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CNNFail

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June 15, 2009

Back on January 16, 1991, it seemed as though anyone with cable TV was glued to their set, watching the beginning of Operation Desert Storm.  As the coalition forces began their aerial assault on Baghdad, most American reporters were pinned down at the Al-Rashid Hotel.  As it turned out, CNN was the only news service able to communicate with the rest of the world during that time.  Bernard Shaw, John Holliman and Peter Arnett gained instant fame as CNN’s “Boys of Baghdad”, providing non-stop coverage of the invasion from Room 906 of the Al-Rashid.  The event helped establish CNN as a “top tier” news organization.  CNN’s coverage of this event became the subject of a documentary film by HBO, entitled Live From Baghdad.

On Friday June 12, many of the world’s news services focused their attention on Iran’s presidential election.  Incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was being faced with a serious challenge by Mir Hussein Mousavi, one of three other contenders for the post.  Mousavi’s supporters were highly organized and energetic.  They adopted the color green as their symbol and they began calling for a “green revolution”.  Al Jazeera reported that Yadollah Javani, political chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, had issued a warning from his website that any such revolution would be “nipped in the bud”.  This should have been a tip that the Revolutionary Guard had every intention of subverting the public will.

On Saturday, June 13, Iran’s state-owned news service, Fars, declared incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner, with nearly two-thirds of the vote.  A landslide of such proportions was completely unexpected, given the large turnout at rallies in support of the leading challenger, Mir Hussein Mousavi, as well as the recent poll, indicating that Ahmadinejad was leading his three challengers with only 34 percent of the vote.  As a result, many expected that a runoff election between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi would have been necessary.  Because of this claimed “landslide” victory, it immediately became obvious that the election had been stolen.  Juan Cole, President of the Global Americana Institute, wrote the following on his blog, Informed Comment:

As the real numbers started coming into the Interior Ministry late on Friday, it became clear that Mousavi was winning.  Mousavi’s spokesman abroad, filmmaker Mohsen Makhbalbaf, alleges that the ministry even contacted Mousavi’s camp and said it would begin preparing the population for this victory.

The ministry must have informed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has had a feud with Mousavi for over 30 years, who found this outcome unsupportable.  And, apparently, he and other top leaders had been so confident of an Ahmadinejad win that they had made no contingency plans for what to do if he looked as though he would lose.

They therefore sent blanket instructions to the Electoral Commission to falsify the vote counts.

This clumsy cover-up then produced the incredible result of an Ahmadinejad landlside in Tabriz and Isfahan and Tehran.

The public reaction on the streets of Tehran was documented for Slate by Jason Rezaian:

A feeling of dejection hung in the air for most of Saturday. Spontaneous street demonstrations early in the day were small and were quickly broken up by riot police on motorcycles.

As reality set in, people began taking to the streets en masse. Around 5 p.m. on the approach to Fatemi Square, where the Interior Ministry is located, I could see that the entire traffic circle had been closed to car traffic. About 200 riot police waited in the middle of the square. I headed down an alley, just steps away, where protesters had created a blockade of flaming garbage cans.

The demonstrators pushed aside a garbage can, opening a path, and rushed forward. Simultaneously, baton-wielding police charged. The protesters hurled rocks, and the police responded by beating everyone who couldn’t escape into one of the connecting alleys.

Citizens, nearly all on the side of the protesters, left their front gates open just a little to offer those of us fleeing the police an escape route.

The ensuing riots resulted in phone cam videos posted to YouTube.  Messages were sent out over Twitter under the hashtags: #IranElection and #Iran Election.

Many mainstream media news outlets had reporters “on the ground” in Tehran.  ABC News had Jim Sciutto there.  Mr. Sciutto sent a message out over Twitter at 9:20 on Saturday morning:

police confiscated our camera and videotapes.  We are shooting protests and police violence on our cell phones

Sciutto and other reporters whose equipment had been confiscated, began shooting riot videos on their phone cams.  Many networks, including ABC, MSNBC and Fox News began to broadcast these  …  but not CNN.  Many Twitter users, following the Iranian violence became outraged over CNN’s failure to cover the rioting.  As a result, they started a new discussion thread, using the hashtag:  #CNNFail.  Many of these postings criticized the quality of CNN’s limited reporting on these events.

Here were some of the messages I found on CNNFail:

Shazzy919 — ChristianeAmanpour:  “No indication of curfew or further forceful action” really????

ahockley — There’s currently a story on CNN titled “Do journalists Twitter too much?”

charlieprofit —  CNN just ran the same report aired earlier where they call some Iranian protesters Vigilantes

Robot117 —  My animosity toward CNN for their utter incompetence in reporting this news is growing

georgedick — CNN still referring to “The landslide win of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad”.   WTF.

In fact, ABC’s Jim Sciutto made the following comment on Twitter concerning CNN’s fiasco:

Did CNN Intl really just air pix of a water-skiing squirrel?  Anyone remember ‘Ron Burgundy’? 12:14 AM Jun 14th from web

A review of CNN’s website reveals that some of their coverage seemed like an attempt to legitimize Ahmadinejad’s “victory”:

The landslide defeat of Ahmadinejad’s leading opponent, Mir Hossein Moussavi, who some analysts predicted would win the election, triggered angry protests in Iran and other cities around the world.

*    *    *

Moussavi’s supporters say the election was rigged. But the huge turnout for Ahmadinejad’s victory speech Sunday leaves no doubt that the president carries plenty of support.

For all the ridicule directed against Twitter and its users, the CNNFail event will become an historical milestone for the moment when this communication medium finally earned some respect.