SOMEONE IN MEDIA DID THE RIGHT THING!  PASS IT ON! – AT 7:55 P.M. ET:  We told you a few days ago about the exalted CNN editor in the Mideast, herself a member of the let's-reach-out-to-them culture, who put a post on her website mourning the passing of the guy who is accused of murdering 241 U.S. Marines in Beirut in 1982.

Well, surprise of surprises, CNN has taken action.  From the Weekly Standard:

Mediaite reports that CNN has fired senior editor of Middle East affairs Octavia Nasr. As Daniel Halper pointed out the other day, Nasr wrote on Twitter on July 4 that she was "sad" to hear of the death of Hezbollah's Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah--a man for whom she has "respect." Fadlallah had justified suicide bombings, is believed to be responsible for the Marine barracks bombing, and had said that "Zionism has inflated the number of victims in this Holocaust beyond imagination."

In a followup blog post last night, Nasr wrote that it "was an error of judgment for me to write such a simplistic comment and I'm sorry because it conveyed that I supported Fadlallah's life's work. That's not the case at all."

She explained that she knew about all the wicked aspects of Fadlallah's life--saying she even "lost family members" in the barracks bombing--and was simply referring to the fact that she respected Fadlallah for his opposition to "honor" killings and beating women. But saying you respect Fadlallah for opposing murdering and beating (Muslim) women is almost like saying you respect Osama bin Laden for building day care centers.

CNN doesn't think Nasr's apology makes up for what she said. "We believe that her credibility in her position as senior editor for Middle Eastern affairs has been compromised going forward," Nasr's CNN superior Parisa Khosravi said in a statement.

COMMENT:  CNN has made the right decision...for a change.  Ms. Nasr has freedom of expression, of course, but she doesn't have an automatic right to be employed by CNN.

I doubt if this action would have been taken had Christiane Amanpour still been CNN's chief international correspondent.  Amanpour, who has jumped to ABC, was disgracefully biased in her Mideast reporting.  She would have probably protected Nasr. 

Maybe CNN is growing up.

July 7, 2010