TV Turns Cold Shoulder to Al Qaeda Videotape

Broadcast and cable news organizations Saturday heeded the Bush administration’s caution against airing unedited videotapes from Osama bin Laden and other suspected terrorists after receiving a third broadcast from the Middle Eastern satellite network Al Jazeera.

CNN, which along with other networks a week ago repeatedly aired a chilling, unedited tape of Bin Laden, reviewed the material and broadcast only a brief segment with a summarized voice-over translation.

Fox News Channel and MSNBC executives said they deemed the tape not newsworthy.

In keeping with the agreement worked out last week between network news executives and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, CNN spokeswoman Christa Robinson said: “We didn’t air it live and didn’t air it in its entirety.”

The videotaped statement, apparently made Thursday or Friday and delivered to Al Jazeera on Saturday, was the third since the bombing of Afghanistan began a week ago.

On the tape, Sulaiman abu Ghaith, a spokesman for Bin Laden’s terrorist network Al Qaeda, repeated earlier threats of airline attacks and said Muslims in the United States and Britain “should avoid traveling by air or living in high buildings or towers.”

He called on the United States and Britain to remove military forces from the Arabian Peninsula because “the land will burn under their feet, God willing.”

Saturday’s tape “was not news. It was rhetoric,” Fox News Channel spokesman Brian Lewis said. The network aired a still photograph of Abu Ghaith and paraphrased his comments.

MSNBC aired a still photograph of Bin Laden and briefly summed up the comments from his spokesman.

On Saturday, CBS planned to use about 10 seconds of the tape on its West Coast evening news broadcast to introduce a story about propaganda and media, spokeswoman Sandra Genelius said.

ABC doesn’t air a Saturday evening newscast, and spokesman Jeffrey Schneider said no decision had been made about whether it would air any portion of the tape.

NBC opted not to use the tape.

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Times staff writer Brian Lowry and Associated Press contributed to this report.