Bin Laden Interview Raises Questions

The U.S. military isn’t alone in its pursuit of Osama bin Laden. In the competitive world of 24-hour TV news, nailing an interview with the suspected terrorist mastermind himself has quickly topped many producers’ lists.

CNN emerged as the front-runner Tuesday when it said circuitous communication links with Bin Laden have been opened, even as executives added that they don’t know whether he is dead or alive. Now questions have been submitted and CNN awaits Bin Laden’s videotaped answers--a prospect that has been met with criticism, curiosity and envy in other newsrooms.

Just the idea of conducting a Bin Laden interview set off a heated internal debate at CNN over the weekend, according to sources there.

The cable news network would say only that it thought carefully about whether to do the quasi-interview for a number of days, before deciding to go forward. That decision came after getting assurances from Bin Laden’s representatives that there would be no restrictions on what it could ask or what it could do with the answers.

The prospect of getting to Bin Laden surfaced last week when CNN was approached by someone claiming to represent Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda organization, through Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab TV network that has been a past conduit for Bin Laden statements.

But the discussion among competitors quickly moved from whether CNN would get the Bin Laden interview to whether it was an interview at all--tied to the major condition CNN did agree to by not conducting the exchange in person.

Indeed, rival Fox News Channel said it wouldn’t have done the interview under CNN’s conditions. “The only way we would do it is if we could have a sit-down interview with Bin Laden and we were allowed to ask follow-up questions,” said a Fox spokesman.

CNN took pains to avoid looking like a pawn of the terrorists. Walter Isaacson, CNN News Group chairman, called his major competitors Tuesday to tell them about the possible Bin Laden comments, promising to share them immediately with other news outlets. The network also took to the air to let viewers know they had submitted questions and hoped for a Bin Laden reply, including asking about his involvement in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

“I know that this is a controversial issue,” said Wolf Blitzer, the CNN anchor who reported the story. “That’s why we wanted to have a dialogue and inform our viewers, so there are no surprises, here’s what we’re doing and not doing.”

CNN’s actions raise two issues of concern, said CBS News President Andrew Heyward. “CNN should not be seen to be bargaining with terrorists, and CNN shouldn’t be seen as providing a platform for propaganda.” He believes CNN did neither.

Heyward says CNN avoided the bargaining issue by disclosing the ground rules, which he called “borderline but acceptable.” Submitting written questions to an interview subject “very clearly goes against everybody’s guidelines, including ours,” Heyward said. “But obviously, in the case of Osama bin Laden, you’re dealing with no ordinary interview subject. He’s the most wanted man in the world. It’s this or nothing and it’s appropriate to consider the exceptional circumstances.”

CNN’s concession, most suggest, is a pragmatic choice made in an extraordinary situation. As Jim Naughton, president of the Poynter Institute, a mid-career school for journalists, put it: “Of course, it would be better to interview him, challenge him, but if the only vehicle for getting comment from him is a set of questions, there’s no harm in asking them.”

L. Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center in Alexandria, Va., did not agree. “One finds it absurd to believe that if CNN existed 60 years ago, it would give an audience to Adolf Hitler or Emperor Hirohito, who ordered the attack on Pearl Harbor,” Bozell said. “It is harming the war effort and it’s a slap in the face to the American people.”

Bin Laden is “a liar,” Bozell added. “Why do you think he will be honest with CNN?”

The relative value and veracity of any answers from Bin Laden, and whether they would merely represent propaganda, have left most news organizations, including CNN, making no commitment to air a response if one even arrives. That’s in line with what TV news organizations pledged to do recently when asked by the White House to consider not airing Bin Laden’s taped messages because they were propaganda and might contain hidden codes. Of the possible CNN-Bin Laden interview, Claire Buchan, a White House spokeswoman, said: “We have confidence the networks will handle it responsibly.”

CNN’s list of six questions were devised, Blitzer said, by a small team of the network’s top editorial management, including Isaacson, Executive Vice President of CNN/U.S. Sid Bedingfield and Eason Jordan, chief news executive.

Like Heyward, TV news organizations were most conflicted by CNN’s decision to submit questions, rather than how they would handle any information once it was in their hands.

Erik Sorenson, president of CNN competitor MSNBC, underscored the problem with making such a concession: Advance questions “take out the element of surprise, and rehearsed answers are often not as honest as spontaneous ones.” But he said MSNBC will consider airing whatever answers CNN gets.

Many newspaper editors found the trade-offs acceptable. “Yes, I’d do the interview,” said Sandra Mims Rowe, editor of the Portland Oregonian. “Yes, he’s probably using the media. But he’s not the first person to use the media.”

Times Staff Writer David Shaw contributed to this story.