Octavia Nasr’s “Twittercide”
It’s a dangerous thing to attempt defend someone who is caught praising an alleged terrorist in public, but here goes.
CNN could have gone one of two ways after Octavia Nasr’s offensive tweet on the death of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah earlier this month.
The network could have reprimanded her, thus giving her the benefit of the doubt based on her two decades of loyal service. Or it could have done what it did: summarily fire her, ending both its PR problem and her 20-year career with one swift, clean kill.
Nasr, you may recall, infamously tweeted, “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah … One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.”
That was a huge mistake, given, as the New York Times points out, “Ayatollah Fadlallah routinely denounced Israel and the United States, and supported suicide bombings against Israeli civilians,” and his “writings and preachings inspired the Dawa Party of Iraq and a generation of militants, including the founders of Hezbollah.”
So if CNN had not fired her, it would have come under intense criticism for harboring a “Hezbollah sympathizer”. It would have faced a losing battle defending her against critics who would never accept her ex post facto explanation, that her “sadness” and “respect” for the departed Shiite cleric was based — not on his advocacy of terrorism — but his enlightened views on women’s rights. For CNN, this probably looked like mission impossible.
The news media in general, and big news organizations in particular, don’t do nuance very well. And if ever there was an antithesis of nuance it is Twitter, as Octavia Nasr ruefully admitted in a mea culpa blogpost, her last on CNN.com, “Revered across borders yet designated a terrorist. Not the kind of life to be commenting about in a brief tweet. It’s something I deeply regret,” were Nasr’s last words.
Criticism is not something big media organizations take well. The quick, easy, expedient solution was to cut her loose. It’s too bad. Let me be clear. I agree with CNN and Octavia Nasr that her tweet was a serious error in judgment. However, I also accept both her apology and explanation, which is a measure of forgiveness CNN could not manage, because of its sensitivity to external condemnation.
You don’t have to be much of a cynic to conclude that if you are a celebrity who brings ratings and revenue to the network, you have a much greater chance of forgiveness and redemption. Think Lou Dobbs at his most controversial, or Richard Quest’s embarrassing peccadilloes, or Eliot Spitzer’s personal baggage.
But the truth is I did have enormous respect for Octavia, and the global perspective she added to CNN’s international coverage. Her insights reminded all of us that things often look different to people in other parts of the world, and that our reporting should recognize that and help explain that. She was all about nuanced perspective, not superficial caricatures.
So to paraphrase her career-ending tweet, I admit I was “sad to hear of the firing of Octavia Nasr, one of CNN’s editors I respected a lot.” Now just don’t tweet that, because all the nuance will be lost, and I could be out of a job.
CNN Drops Editor After Hezbollah Comments- New York Times, July 7, 2010
