CNN is being sharply reproached by some columnists and competitors for accepting an invitation by the 24-hour Arab news channel Al-Jazeera to submit a list of six questions to Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
A spokesman for Fox News channel told today’s Los Angeles Times that his channel would not have accepted the invitation. “The only way we would do it is if we could have a sit-down interview with Bin Laden and we were allowed to ask follow-up questions,” the spokesman said.
L. Brent Bozell, president of the conservative Media Research Center in Al;exandria, VA, commented: “One finds it absurd to believe that if CNN existed 60 years ago, it would give an audience to Adolf Hitler or Emperor Hirohito, who ordered the attack on Pearl Harbor.”
New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser wrote: “The enemy wanted for the murder of 5,000 innocents is being treated as CNN’s celebrity ‘get’ of a lifetime.”
CNN has said that it will make the bin Laden tape available to its rivals when (if?) it receives it.
