CNN Mideast Affairs editor loses post after tweeting her respect for militant cleric

Octavia Nasr, CNN’s senior editor of Mideast affairs, lost her post Wednesday amid mounting criticism of a message she posted on Twitter expressing sadness at the death of a Lebanese cleric who once was an influential spiritual leader of the Shiite militant group Hezbollah.

Nasr, who had worked for the cable news network for two decades, had already apologized in a blog post on CNN.com for “an error in judgment” in writing that Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah was “one of Hezbollah's giants I respect a lot" after his death Sunday.

At one time Fadlallah was considered a major spiritual leader of Hezbollah. In recent years, however, he had lost influence as he distanced himself from many elements of radical Islam and had condemned violence against women. Fadlallah continued to call for the elimination of Israel and was designated a terrorist by the U.S., Nasr noted in her blog post.

Nasr’s remarks were condemned by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which called Fadlallah “an international ‘godfather’ of terrorism” and asked CNN to formally repudiate the comment.

The network issued a statement saying the tweet violated CNN’s editorial standards. Nasr herself said she was wrong to “to write such a simplistic comment.”

“I'm sorry because it conveyed that I supported Fadlallah's life's work,” she wrote in her blog post. “That's not the case at all.” Rather, Nasr said, she was referring to the fact that Fadlallah took “a contrarian and pioneering stand among Shia clerics on woman's rights” and had called for the abolition of honor killings. She noted that she lost family members in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that Fadlallah was suspected of orchestrating.

But CNN executives concluded that her comment had irreparably damaged Nasr’s standing.

“We believe that her credibility in her position as senior editor for Middle Eastern affairs has been compromised going forward,” Parisa Khosravi, CNN International’s senior vice president for newsgathering, wrote in an e-mail to employees announcing her departure.

Nasr, who was based in Atlanta, served as a Middle Eastern expert for CNN, contributing to coverage about the region’s politics, as well as stories about global terrorism and militant Islam. Fluent in Arabic, as well as English and French, the Lebanese-born journalist got her start as a war correspondent for the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation, covering that country’s civil war. She joined CNN in 1990 and played a major role in the network’s coverage of the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, as well as the Middle Eastern peace process, according to her official biography, which calls her “a leader in integrating social media with newsgathering and reporting.”

-- Matea Gold

twitter.com/mateagold

Photo credit: CNN

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Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah dies at 74; Lebanon's top cleric was once Hezbollah's mentor

Comments

[Grandpa]

I salute her for having the guts to speak the truth. Where is the much hyped freedom of speech the west talks about?

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You're reading it right here, bub.

[Big Dude]

Freedom of speech??As a reporter and employee of a news agency, she has every right to express her views. Too bad she expressed it for a man and organization that has a history of violence, murder and terrorism. Not particulary a wise viewpoint in todays world.

[bruce]

Well I see all the "Hate America liberal crowd" is out in full force on this site. Free speech is fine but it comes with a a price. Once you makes these kind of hate statements be prepared to suffer the consequences. But then all good liberals don't believe in consequences when it's their free speech rights.. just others they don't agree with!!!!

[Michael]

Wasn't it just last week people were praising the late senator Robert Byrd, who by his own admission was a member of the KKK? The same KKK that was a domestic terrorist organization that terrorized citizens of the United States? Anybody get fired?

[trajan]

Wow! It is really sad to see this type of stuff going on in America. You can get fired for showing respect for someone with a different point of view of the world.
Thats ridiculous and unAmerican. We have become a nation of hypocrites in this country. I am thru with CNN and media outlets like it that feed propaganda to people and censor our opportunity to witness honest ideas and sincere expression on important issues that Americans should be thinking about.

[Clay Landon]

Nasr's "tweet" was more complex than the simpletons gave her credit for. She explained as much... and CNN gave in to the simpletons.

[tonye]

Freedom of speech has nothing to do here.

Her ability to do her job does.

By expressing sympathy for such an individual she put her impartiality at risk: Journalists have to at least maintain a pretense of impartiality, if they do not, then they are toast. On top of that, she was the editor which makes her loss of credibility even worse.

Freedom of speech is one thing.

The ability to do a job is another thing.

No one is throwing her in jail and no one is preventing her from getting a job in a position where her political viewpoints are welcome or irrelevant.

Who knows, she might get at job at the White House. :-P

[Castmosis]

Free speech is fine right, long as it doesn't involve taking a stance against israel or zionism. then you get crushed. This media is soooo biased towards israel that it's lost all credibility. Shame on CNN. I will never watch that dying network again.

[xicanoboy1331]

No one has any idea of what RESPECT means anymore. Look at the world around you...what could respect possibly have to do with any of the purely mean-spirited words and actions that have become commmonplace and, sadly, acceptable.

[The Bell]

When Reagan died, a whole lot of journalists gushed in craven admiration for what the rotten old war criminal had accomplished in his lifetime: destabilizing poor countries, financing death squads, whoring for dictatorships, gutting the Western economy, deforming language and generally creeping out millions of honest hardworking people.

Should they all be made to apologize, then fired? Quite probably.

[smallcity]

In his many writings and speeches, Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah taught the total denigration of women. Perhaps now Octavia Nasr will be able to be cover herself from head to toe with a burqa, not be seen in public without a man or other woman, walk behind a man, not have any opinions (since they don't matter)... in fact, follow all fundamentalist sharia law.

This man was wicked on all levels.

[Katie]

GOOD for CNN!! They did the RIGHT thing!! We are TOO sympathetic to those who would seek to destroy our country!

It's refreshing to see that someone is finally standing up to what is evil.

[Donna Fisher]

In polite society, there is a period of 7 days following the death of ANY and EVERY human being in which any and all expressions of sympathy are appropriate. If we cannot abide by this tradition, we have become truly and totally barbaric and we should not be surprised when the world in which we live goes completely up in smoke.

[Lawrence W]

Freedom of speech is a constitutional right that protects you from imprisonment, not from getting fired from your job. At work, you can't say anything that you want and expect to be protected because of "freedom of speech".

[Tom, Long Beach, California]

good riddance and keep the Muslim sympathizers out of our US journalism

[Aaron]

Disclaimer: I don't know anything more about Nasr or Fadlallah than what I've read here. With that out of the way, I think that as someone whose official biography trumpets her mastery of social media, Nasr was an idiot for not understanding the potential ramifications of her tweet. Also, to the other commenters here: CNN didn't fire her because of her political convictions. They did it because they thought viewers and readers would henceforth dismiss Nasr out of hand as a supporter of radical Islam, which would undermine her credibility as a reporter. It wasn't because of what Nasr said, but because how they expected people to _react_ to what Nasr said. I may be Jewish, but I certainly didn't interpret her quote (accompanied by her subsequent explanation) as total insanity. And before reading the comments here, I thought other people would too, and that CNN was out of line for firing her. But having perused the thoughts of the other readers - full of talk of censorship and freedom of speech, which have nothing to do with the issue at hand - I'm beginning to change my mind. People, it seems, are clueless indeed - and consequently, perhaps firing her was the right decision.

[Village idiot]

We have freedom of speech as long as it doesn't go against our Allies (Israel)... And freedom of speech is encourage if its speech against the Muslims.... I guess this is the reason why America is so great....

[Schigolch]

What if an editor expresses admiraton for some other terrorist like Menachem Begin or Itzhak Shamir? Will he be dismissed too?

[PT1]

Twitter: The instant way to unemployment for a generation. Two employees recently bad-mouthed one of my clients on Twitter recently. We had no choice but to fire them.

[Matt]

"god forbid that she would have respect for someone progressive towards women's issues and distancing themselves from radical islam. what a cowardly knee-jerk response. "

That is exactly right. Unfortunately, CNN is justly known for its cowardly, knee-jerk responses to a lot of things. CNN doesn't deserve our respect. It's not the worthy news channel that it was when Ted Turner was in charge. Those days are long gone.