The contretemps between Fox News and CNN over their Libya coverage continues to unfold. This time, Fox’s veteran national security reporter, who unwittingly touched off the dispute, weighs in to call CNN’s conduct “unprofessional,” “nonsense,” and beneath them. She also joked, “CNN has put a landmine out there so I can stop reporting.”
“My reporting was not meant to point fingers; it was to get the facts out there,” Jennifer Griffin told Mediabistro. “It was not about attacking anyone personally. I feel, unfortunately, CNN decided to make this personal, by saying what I think are extremely unprofessional things about my colleague Steve Harrigan who is a fabulous reporter and who is a great war correspondent and I think what they said about him was indefensible. They made this personal. I did not.”
Griffin broke the story this week that Libyan officials used journalists as cover, to thwart a British missile attacks. In her original report, she mistakenly asserted that, unlike competitor organizations, Fox did not participate in that propaganda mission. In fact, Fox sent a security guard with a camera on excursion, and Griffin has since corrected that part of her dispatch.
But CNN’s Nic Robertson took it as an insinuation that Fox was calling him and other reporters dupes — and, perhaps, trying to cover up for the fact that their own Libya reporter, Steve Harrigan, is, to paraphrase Robertson, lazy. He went ballistic.
That was Monday. Harrigan has since gotten into the mix, and now Griffin’s standing up for him.
“I just think this has gotten ugly, and I think it’s beneath Nic to be saying these things about Steve Harrigan,” she said. “If he has something to say he can say it about me. But to question his reporting and why he stayed at the hotel … it’s just nonsense. Frankly, CNN should be focusing on getting more scoops and not attacking Fox News. They should get back to reporting and stop this petulant behavior.”
