Terrific piece here by Lee Smith in the Weekly Standard, filling in the background on the recent firing of Octavia Nasr, a Lebanese Christian Arab, by CNN for her Twitter expressing admiration for one of Hezbollah’s recently deceased ayatollahs:

… why is Nasr being singled out for openly expressing the U.S. media’s default position on Hezbollah, Fadlallah’s one-time colleagues? For instance, does anyone doubt that the New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh “respects” the late cleric’s even more vicious rival, Hezbollah General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah, whom he interviewed in the pages of the New Yorker?

The Western press delights in rattling the bourgeois sensibilities of its audience by showing the multifaceted aspects of Hezbollah–it’s not just a militia with an appetite for slaughtering Jews, it’s also a social welfare outfit that provides educational opportunities!–and even collaborates with the Party of God by publishing doctored photographs of Israeli “war crimes.” The op-ed pages of America’s dailies are replete with articles promoting Hezbollah’s “pragmatism” and “moderation” (which also happens to be the position of the president’s counter-terrorism czar John Brennan, and a recent CENTCOM analytical exercise), while reported pieces from Lebanon pass along Party of God press releases as objective analysis. If every U.S. journalist who quoted Hezbollah mouthpiece Amal Saad Ghorayeb as a respected “scholar” was fired, the bars of East Beirut would lose 25 percent of their business.

Smith, an expert on the Middle East whose views and insights deserve a wide audience, goes on to lay out the cozy relationship between the western media and Hezbollah, which is often romanticized as Third World freedom fighters by the Lawrence of Arabia wannabees in the press corps: (more…)

Bet CNN’s Octavia Nasr, the network’s “senior editor for Middle Eastern affairs,” wishes she’d never sent this Tweet:

Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah… One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.

Yes, you read that right: an American “journalist” expressing admiration for a leader of a terrorist organization.

Even for CNN, that was too much. She’s just been fired. From Mediaite:

In the latest case of new media (or oversharing) gone wrong, CNN’s Senior Editor of Mideast Affairs Octavia Nasr is leaving the company following the controversy caused by her tweet in praise of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah

Mediaite has the internal memo, which says “we believe that her credibility in her position as senior editor for Middle Eastern affairs has been compromised.”

As if further proof were needed that a sizable segment of the Fourth Estate is now effectively the Fifth Column, this one is right up there. Apparently it’s no longer enough that reporters and correspondents pretend to be neutral, even about the good guys — now, they’re not only not neutral, they publicly express their admiration for sheer, malevolent evil — a man who, according to the obits, was “known for his staunch anti-American stance.”

Good Lord, is this what American journalism has come to? (more…)