CNN Fires Editor after Expressing Sadness over Sayyed Fadlullah’s Death

[Shia Islam]

“Freedom of speech” is the first amendment in the US constitution and it prohibits any violation to the freedom of the press. Based on this right, a CNN editor expressed her sadness for the death of Lebanese Shiite cleric Ayatollah Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlullah by posting a simple note on Twitter. However this note led to lose her job as an editor responsible for Middle Eastern coverage.

CNN Channel, one of the most prominent American media, has violated the first amendment after it fired Octavia Nasr for posting a note on Twitter expressing admiration for the late Ayatollah Fadlulah.

Nasr later apologized for her tweet, but CNN's senior vice president for international newsgathering, Parisa Khosravi, said Wednesday that Nasr's credibility had been compromised.

The Atlanta-based Nasr is a Lebanese journalist who worked at CNN for 20 years, starting as an assignment editor on the international desk. Her job was mostly off the air, but she occasionally would appear as an onscreen analyst during discussions of Middle Eastern news.

Grand Ayatollah Fadlullah died Sunday after a long illness and many people and figures from Lebanon and all over the Arab and Muslim world took part in his funeral on Tuesday.

In a Twitter posting over the weekend, Nasr said “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlullah... One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.”

Nasr’s remarks drew fire from the Honest Reporting media watchdog, which asked on its Web site, “Is Nasr a Hezbollah sympathizer? This is disturbing enough given that the group is designated a terrorist organization by the US and is committed to the destruction of Israel.”

CNN issued a statement on Tuesday calling it an error in judgment for Nasr to write such a simplistic tweet.

Nasr later said in a blog that she had been referring to Fadlullah's attitude toward women's rights. His eminence had issued edicts banning so-called "honor killing" of women and giving women their rights as Islam says.

She wrote that Fadlullah was "revered across borders yet designated a terrorist. Not the kind of life to be commenting about in a brief tweet. It's something I deeply regret."

But Khosravi said in a memo Wednesday that she spoke with Nasr and "we have decided that she will be leaving the company."

Al-ManarTV:: CNN Fires Editor after Expressing Sadness over Sayyed Fadlullah’s Death 08/07/2010
08/07/2010

 

[*Anne*]

Oh wow, I don't know what to think about this. 20 years, and she gets the boot over a tweet? A tweet she could have clarified?

Nasr explained in a blog post on Tuesday that she did not respect Fadlallah's record, noting that, as a Lebanese Christian, she had lost relatives to Hezbollah attacks while he was a leader of the organization in the 1980s.

She added that he also pressed for women's rights and had slammed Hezbollah's closeness to Iran in recent years, a position that led the movement to marginalize the cleric.

"I used the words 'respect' and 'sad' because to me, as a Middle Eastern woman, Fadlallah took a contrarian and pioneering stand among Shia clerics on woman's rights," she wrote. "He called for the abolition of the tribal system of 'honor killing.' He called the practice primitive and non-productive. He warned Muslim men that abuse of women was against Islam."

On the other hand, there's this:

Jewish groups had protested the Tweet, noting Fadlallah's role in founding the terrorist group, in praising deadly terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians and in denying the Holocaust.

I don't know much about Hezbollah beyond what I hear on the news, and based on that limited knowledge, I agree that any comment on them, especially one that has to be 140 characters or less, should be carefully constructed.

However, at least one group -- the Anti-Defamation League -- said it was satisfied with the statements of regret Tuesday from Nasr and CNN, and did not call for her firing.

Yeah, I'm not sure I would have had the heart to fire her over this.

Whoops, forgot my source.

 

[Shia Islam]

There is a great misunderstanding associated with the creation of Hizbollah.

One need to study the Lebanese civil war and the Historical marginalization of Lenbanon Shiites to understand how Hizbollaha came into existence.

It's a very clear mistake to attribute the creation of Hizbollah to Fudlullah.

In many occasions Fudlullah has criticized Hizbollah and Iran.
I posted a video recently in this regard.

Finally it's an open lie to claim that Fadlullah has denied the Holocausts.

 

[Revoltingest]

“Freedom of speech” is the first amendment in the US constitution and it prohibits any violation to the freedom of the press. Based on this right, a CNN editor expressed her sadness for the death of Lebanese Shiite cleric Ayatollah Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlullah by posting a simple note on Twitter. However this note led to lose her job as an editor responsible for Middle Eastern coverage.

CNN Channel, one of the most prominent American media, has violated the first amendment after it fired Octavia Nasr for posting a note on Twitter expressing admiration for the late Ayatollah Fadlulah.

The 1st Amendment is about protecting speech from government. In her case, the company decided (rightly or wrongly) that
her speech had compromised her job. This is legal. When you go to work for the media, you voluntarily accept some restrictions.

I wonder if she'd have been canned if she expressed the same sentiment for Robt Byrd, the former KKK member?

 

[Mathematician]

It's not a violation of the first amendment, but a bit of PR gone mad. You can respect people whose allegiances you disagree with.

 

[Wandered Off]

As Revoltingest and Gene have pointed out, this is not a violation of the US Constitution. Your employer has the right to limit your speech, and you have the right not to work for that employer if you don't like the limits.

The first amendment restricts the government only.

 

[YmirGF]

As Revoltingest and Gene have pointed out, this is not a violation of the US Constitution. Your employer has the right to limit your speech, and you have the right not to work for that employer if you don't like the limits.

The first amendment restricts the government only.

Agreed and that said, any support given to Hamas or Hezbully enables terrorism.

 

[Revoltingest]

Agreed and that said, any support given to Hamas or Hezbully enables terrorism.

But she was speaking well of the man, not organizations or their objectionable actions.
I don't condemn her for finding something positive in a person with some faults.

 

[Shia Islam]

IMO As long as the World powerful governments look toward Hamas, Hizbollah and Al-Qaeda as well as many other groups as one group, and as long as they treat them similarly the world will not see peace.

One need to study each group separately within its context.

Hamas need to be studied within the Palestinian problem.
Hizbollah within the Lebanese situation...

Iran need to be encouraged to take a step from its current revolutionary stage...

A-Qaeda is a different issue than all of the above discussed...
It's Al-Qaeda which openly called for attacking the west...

As for Fadlullah, he strongly criticized sep 11 attacks and has taken a strong position against A-Qaeda...

I don't think that any sane person would expect Fadlullah to praise the Israeili occupation of his own country Lebanon, nor to stand against those who fought this occupation. Nonetheless, both Iran and Hizbollah stood against him because he opposed many of their positions.

 

[YmirGF]

I don't think that any sane person would expect Fadlullah to praise the Israeili occupation of his own country Lebanon, nor to stand against those who fought this occupation.

And yet Hezbully's occupation of southern Lebanon is perfect OK. Nice reasoning you have going on there.

 

[K.Venugopal]

Expressing condolence at the death of even one's enemy is a civilized gesture. She, being a Lebanese herself, might have respected the Ayatollah for her own reasons. No one can deny her right to do so. But the charge that she is a sympathizer of Hezbollah is unlikely to stick because she is a Christian and everyone who knows even a little bit of recent Lebanese history (say after the mid 70s), knows that the Christians (Maronites?) there have no love lost for the various Muslim para military militias, including Hezbollah. CNN, which proved itself insensitive in this matter of a person’s harmless expression of emotion, should take her back.

 

[Sunstone]

So much for the myth CNN is liberal. She was fired because she didn't hold neocon views.

 

[Revoltingest]

So much for the myth CNN is liberal.

How is this liberal or conservative?

 

[Sunstone]

How is this liberal or conservative?

Her remarks offended the neocons. Check out the politics of the organizations and individuals who protested her remarks.

 

[Revoltingest]

Her remarks offended the neocons. Check out the politics of the organizations and individuals who protested her remarks.

I saw several articles about it, but none listed any protestations. Anyway,
neo-cons look pretty much in the middle to me....the worst of both sides.

 

[Ordeet]

The decision, I think was right and proper. You have the freedom to say what you want, that much is guaranteed, but nowhere in the Constitution or anywhere else does it say that there are no consequences for your actions. For example when I was going to college there was some guy who put up a Nazi flag "for shock effect". Sure, nobody said that he did not have the "right" do do it but people also had the right to demand that he get punished, which he was, in the end.

The beauty of the current system is that we allow the freedom for anyone to be anti-semitic but using media to severely condemn anti-semites down. And once someone is an anti-semite, he should have his life made miserable all ways possible. So the anti-semite should himself have every reason to choose to not be one on his own. Its about us making them (the racists) hate themselves and shutting themselves up without us trying.

 

[K.Venugopal]

The decision, I think was right and proper. You have the freedom to say what you want, that much is guaranteed, but nowhere in the Constitution or anywhere else does it say that there are no consequences for your actions.

A consequence that means losing one's long held job just for condoling someone's death is surely an overkill caused by a paranoid mind.

 

[Smoke]

The decision, I think was right and proper. You have the freedom to say what you want, that much is guaranteed, but nowhere in the Constitution or anywhere else does it say that there are no consequences for your actions. For example when I was going to college there was some guy who put up a Nazi flag "for shock effect". Sure, nobody said that he did not have the "right" do do it but people also had the right to demand that he get punished, which he was, in the end.

If he had the right to do it, there was no basis for punishment. The people who demanded he be punished and the people who did the punishing were necessarily operating on the assumption that he did not have the right to do it.

I don't have much use for CNN, and if I were in charge of it a lot of things would be different. But I can certainly see how executives would find it problematic to have a news editor on staff who had publicly identified herself as sympathizing with Hizbullah. Firing her might have been over the top, but I know people personally who have been fired from much less sensitive positions than news editor because of things they've posted on Facebook.

 

[dust1n]

Good thing I don't look to CNN for any real news.

 

[K.Venugopal]

Firing her might have been over the top, but I know people personally who have been fired from much less sensitive positions than news editor because of things they've posted on Facebook.

Fired for writing something in Facebook? Should employers play Big Brother and seek to control their employees’ life even outside the area of their employment? Maybe these things are the norm in North Korea. But in US of A?