(DEAN BARNETT HERE)

Early last evening, for reasons that I don’t recall, I had CNN on. As is the network’s wont, the anchor-person was tediously touting CNN’s allegedly extraordinary abilities to cover the Israel-Hezbollah war. CNN’s long-standing conceit is that while Fox gets better ratings, for hard news there is no place else to go but CNN.

Part of CNN’s coverage of the war includes reliance on the local networks of the region. CNN monitors these networks; when they have images of sufficient newsworthiness, CNN passes these images along on a real-time basis. Among the networks CNN relies on for its unique brand of hard news is the Al-Manar network, the network owned and operated by Hezbollah.

In other words, the credulous news gatherers at CNN deem Hezbollah a sufficiently reliable news provider to pass on the organization’s “coverage” without critique, review or commentary. Given that Charles Johnson, Allah and others in the blogosphere have brilliantly shown that even an organization as estimable as Reuters (giggle) has been passing off pro-Hezbollah propaganda as news throughout the war, this seems like a breathtakingly irresponsible move on CNN’s part.*

CNN’s explanation for this policy? Based in Lebanon, Al-Manar often gets to “the scene” first. According to this explanation, Al-Manar’s reliability or lack thereof does not seem to factor into the equation. After this explanation of CNN’s rigorous coverage, the network returned to its exhaustive reportage of the human cost of the war. In this case, we looked at the humans hardest hit – the Lebanese children.

I didn’t stick around long enough to see if all the Israeli children that Hezbollah wants to annihilate merited a mention.

*The blogosphere’s work exposing Reuters is the most important thing ever accomplished in this virtual world. Kudos and thanks are due to Charles and all the others involved in this undertaking. If by some chance you’re new to this scandal, be sure to follow the links.

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