They said her credibility was “compromised.” That’s one way of putting it. An update on this story. “CNN fires Octavia Nasr for Twitter post praising Hezbollah terrorist, says credibility ‘compromised’,” by Richard Huff for the New York Daily News, July 7 (thanks to Ron):
Less than 140 characters cost CNN’s Octavia Nasr her job after she tweeted her “respect” for a terror-loving Hezbollah sheikh who died over the weekend.
Nasr, CNN’s Senior Editor of Mideast Affairs, ran into hot water after she posted on Twitter that she was “sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah… One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.”
Facing an immediate and harsh backlash, she backpedaled Tuesday in a blog post, saying she didn’t endorse the life work of Fadlallah – who was labeled a terrorist by US officials.
“Not the kind of life to be commenting about in a brief tweet. It’s something I deeply regret,” she wrote. Still, she praised Fadlallah for being a pioneer on “woman’s rights,” and warning Muslim men against abusing their wives.
But where was the threshhold of “abuse” for Fadlallah? Anyway, in light of Fadlallah’s other activities, praising him for advocating some level of women’s rights is like praising Hitler for his paintings and ignoring all the other stuff.
It was not enough. On Wednesday, CNN fired her.
Parisa Khosravi, senior vice president of CNN International Newsgathering, told the staff that Nasr accepts she shouldn’t have made such a “simplistic” comment without context.
Our Uh, Yeah Department issued the following statement:
“Uh, yeah.”
“However,” Khorsravi wrote in a memo, “at this point, we believe that her credibility in her position as senior editor for Middle Eastern affairs has been compromised going forward.”
Nasr joined CNN in 1990 and was an on-air and off-air analyst on Mideast affairs for a variety of CNN platforms.
Fadallah had often praised suicide bombings – including one in 2008 that left 8 students dead at an Israeli yeshiva. He was also fiercely anti-American.
No kidding!