- LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - CNN founder Ted Turner has said the network's retraction
of a story claiming that the U.S. military used nerve gas during a Vietnam
War raid was ``the most horrible thing'' that ever happened to him. ``Nothing
has upset me as much in my whole life,'' Turner said, including his Atlanta
Braves baseball team ``losing to the Yankees in the World Series after
being up by two games, the failure of two marriages, the death of my father.
It's the most horrible thing.'' Turner, speaking Friday to a group of television
writers and critics after a preview of CNN's upcoming documentary ``Cold
War,'' said the network was his ``baby'' from the beginning and that the
controversy over the story brought him both embarassment and sadness. He
said new measures would be put in place at CNN to ensure that ``nothing
like this ever happens again.'' Already in place, he said, was an oversight
committee made up of CNN News Group President Tom Johnson, CNN/USA President
Richard Kaplan and other executives. The June 7 CNN report alleged that
the U.S. military used the deadly nerve gas sarin to kill American defectors
and North Vietnamese during a secret 1970 raid by a Special Forces unit
on a small Laotian village. The story was reported on ``NewsStand, a joint
venture of CNN and Time magazine. Both news organizations retracted the
story July 2, saying that the facts could not be supported, and the network
apologized to all of the military participants. Since then, one producer
at CNN has been fired and two others have resigned. Reporter Peter Arnett
was reprimanded. Turner said Friday he knew a little about the story before
it aired and was assured that it was accurate.
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- New Poll - US Majority Says
News Reporting Often Wrong
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- NEW YORK (Reuters) - More than half of Americans think news reports are
often inaccurate and most believe journalists are under more pressure from
owners to get a good story than they were in the past, a poll released
Saturday said. The poll was taken after a retraction by CNN of a nerve
gas story and the firing of writers for the Boston Globe newspaper and
the New Republic magazine for fabricating facts. The poll, conducted by
the Pew Research Center and published in Newsweek magazine, said 53 percent
of those surveyed characterized news reports as ``often inaccurate.'' Fewer
than half, 46 percent, said they believe almost all or most of what the
media reported. Some 61 percent survey said they got their news from television,
24 percent from newspapers and 2 percent from online or Internet services.
The poll surveyed 752 people and had a margin of error of plus or minus
4 percentage points. The poll also found that 76 percent felt the news
business and gone too far in the direction of entertainment. It also found
that compared to the past more journalists were influenced by pressures
from owners (77 percent), other journalists (71 percent) or the desire
to be rich and famous (70 percent) than by the urge to report the news
fairly (33 percent.)
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