Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

CNN Fires Editor After Hezbollah Tweet

Accusations about media bias toward — or against — Israel have flown around since, well, 1948. But the side that claims Israel gets a raw deal scored a point yesterday when CNN’s senior editor of Mideast affairs was fired for a Twitter message praising a deceased Shiite cleric who encouraged suicide bombings.

The New York Times Media Decoder blog reported that Octavia Nasr, “a 20-year veteran of CNN, wrote on Twitter after the cleric died on Sunday, ‘Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah … One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.’” As a private thought, Nasr’s sorrow was touching. But it became a little more problematic as a public sentiment broadcast over an Internet vehicle that probably gets more viewers than CNN itself.

The brouhaha began when the website Honest Reporting broke the news of Nasr’s pro-Fadlallah tweet, calling her “CNN’s Cheerleader for Hezbollah” and deeming her position “fatally compromised.” The site, which describes itself as “dedicated to defending Israel against prejudice in the media,” even questioned whether Nasr’s sentiments make her a terrorist sympathizer. “Is this the sort of extremist figure that CNN’s Senior Editor of Mideast Affairs should be professing her respect for?” Honest Reporting emphasized that Nasr’ s Lebanese background was irrelevant.

Nasr’s apology on a CNN blog wasn’t enough to save her job. “It was an error of judgment for me to write such a simplistic comment and I’m sorry because it conveyed that I supported Fadlallah’s life’s work,” she said. “That’s not the case at all.” Parisa Khosravi, senior vice president for CNN International Newsgathering, followed up with an internal memo that basically said Nasr was history. “At this point, we believe that her credibility in her position as senior editor for Middle Eastern affairs has been compromised going forward,” Khosravi wrote.

It’ll be interesting to see where Nasr ends up, but there’s one sure result of the fracas: Both sides in the media-bias conflict will claim l’affaire Nasr validates their claims.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.