Beirut, July 8, 2010

Press Release

SKeyes denounces the sacking of the journalist Octavia Nasr by CNN,

for praising Fadlallah.

In a surprising move, the U.S television network CNN sacked the Senior Editor of
Mideast affairs Octavia Nasr, for praising the Lebanese Shiite cleric Mohammed Hussein
Fadlallah, who passed away last Sunday. The journalist Nasr had mentioned through the
Twitter internet service that she was sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammad
Hussein Fadlallah.
Nasr, who had been working for CNN since 1990, mentioned in her Twitter message that
Fadlallah was “one of Hezbollah's giants [that] I respect a lot...”
Nasr soon expressed her deep regret on CNN‟s website, and said, “It was an error of
judgment for me to write such a simplistic comment”. She then clarified, “I used the
words "respect" and "sad" because Fadlallah took a contrarian and pioneering stand
among Shia clerics on woman's rights”, adding that, “This does not mean I respected him
for what else he did or said.”
However, CNN rejected her apology and said that Nasr‟s credibility had been
undermined. In an internal CNN memo, CNN International‟s senior vice president for
newsgathering, Parisa Khosravi, said that she discussed the matter with the journalist
Nasr, and decided that “she must leave the station.”
Octavia Nasr covered the major conflicts in the region for CNN in the past twenty years,
and hosted the programs CNN World Report and CNN International World News from
1993 to 2003.
It must be mentioned here that the United States government had listed Fadlallah‟s name
on what it designates as „the international terrorists list.‟
Her dismissal from CNN takes place a month after the resignation of the Senior White
House Correspondent Helen Thomas, who was forced to retire after her controversial
remarks on Israel.
The SKeyes Centre for Media and Cultural Freedoms denounces this arbitrary decision to
dismiss the colleague that served CNN over twenty years, and considers it to be a flagrant
violation of the freedom of expression and the freedom of opinion, especially as it is
being perpetrated by a media outlet that is based in a prestigious democratic and
multicultural country. Neither the right to the freedom of expression, which was practiced
outside of the scope of Nasr‟s profession, nor her apology pushed the station to reverse its
decision.

Samir Kassir Foundation, Aref Saghieh Bldg.( Ground Floor), 63, Zahrani St., Sioufi, Achrafieh, Beirut, Lebanon
Tel /Fax: 00961 1 397334, Mobile: 00961 3 372717, E-Mail Address: info@skeyesmedia.org