Reporting the News from Brutal Dictatorships

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Recently, CNN's chief news executive wrote in the New York Times about 13 trips he'd made to Iraq over the last decade to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. To do so, he revealed that there were awful things that could not be reported without jeopardizing the lives of their Iraqi staff. What rules apply to news organizations reporting from within a brutal dictatorship? What compromises, if any, should be made to continue reporting, while trying to protect the lives of employees? Ruth Seymour discusses these and other issues with New York Times assistant editorial page editor Ethan Bronner, former CNN commentator James Glassman, and Bob Steele, director of journalism ethics at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida.

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