004/05/03/cbs/index.html

[The_Gopher]

1. CBS, No Backbone Journalism......

so let's see...under pressure from conservatives, CBS pulls "The Reagans." and then it decides not to air the MoveOn commercial during the Super Bowl. and now it's admitting to holding back stories for two weeks at the military's request.

yes...it's that dastardly librul media at it again!

[KissMyAsscroft]

3. Ahhh, yes the liberal media.

That being said, I don't know that I wouldn't have held back the story for a couple of weeks either.

[The_Gopher]

4. creates a slipperly slope....who decides the criteria?

who gets to decide what is in the best interest of the public to hold back, and what's in the best interest to broadcast? clearly, the giant news corporations already have skewed priorities as to what they see fit to air as news. this just fits a pattern of acquiescence on the part of journalists. they lied down in the lead-up to the war, thus enabling the Bushco lies. and now they're lying down in the aftermath, further enabling a horrible mess.

[dusty64]

21. It should be obvious to

all that we no longer have a free press. Imagine what would happen if Pravda went after the rethugs in the WH and Congress the way they went after the Dems in 1994 and Clinton? There is little hope we can ever get our Country back as long as the "truth" and information is controlled by the same corporations that are bleeding us dry and profiting from war. Corporate control of the media and "voting" machines ought to be among the very TOP concerns of the Democrats, its now or never.

[KansDem]

26. CBS = "Craven Broadcasting System" (eom)

[iamjoy]

2. Amazingly....

The other day, I was reading what the Freepers thought of this. They blame the media for sharing this story with the public!

Is that their attitude? Kill the messenger (unless he/she makes a Democrat look bad)? Is it only a free press if they say nice things about Conservatives?

[SoCalDem]

7. People call in every day to c-span

and are FURIOUS about people who think the pictures should be shown.. And of course they all repeat the talking points.. "frat boy stunt".."getting information".."faked".. They are desperately grasping at straws and , failing any reasonable "explanation", they just spew venom..

[texas1928]

5. Yeah Liberal media

If a new sex position came out of the Ken starr investigation, it was breaking news. They would even interupt Day Time Soaps.

[aquart]

16. We soap watchers have neither forgotten nor forgiven.

Nor does Bush ever want to read a soap message board to feel good.

[Piperay]

19. Haha, yeah that is right

I am a soap watcher and I read some soap boards and soap fans utterly despise chimp, it is so funny and uplifting to come across the unexpected rants against chimpco. :bounce:

[Democat]

6. I'm sure CBS would have done the same for Bill Clinton or Kerry - NOT

Actually, instead they would have run the report immediatly without checking any facts, after getting a press release from the RNC - like what ABC did in their attack on Kerry's medals, directly from the RNC.

[saigon68]

8. LYING MOTHERFUCKER MYERS

So in that 2 week period he never read the investigative report released in Feb written by one of his own Generals.

A copy of which was Leaked to Seymour Hersh.

This man is Dirt and Scum no Better than General Yamashita. What a cowardly scumbag.



Gen. BLUE SUIT MEYERS puppet boy, US military catamite, appointed by Cheney Caesar in
the year of Our Lord 2001

His quotes “Duh, we are winning” and on the increased violence that flared up this month is "a
symptom of the success that we're having here in Iraq"

And "No my hand is not grabbing at her breast"

Also on the subject of Fallujah "We went in because we had to find the perpetrators and what
we found was a huge rat's nest that is still festering today. It needs to be dealt with,"



On Edit: cleaned up most of the profanity :-( sorry.


(Maybe some day he will be smoking crack and selling his own plasma)

[Zhade]

10. Man, he looks like shit!

I mean, the guy has shit for a soul, but he looks beaten all to hell in that picture.

Actually - and this just struck me how creepy it is - he looks a bit like Ashcroft. Yikes!

[riverwalker]

17. Gen Myers has been to the prison

at Abu Ghraib before. I wonder how much he really knew. I wish someone would start talking.

[saigon68]

18. Another Photo of the DIRT BAG

[kentuck]

20. You got that right....

Asshole just said on Sunday news that he had not read report!

[AussieInCA]

9. RW machine has created a monster

freepers and their followers follow them so blindly now they come out promoting restricting information now. Listening to Oreilly today he gets these brainwashed callers saying the government should restrict information like this from the public. Oreilly is backpeddling like mad that the media needs to expose this stuff. Then you catch a bit of savage in the afternoon and he has to reign his callers in for the "I hate all brown people" saying he never would suggest that and cuts the guy off.

What a mess eh. Good on you Chimpy and your wacko machine.

[saigon68]

12. Maybe the freepers can be encouraged to string up a few Ragheads

By their media darlings the kings and queens of hate



Lynching 1930

A mob of 10,000 whites took sledgehammers to the county jailhouse doors to get at these two young blacks accused of raping a white girl; the girl’s uncle saved the life of a third by proclaiming the man’s innocence. Although this was Marion, Ind., most of the nearly 5,000 lynchings documented between Reconstruction and the late 1960s were perpetrated in the South. (Hangings, beatings and mutilations were called the sentence of “Judge Lynch.”) Some lynching photos were made into postcards designed to boost white supremacy, but the tortured bodies and grotesquely happy crowds ended up revolting as many as they scared. Today the images remind us that we have not come as far from barbarity as we’d like to think.


This photo was taken 15 years before I was born. This was typical behavior into the late 60's in certain enlightened areas of AMERIKA.

There were 5,000 of these quaint folk celebrations, with Black men being the primary recipients of the crowds adoration.

[DoYouEverWonder]

22. I bet they all went to Sunday church soon after

they're little block party for the lynching?

Makes you wonder if there is any real hope for humanity?

[ColdWarZoomie]

13. Freepers...

...weren't these the same morons screaming about "moral relativism" during the Clinton years? Now everything we do during war is OK because it brings out the worst in people? I really love the "Saddam did worse" argument, as if our standard of behavior should now be judged according to tyrants and mass murderers!

They're too damn stupid to understand that this crap could be, and very likely is, the final straw that sinks everything.

It's over as far as I can tell. The insurgents will operate within the masses like fish in the ocean. Apart from the Kurds, who is really going to support us? The fact that we did not track down 1 friggin hostage is a sign that our human intel on the ground was already crap. Now it will only be worse.

We're toast.

[MikeG]

11. It's OK - we needed to cleanse the palate from the other stories.

Now this one has a clear track.

[nadinbrzezinski]

15. Here is a theory

Run with it, or not

Perchance they sat on it, since they knew Sly Hersh was coming with it.

The one two punch has suckered punch the administration.

Just a theory... and yes I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for a second

[AP]

14. But they won't hold the letter from 20 vets who say Kery

isn't fit for service until the confirm it isn't a fraud, as the Kerry camp alleges?

What were they waiting for? Someone in the UK to fake some photos so they could merge the two stories in people's minds?

[noonwitch]

23. Myers has a point about the kidnapped americans

Once those pictures hit al-Jezeera, the kidnappers would see them and perhaps be angry enough to inflict similar if not worse upon their american captives. That is a legitimate concern for the military.
CBS could have still covered the story earlier, but without the pictures, it really isn't much of a story.

[DS1]

24. and the clusterf*ck called Fallujah, can we agree that the story wasn't

exactly time sensitive, and he didn't ask for a total ban on reporting.

[The Stranger]

25. Accomplices.

How many people were tortured during those two weeks? How many U.S. soldiers will suffer repercussions as a result?

CBS News is an accomplice to these crimes.