Corporate Executives Pressured Journalists on Iraq

Bill Moyers had a PBS special last year called, “Buying the War,” which included all kinds of fascinating insights on the journalistic malpractice at the nation’s major news outlets leading up to the war in Iraq. Most notably, Moyers pressed Walter Isaacson, former chairman and CEO of CNN, to explain what transpired. Isaacson noted there was “almost a patriotism police” after 9/11 and when the network showed civilian casualties it would get phone calls: “Big people in corporations were calling up and saying, ‘You’re being anti-American here.’”

The notion that corporate executives would lean on the executives at news networks was more than a little disconcerting. But it’s just as important to realize that journalists were also under pressure to deliberately sell the public a bill of goods.

Last night, CNN congressional correspondent Jessica Yellin made a startling concession on the air.

It’s not every day that a broadcast journalist at a major network acknowledges for a national audience that she was “under enormous pressure from corporate executives,” who later edited her pieces and pushed her in specific pro-war directions.

This is, by any measure, no small admission.

For those who can’t watch clips online, here’s the transcript of the relevant portion: