For more than three decades, international correspondent Jim Clancy reported the news and anchored several programs for the Cable News Network.
That long-time record came to an abrupt end on Friday, when he left CNN more than a week after he got into an angry Twitter argument in which he claimed that people who disagree with him regarding Mohammed cartoons are “agents for Israel” and used a derogatory term for disabled individuals.
CNN's Jim Clancy has been with the network for 32 years. His network's bio says that he "brings the experience of more than three decades covering the world to every newscast on CNN International." He also apparently has a lot of pent-up feelings about the Middle East.
Those feelings boiled to the top over Twitter early Thursday. Clancy started it all by claiming that the cartoons published by journalists who were killed in the Charlie Hebdo massacre on Wednesday "NEVER mocked the Prophet. They mocked how the COWARDS tried to distort his word. Pay attention." It went downhill from there, both factually and professionally.
Following President Barack Obama's speech today at West Point, the UK Daily Mail reported "tepid applause and a short standing ovation from less than one-quarter of the audience upon his introduction." In a CNN video clip found at Mediaite, Jim Clancy noted that Obama did not sound like a “commander-in-chief speaking to his troops.” He further observed: “You heard the reception; it was icy."
The video posted at the White House's web site doesn't include the reception Obama received when he was introduced. There's a reason for that. The first 14 seconds of a Reuters video clip (HT Nice Deb) shows, especially for those of us who recall the enthusiastic receptions George W. Bush routinely received, that describing it as "tepid" may be an overstatement:
Rick Sanchez Tuesday invited on a former adviser to deceased Palestinian terrorist Yasser Arafat in order to tell viewers how Israel has become a threat to American troops.
The CNNer devoted a good amount of his two-hour "Rick's List" to teeing up a number of guests and fellow so-called journalists to voice their anti-Israel sentiments.
"Mark Perry is saying that some of the top Pentagon generals now believe the United States troops in the battlefields in Afghanistan and in Iraq are being endangered by the lack of progress toward Middle East peace, and, in particular, by actions undertaken by the Netanyahu government," said Sanchez.
What followed took place moments before CNN broadcast anti-Semitic and anti-Israel Twitter comments (video embedded below the fold with transcript and commentary, h/t Story Balloon):
After months of investigation, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) released a report addressing accusations from some humanitarian groups that its use of white phosphorus (WP) munitions in the Gaza War was a violation of international law, as the report distinguishes between the use of WP as a weapon and the more common non-weapon purposes such as providing smoke screens to conceal troop movements. The pro-Israel group CAMERA recently quoted from the report in the article, "Did Israel’s Use of White Phosphorus Constitute a War Crime?" by Steven Stotsky, on its Web site. The report not only argued that the military's decision to explode the munition in the air was safer for civilians than it would have been to explode it on the ground, but it also suggested that the use of WP to facilitate troops movements also meant civilian casualties were lower than they otherwise would have been by making attacks on Hamas more accurate.
Last January, evening newscasts and some morning newscasts on the broadcast networks and on CNN and FNC reported on accusations from humanitarian groups – with varying degrees of accuracy – with CBS even referring to WP as a "banned weapon," and a "horrific new weapon, " and contending that the IDF may have committed "war crimes." At one point, CNN similarly incorrectly identified WP as a "banned substance." ABC showed a clip of a wounded Palestinian boy charging that Israelis have "no mercy" even for children. (MSNBC does not have a morning or evening newscast equivalent to NBC’s Today show or the NBC Nightly News, so MSNBC coverage was not examined.) But, according to a Nexis search, none of these news programs showed any interest in updating viewers once the Israeli military had made public its say on the matter.
As previously documented by NewsBusters, the January 22 CBS Evening News ran a report (video here), introduced by anchor Katie Couric, which left the impression that the Israeli military had used a "banned weapon," without informing viewers that there are non-weapon uses for WP, and passed on accusations of "war crimes." Couric: "Hamas just ended a bloody war with Israel in Gaza, and tonight there is growing evidence the Israelis may have used a banned weapon. Some even accuse them of war crimes."
On the January 25 World News Sunday on ABC, as he introduced a report by correspondent Simon McGregor-Wood, anchor Dan Harris played up complaints against "both sides" in the war, and even suggested that the Israeli side may have been worse in its conduct of the war as he highlighted that there was "especially tough criticism" leveled at Israel. Harris: "Both sides are being dogged now by complaints that they violated the rules of war. Israel has come under especially tough criticism for its use of a chemical agent."
