I'm watching live coverage of Alan Johnston's release on CNN. The vapidity and ignorance of CNN's talking empty airheads is almost unbelievable. As bad as things are in print, live broadcast journalism really highlights how uninformed these jokers really are.
CNN's Ben Wedeman is the "expert" correspondent that Anderson Cooper was quizzing, while Ismail Haniyeh was making a long, rambling Arabic statement. Cooper, for his part, had no idea who Haniyeh was, and he repeatedly referred to him as a "Palestinian official."
Wedeman kept emphasizing how much calmer things were in Gaza now that Hamas has taken over, and how much safer it is for journalists versus when Fatah was in charge. He even mentioned that the Hamas group that was taking him around showed him that they were taking care of traffic problems. He either purposefully ignored, or was unaware, of the many journalists that have been threatened by Hamas since the fighting.
Wedeman also took pains to contrast Hamas with Al Qaeda. Hamas, you see, only does its terror in that general area, and it is a "political" entity - it is not the worldwide threat that Qaeda is. He didn't quite say "Hamas only targets Jews" but he got close. And at the very end, he broadly implied that Fatah does have some sort of connection with Al Qaeda, since the clan that kidnapped Johnston has been rumored to be close both with Fatah and Al Qaeda at different times.
Johnston, of course, had nothing but praise for Hamas and all Palestinian Arab journalists and politicians who worked so tirelessly for the release of their main spokesman.
At the beginning, Wedeman started translating Haniyeh's statement, but this was way too boring for live TV. Before he stopped, he quoted Haniyeh as saying that Johnston's kidnapping was not good for the Palestinian people - which means, of course, that the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit is indeed in the best interests of the PalArabs.
It was essentially a free 15 minute commercial for Hamas.
