Christiane Amanpour’s biased reporting causes..backlash to..selection as host of ABC’s This Week

Christiane Amanpour’s biased reporting causes a backlash to her selection as host of ABC’s This Week

This Sunday, former CNN war correspondent and television host Christiane Amanpour will take over as host of ABC’s venerable public affairs show “This Week.” Her selection for the post, however, has caused a surprisingly potent backlash. Putting aside issues such as the suitability of a foreign affairs reporter for a show on domestic politics and reports of behind-the scenes opposition to her appointment, most of the criticism has concentrated on Amanpour’s political views and her allegedly biased reporting.

In one form or another, this kind of criticism has dogged Amanpour for a very long time.

Amanpour’s career took off during the Bosnian wars and, according to many of her colleagues, this was well deserved. In a New York Times profile published at the time, they were almost unanimous in their belief that Amanpour is a gifted war correspondent.

Dominic Robinson, a CNN producer, is quoted as saying, “In TV, she’s the best. She knows what she wants and how to get it. She’s really hot.” Another observer put it in vaguely politically incorrect terms, saying, “She gives great war.”

Nonetheless, many of her peers also expressed strong misgivings about Amanpour’s style. They were concerned because, in a way many journalists do but prefer to pretend they do not, Amanpour openly took sides in the Bosnian conflict. The Times profile quotes an anonymous “insider” who “has doubts about Amanpour’s commitment to objective journalism.”

“I have winced at some of what she’s done, at what used to be called advocacy journalism,” he said. “She was sitting in Belgrade when that marketplace massacre happened, and she went on the air to say that the Serbs had probably done it. There was no way she could have known that. She was assuming an omniscience which no journalist has.”

Indeed, Amanpour herself openly admitted to her biases. In 1996, she told the British newspaper The Guardian,

It drives me crazy when this neutrality thing comes up. Objectivity, that great journalistic buzzword, means giving all sides a fair hearing—not treating all sides the same—particularly when all sides are not the same. When you’re neutral in a situation like Bosnia, you are an accomplice—an accomplice to genocide.

Amanpour’s dedication to advocacy journalism has been criticized in other areas as well, especially the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Middle East in general. The most bitter of these critiques was occasioned by Amanpour’s 2007 documentary series God’s Warriors.

The series examined religious extremism in three parts — on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, respectively. Many Jews and other supporters of Israel were outraged both by the format of the documentary, which equated Judaism and Christianity with radical Islam, and the content of the episode on Judaism, which many considered to be inaccurate, biased, and perhaps worse.

Citing such lines as “Six thousand miles from Israel’s settlements, in the heart of Manhattan, defiance of international law comes dressed in diamonds,” some charged that the series was all but openly anti-Semitic.

One did not have to go this far, however, to see that something was deeply troubling about it. “By its very structure of equating the three different situations,” wrote critic Jonathan Tobin, now executive editor of Commentary magazine, “the series was nothing short of a brazen lie.”

This pile of steaming fecal matter has no clue what journalism is. Her job, along with her colligues, was perception control for our government and for NATO in Bosnia and Kosovo.

“Amanpour’s career took off during the Bosnian wars and, according to many of her colleagues, this was well deserved.” Her colleagues are just as bad. How would they know it was well deserved? Shed followed the script to the letter? That's impressive to them?

Wiki:
In 1994, Stephen Kinzer of the New York Times (Oct. 9, 1994) criticized her coverage of the Bosnian War. Kinzer quoted a colleague’s description of Amanpour as she reported on a terrorist bombing in the marketplace of the Balkan town of Markale:

She was sitting in Belgrade when that marketplace massacre happened, and she went on the air to say that the Serbs had probably done it. There was no way she could have known that. She was assuming an omniscience which no journalist has.

The final result of the investigation was a contradiction to what the mainstream war mongers were writing but there was no time for any corrections. There was a job to do. Make Serbs Nazis and guilty before the war even started as a pretext for war. They pave the war for military interventions all over. That's what media is for.

...but what a torn individual, here she bares the name of Christ in her name and yet stood by to watch her father's fellow Muslims burn Christian churches that have stood for 1,000 years.

It's funny, when Clinton was helping terrorists in Bosnia with the help of Iran nobody thought this Nazi was biased. Now she is. That should tell you a lot about the facts used about the Bosnian war. That should also tell you about the military industrial complex. War is great business and if you get in the way of it you are going to be discredited or worse.

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