We journalists can be a prickly bunch, but rarely do you see our competitive juices overflow on the air – for an international TV audience.
Over at Forbes.com, Frederick Allen is recounting the battle between CNN and Fox News journalists in Libya that erupted on Monday and continued to boil over.
It started when Fox reported that CNN’s Nic Robertson and other journalists in Libya had been duped by Libya’s Ministry of Information into serving as human shields to protect a Ghadafi compound in Tripoli from aerial bombing.
That evening Robertson struck back hard on air, telling Wolf Blitzer, “This allegation is outrageous and it’s absolutely hypocritical. When you come to somewhere like Libya, you expect lies and deceit from a dictatorship here. You don’t expect it from the other journalists.”
Fox claimed that its correspondent, Steve Harrigan, hadn’t gone out with the other journalists because he saw through the ruse they were caught in.
Robertson said about that, “I see him more times at breakfast than out on trips with government officials here. So for them to say and call this –to say they didn’t go and for them to call this and say this was government propaganda to hold us there as human shields when they didn’t even leave the hotel … is ridiculous. … We very rarely see the Fox News team.”
Harrigan shot back: “I can stand outside my balcony and report what I see. I can talk to people about what they see … but for someone to say I’m lazy who doesn’t know me, who’s not in our working condition, who doesn’t know our schedule . . . this guy has a screw loose!”
According to Allen, Fox later admitted that one of their own staffers did go on the same assignment that Robertson covered.
Now Harrigan has told Huffington Post, “I think he’s [Robertson] dull. I fall asleep when he gives a report,” and “Is that heroic what he’s doing? He puts on his blue blazer and gets on the government bus, and then pats himself on the back and calls that news? Bullshit.”
CNN’s latest word: “Fox News has reported, and is continuing to report, without an accurate and respectful grasp of the conditions for all the reporters on the ground. We have no further comment on this.”
Allen added that it’s curious that this is happening just as reports indicate that CNN’s Libya coverage has trounced Fox, giving the network in recent days almost twice its often-dominant rival’s viewership. And the verbal sparring comes as Fox struggles with declining ratings and the rumored coming departure of its controversial star, Glenn Beck.
Allen concludes: “CNN must be doing something right. But isn’t it pathetic that in the midst of an instant controversial war where America’s role and objective and plan are hard even to discern, the people we depend on to inform us of what’s going on there can’t even get a handle on their own hostilities?
