CNN Reassigns Reporter Who Called Israelis Cheering Bombs ‘Scum’ in Tweet
By Caroline Bankoff
On Thursday night, CNN correspondent Diana Magnay did a report from a hill in southern Israel, where a group of Israelis had gathered to watch the beginning of the ground invasion of the Gaza Strip. As Magnay described the missiles flying through the sky behind her, the spectators could be heard cheering on the bombardment. "It is an astonishing, macabre and awful thing to watch this display of fire in the air," she told Wolf Blitzer before signing off.
Shortly afterwards, Magnay posted this tweet:
She quickly removed the message, but not before it had been favorited and retweeted by hundreds of people. Unsurprisingly, the tweet — along with its deletion — led observers to speculate as to whether Magnay was capable of reporting on Israel and Gaza "objectively," while others wondered if CNN had censored an employee's social media presence. By Friday, she had been reassigned to Moscow.
CNN told the Huffington Post's Michael Calderone that Magnay had not intended to call all Israelis "scum" — just the ones present for the segment, who were said to have "threatened and harassed" Magnay and her colleagues "before and during a liveshot." "Diana reacted angrily on Twitter," said a network spokesperson. "She deeply regrets the language used, which was aimed directly at those who had been targeting our crew. She certainly meant no offense to anyone beyond that group, and she and CNN apologize for any offense that may have been taken."
CNN's decision to remove Magnay from Gaza comes just after NBC — citing "security concerns" — pulled correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin from the area after his moving account of the deaths four Palestinian children in an Israeli air strike. While the circumstances surrounding Magnay and Mohyeldin's removals are slightly different, their situations have given people on both sides of the conflict more reason to feel that the media isn't being fair when it comes to reporting what's happening in Israel and Gaza.
NBC Reporter Who Witnessed Killing of 4 Palestinian Children Removed From Gaza by the Network
Ayman Mohyeldin, the NBC correspondent who was playing with a group of Palestinian kids moments before an Israeli attack killed four of them on a Gaza beach yesterday, has been pulled from the region. According to a report by Glenn Greenwald at the Intercept, the network demanded Mohyeldin leave immediately, citing "security concerns," although it also sent a different correspondent, Richard Engel, to Gaza.
While Mohyeldin has experience covering conflict in Israel — NBC poached him from Al Jazeera for his Middle East coverage — Engel's accompanying producer has never covered Gaza from the ground and, according to the Intercept, does not speak Arabic.
Following Mohyeldin's moving first-hand coverage from the beach, which some have seen as anti-Israel, the troubling implications here are obvious.
Mohyeldin, who is Egyptian-American, reported on Wednesday's civilian tragedy both on-air and on social media with chilling details ("Minutes before they were killed by our hotel, I was kicking a ball with them"), photographs, and footage of the victims' grieving families.
The network pushed his exclusive access hard, but by the time Nightly News rolled around, Mohyeldin had been swapped for Engel, NBC's chief foreign correspondent. TV Newser reported last night, "the decision to have Engel report the story for Nightly instead of Mohyeldin angered some NBC News staffers."
Others have noted that Mohyeldin deleted posts he'd made to Twitter and Facebook critical of the U.S. State Department's reaction to the attack:
He'd previously been called a "spokesman" for Hamas, and criticized for "a pro-Hamas rant" by media critics sensitive to an anti-Israel bias.
It's also entirely possible that the network felt Mohyeldin's objectivity had been compromised after witnessing such tragic violence up close. Or, fearing post-traumatic stress, felt he needed, emotionally, to be extricated from the war zone. But if that's the case, NBC should say it, rather than broadly claiming "security concerns."
The network has not responded to a request for comment.
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