Ashleigh Banfield 'Bawled Out' in NBC President's Office over Iraq War Comments

National Journal and AP Wire ^ | April 29, 2003 | Rob Miller

[ewing]

Sources say NBC News President 'bawled out' MSNBC's Ashleigh Banfield in his office after she critized the networks war coverage..

Sources said Banfield, in effect, not to do it again.'

[ewing]

Additional source link http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=638&ncid=762&e=5&u=/nm/20030429/en_nm/television/banfield_dc

[ewing]

hold muh beer while she goes on double secret probation!

[tuna_battle_slight_return]

Better bawled than balled. I thought we had a series sexual scandal unfolding here.

[Paleo Conservative]

NBC's Banfield Chided Over Criticisms

Tue Apr 29, 1:31 AM ET Add Entertainment - Reuters TV to My Yahoo!


By Andrew Grossman

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - NBC News president Neal Shapiro has taken correspondent Ashleigh Banfield to the woodshed for a speech in which she criticized the networks for portraying the Iraqi war as "glorious and wonderful."

Reuters Photo

Banfield delivered her remarks Thursday at Kansas State University.

"She and we both agreed that she didn't intend to demean the work of her colleagues, and she will choose her words more carefully in the future," an NBC spokeswoman said Monday.

Other sources inside NBC said Banfield promised, in effect, not to do it again and to check her facts before making public statements in the future. Banfield had criticized NBC in the speech for closing its bureau in Kabul, Afghanistan (news - web sites), a statement that the network said was untrue.

Sources said Shapiro "bawled her out" for what were perceived as criticisms over the war coverage of all of the networks, including NBC and MSNBC.

In her speech, Banfield said the networks had portrayed the Iraqi war as "glorious and wonderful" because they had failed to show the bloody horrors of the battles.

There was no indication whether Shapiro was upset over the entire speech -- Banfield also lambasted Fox News Channel and MSNBC talk show host Michael Savage -- or just the elements that were critical of the networks' war coverage.

NBC insiders said few people took Banfield's comments seriously because of her lack of experience -- she is largely working for MSNBC these days, and her primetime show on the network failed last summer. "I don't think people look to Ashleigh Banfield to set the standards (news - web sites) of journalism," one person said about the reaction inside the department. "People were sort of rolling their eyes."

Reporters who have returned from Iraq (news - web sites) have defended the networks' lack of blood-and-guts video, saying it was impossible to film much of it because of logistical reasons. They also noted that embedded reporters did not see action much of the time in Iraq.

"In my situation, I didn't have the occasion to videotape many bodies or anything," said Don Dahler, an ABC News correspondent embedded in Iraq who was interviewed April 16 after returning to the United States. "I don't think I would have shied away from shooting dead bodies or injured Americans."

Banfield noted in her speech that Americans never got to see the results of mortar fire, just the smoke.

But correspondents have said it was impossible to film the damage because tanks and artillery were firing at targets miles away from them.

Banfield, who was stationed Stateside during the war, is the first network journalist to publicly criticize television's coverage of the war.

Correspondents who have returned from the front have all raved about the embedding system that placed them with troops as well as the overall network coverage of the war.

"On a more macular level, there's some sort of demystification here -- not only for the media but for the military and what the other institution is about," CBS News correspondent Mark Strassman said after returning from the war. "This vague process is a new step that will always continue to evolve. And all that's for the better. They have a story worth telling, and we have a story that we want to tell, and all that is for the good."

Lost in much of the controversy is that Banfield actually had praise for NBC News in her KSU speech, saying the network had never censored her when she covered the Arab point of view. A major theme of her speech was that both Americans and Arabs need to be educated about each other's culture and points of view in order to begin a dialogue that would lead to peace. She said that can't be done if television networks abandon overseas coverage.

But much of Banfield's criticism was aimed at television audiences who would prefer to watch stories about murder victims and missing girls than international relations -- unless there is a major crisis.

"It's crucial to our security that you are interested in this," she said. "Because when you are interested, I can respond. If I put this on right now, you'll turn it off."

Reuters

[_Jim]

"Former unremarkable Channel 4 KDAF (Dallas/Ft. Worth) reporter-ette Ashley Banfield who went off to seek her fame and fortune in other media markets ..."

[LurkedLongEnough]

She was just trying to get an acting offer from her Hollywood buddies.

[ewing]

You can say that again!

[ewing]

I liked her better with the changing hair color..

[tuna_battle_slight_return]

Wasn't this woman in Playboy a few years back? I almost didn't recognize her with her clothes on.

[cardinal4]

Shes a pig. She is a pro Palestinian terror supporter, who refers to them as "Freedom Fighters" from Canada. All the same criteria the Peetah Jennings possesses.

[dfwgator]

Ms Banfield, like Peter Jennings, is a Canadian. Nuff said.

[Bahbah]

"A major theme of her speech was that both Americans and Arabs need to be educated about each other's culture and points of view in order to begin a dialogue that would lead to peace."
This proves it. She is at least as intelligent and well versed in these matters as Sarandon and Garafolo. LOL.

[ewing]

I don't think Playboy would ever want fer services. (could be wrong)

[cgk]

Banfield, who was stationed Stateside during the war, is the first network journalist to publicly criticize television's coverage of the war.

I doubt that. Nearly everytime I flip the station from FNC (seldom), I see the CNN/MSNBC/ABC/NBC, etc peeps talking about how horrible all the images of war are.

[mountaineer]

Banfield, who was stationed Stateside during the war

Apparently, she misplaced her "dress like the natives" burkha.

I've been looking everywhere for it!

Media Research reports:

MSNBC’s Ashleigh Banfield is eager to give terrorist murder mastermind Osama bin Laden a forum from which to pontificate. "Personally, absolutely I would like to interview Osama bin Laden," she declared on her show late last week, since "I'd be fascinated by anything Osama bin Laden would have to say."

Media observers sometimes ruminate about if modern media technology had existed 60 years ago whether the networks would have given a forum to Hitler and other Nazi leaders to push their propaganda or, just after Pearl Harbor, would have featured Japanese leaders explaining how U.S. imperialism left them with no other option. In Banfield’s case we now have an answer as she boasted of having no journalistic discernment: "There's no one I would not want to interview."

MRC analyst Brad Wilmouth just came across her comments uttered on the March 28 edition of her 9pm EST show, Region in Conflict, which that night she hosted from Beirut. At the end of the show she read an e-mailed question: "If given the chance to interview Osama bin Laden, would you?" Her answer:

"Personally, absolutely I would like to interview Osama bin Laden. There's no one I would not want to interview. I always am interested in hearing points of view, conveying those points of view. I always find it sad that people think by being the messenger you're somehow branded as actually believing in the message yourself. It's not the case. I'd be fascinated by anything Osama bin Laden would have to say."

I guess figuring out how to make sure he faces American justice isn’t of any interest to her. File this one under journalist first, American second.

[Web Update: Banfield is a Canadian citizen. As reported in the February 20 CyberAlert, on the Late Show she told David Letterman that when in Pakistan or Iran she’s "very quick to point out" that she’s not a U.S. citizen but is Canadian. With that known, "I tend to get a warmer reception."]

[2nd Web Update: The night before Banfield expressed her interest in interviewing Osama bin Laden she scolded an Arab journalist who told her he’d interview him: "There are millions of people in America who believe that Osama bin Laden was responsible for the deaths of 3,000 innocent people on September 11th, but you would not see this as a platform for a maniac?"

[albertabound]

so are Mark Steyn and David Frum, enough said.

[xkaydet65]

I have a question for the honchos at NBC. Where is your concept of Free Speech? Doesn't Banfield have as much right to criticize her bosses and colleagues as retired generals have to criticize their former bosses and colleagues; As pundits have to criticize President Bush and the Republican Party.I guess it's like my old mayor Ed Koch used to opine
"It's all about whose ox is being gored."

[jiggyboy]

Doesn't Banfield have as much right to criticize her bosses and colleagues...?

Nope. She's still getting the paycheck.

And your concept of Free Speech -- that it exists for an employee -- is roundly ridiculed here on a daily basis.

[Myrnick]

In case you missed it, here is the article from the KSU campus paper. I'm ashamed of my alma mater for allowing her to speak for what used to be a prestigious lecture series.

Ashleigh Banfield, a reporter for MSNBC, delivered the 129th Landon Lecture about the effects of embedded journalists in the war with Iraq.

Jessica Pitts

Kansas State Collegian

The scenes the American public saw on cable television during the war with Iraq might not be the truth, a journalist said Thursday.

"I am very concerned about this three-week TV show and how it might have changed people's opinions," Ashleigh Banfield, reporter for MSNBC, said. "The TV show we gave you was exciting. It was entertaining. I hope that the legacy it leaves behind doesn't give only that impression. War is ugly and dangerous, and we didn't see that."

Banfield, host of "MSNBC Investigates" and an NBC News correspondent, delivered the 129th Landon Lecture about the effects of embedded journalists in the war with Iraq.

"There were a lot of journalists who were skeptical of the embedded process in Iraq," Banfield said. "It certainly did show the American side of things because that is where we were shooting the coverage."

She said it also gave journalists, including Arab journalists, the opportunity to see, without any type of censorship, what was happening.

"They saw how these fights were being fought, how these soldiers were behaving, what civil affairs soldiers were doing, and what humanitarian aid really looked like," Banfield said. "For that element alone, it was a wonderful new arm of access journalists got to the war. But that said, what didn't we see?"

Banfield said viewers didn't see where the bullets landed.

"What happens when a mortar lands?" she said. "A mortar is not a puff of smoke. That is not what a mortar looks like. There were horrors completely left out of this war. Is this journalism, or is this coverage?"

Banfield said there is a grand difference between journalism and coverage, and the embedded reporters were a prime example of the difference.

"Getting access does not mean getting the story," she said. "It just means we are getting one more arm of the story, and that is what we got. And it was a glorious, wonderful picture that had a lot of people watching and a lot of advertisers excited about cable news."

Because of that wonderful picture, Banfield said she wonders if Americans would be open to fighting another war.

"I am not so sure that we in America are hesitant to do this again, to fight another war, because it looked like a glorious and courageous and so successful, terrific endeavor," she said. "We got rid of horrible leadership, got rid of a dictator, got rid of a monster, but we didn't hear the civilians' opinions. We didn't see the bodies."

Banfield said to understand truly what war is about, journalists must cover both sides of an issue, and in many reports on cable television, only the American side was aired.

"So many voices were silenced," she said. "We did wonderful things. We freed the Iraqi people, and many of those people, by the way, were quite thankless for that. There has to be a reason, and the reason for it is because we don't have a very good image right now overseas.

"What you read in the newspapers and what you see on cable is not what they see there. We can't blame these poor people for not liking the United States. All they know is we are crusaders ... . All they know is that we want their oil. They are very suspect to who these new liberators are."

But the cable news reporters might never have the chance to finish this story, Banfield said, because of viewer ratings.

"When I say the war is over, I kind of mean that in the sense that in the past few days the numbers are falling off the ratings chart," she said. "We plummeted into the basement the last week. We went from millions of viewers to just a few hundred thousand. Did we suddenly become boring? Did we suddenly lose our flair?

"No. I just think people had enough."

Banfield said that in a three-week campaign, the American public saw more minutes of news on the Iraq war than it ever saw in years of coverage of Vietnam. And her concern now is that those same viewers will quickly forget.

"I think we reached the saturation point faster because you just get so much so fast," she said. "They have had enough, and now the story is gone. When is the last time you saw a news report about Afghanistan? It was only a year ago, and viewers are not demanding it."

If viewers were interested, the networks would cover it, she said.

"I am desperately depressed that it has come to this -- that it has come to the American shores," Banfield said. "But, it is important for your safety, and your future, and your world and your children that we continue to want and know what is happening overseas when our troops leave. It is important that we still demand coverage of those things."

[Highway55]

I think she’s intelligent.
I think she’s attractive.
I think she’s been a naughty, naughty girl.