From an American University forum, “The Media in National Crisis” (10/1/01), moderated by AU professor Jane Hall; panelists included FAIR founder Jeff Cohen and Ray Suarez, senior correspondent on PBS NewsHour.
Jeff Cohen: Since September 11, when you’ve had people coming on the air, it’s the former secretaries of State, the former secretaries of Defense. . . . They are not asked the tough questions about the foreign policy failures that have got us to this point. For example, Sandy Berger was the National Security Adviser and Madeleine Albright the Secretary of State. They overruled or ignored their own intelligence officers in the State Department that were saying up to the point of the leveling of the [Sudan medicine factory in 1998]: We don’t have credible evidence to target that factory.
Now these two have been on show after show, day after day since September 11, and if we had a free media you’d think someone would ask them: “How can you be talking about retaliating militarily against terrorism when you haven’t taken responsibility for what you did in Sudan?” These people who are former secretaries of State and former secretaries of Defense and former CIA directors have been dominating the airwaves on CNN and PBS and everywhere else, and they are not asked the obvious questions about how we got to this point.
Jane Hall: Okay, Ray Suarez, you’re interviewing lots of people on this story. How hard is it to do that, to ask the question?… Do you agree with Jeff’s criticism and how can you get at that not ahistorical point of view with people? Is that a fair thing to ask of a talkshow interview with somebody?
Ray Suarez: Absolutely. Do I agree with it? Yeah, a lot of the people who are being used as expert guests, are being used as expert guests with very little reference to their actual past as policymakers and as people who did things and caused things to be done in the world. It’s very true.
Hall: So you have one of these people coming on your show, they’re a “good get” as we call it in TV show parlance. How are you going to look to your viewers, first of all, if you go after them on what did you do in the Sudan, and will you get them back a second time?
Suarez: Well, yeah, access is like oxygen when you’re a reporter. And if you’re going to do something, I guess, that’s going to jeopardize access in the future, you better be pretty sure that this person who is going to perceive what you are about to do to them as burning them is someone who you can do without in the future after you bum them. That’s a tough straddle. It shouldn’t be, but it is.
