Is Amanpour Reluctant To Retract The "Shootout" Because It's Not The First Time She's Had To Apologize? (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

Why haven't CNN and Christiane Amanpour apologized for their obvious misstatement of fact from May 11?

A mother and her 2 daughters were gunned down by Palestinian terrorists on April 7. Even granted the squeamishness of the media when it comes to calling out Palestinian terrorism by name, Amanpour's report was outright shocking when she referred to the attack on unarmed women as a "shootout" --

 pic.twitter.com/PQUPTfHx5R

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 11, 2023

This takes blaming both sides to a whole new level.

And it is even more cringe-worthy considering the pat on the back that Amanpour gave herself in 2016:

I learned that as a journalist I could not be morally equivalent and nor could I present false factual equivalence. I insist on being truthful, not neutral.

Truthful, not neutral. pic.twitter.com/gJgNwFyvWf

— Christiane Amanpour (@amanpour) October 13, 2016

The odd thing is that despite this boast, Amanpour did in fact publicly apologize for her bias in November 2020, after she used a reference to the Holocaust to attack Donald Trump. She started off with a reference to the anniversary of Kristallnacht:

It was the Nazis’ warning shot across the bow of our human civilization that led to genocide against a whole identity and, in that tower of burning books, it led to an attack on fact, knowledge, history and proof.

After four years of a modern-day assault on those same values by Donald Trump, the Biden-Harris team pledges a return to norms, including the truth.

But, in this case, the reaction against Amanpour's outrageous comparison led to a public retraction: 

 We can only hope that the pressure applied again by these organizations and by the Israeli government will again produce an apology by Amanpour.

Why is it taking so long, especially considering the obvious inaccuracy in calling the murder of unarmed women a shootout?

One reason might be that CNN themselves compounded the error and face the possibility of having to retract a second biased report on the cable network.

On April 10, CNN correspondent Frederik Pleitgen described the attack during Isa Soares Tonight in an even more convoluted way :

But earlier in the West Bank, there was a shooting incident where a car received a bullet shot, or gunshots, with the family in it. It was a mother and her two daughters, and the two daughters were killed in that crash. [emphasis added]

Journalism at CNN has deteriorated so badly that beyond blaming guns instead of the terrorists who fire them, now the bullets are blamed. Or perhaps the car that "received" the bullets is at fault? Then the death of the mother and her 2 daughters is blamed on the crash, despite the fact that the terrorists fired into the car after the crash in order to make sure their victims were dead. And of course, there is no mention of Palestinian terrorists.

Still, this would be a good opportunity for CNN to follow through on their declared goal to be less partisan, as reported in June of last year:

CNN's new boss, Chris Licht, is evaluating whether personalities and programming that grew polarizing during the Trump era can adapt to the network's new priority to be less partisan...

Details: Licht wants to give personalities that may appear polarizing a chance to prove they're willing to uphold the network's values so that they don't tarnish CNN's journalism brand.

 Of course, Licht has in mind drawing Republicans back to the network. He is not overly concerned with how Israel views CNN. But if the pressure on CNN to fix an undeniable error can be maintained, CNN may see it to its advantage to have Amanpour apologize.

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