Caught wearing brown lipstick...

Yeah, you know what? I don't care. This isn't like CNN's Jordan confession, in that it isn't directly relatable to Omaar's reporting. CNN's sin (and Arnett's, for that matter) wasn't the dick-sucking that went on behind the scenes. It was the manipulation of on-the-air news and wire reports to maintain access.

Omaar wasn't particularly outrageous in his reporting from Baghdad before the collapse, and he turned around on a dime for the Paradise Square set-piece. He was never as obnoxious as Fisk was, for instance.

As far as I'm concerned, this is nothing more than a bitchy process story.

I've got to agree with the above. Sycophant is one way to look at it, playing the guy is another. It's the reporting that matters, not what silly compliments he paid to get his visa approved. CNN and Arnett compromised their integrity as reporters of the news in return for access - far worse. Bitchy process story sounds about right.

Y'know, I have a feeling CNN wasn't the only one to do the sorts of things that they admitted to.

Certainly, they probably did it the most, but FOX, MSNBC, and every one of the networks did the same things.

As it stands, there's likely one hell of a reckoning going on inside CNN; Unseen, but significant changes are probably in progress or soon to happen, particularly in terms of how CNN operates on the ground.

After this, I think every US network is going to be doing a lot of painful soul-searching.

Unseen, but significant changes are probably in progress or soon to happen

Yep. They're probably hard at work trying to poach Mr. Omaar from the BBC so he and Peter Arnet can head up the CNN Mid-East bureau.

He drank... from the Tigris?!?? ew, ew, ew!

Everyone knows Arthur Kent is the real Scud Stud: http://ask.yahoo.com/ask/20030319.html

I didn't tape or take notes, but I saw several of Rageh's BBC reports, and each was preceded with a disclaimer that he was under the watchful eyes of Baghdad authorities.

I'd say his comments are more Monty Python than anything else: "what I meant to say, your Highness, is that your words flow forth like a golden stream of enlightenment, not like bat piss."

http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/8889/poetry/mp-wilde.htm

Your Highness, you are also like a stream of bat's piss.
PRINCE: What?!?
WHISTLER: It was one of Wilde's. One of Wilde's.
OSCAR: It sodding was not! It was Shaw!
SHAW: I... I merely meant, Your Majesty, that you shine out like a shaft of gold when all around is dark.
PRINCE (accepting the compliment): Oh.

I found Ragee Omaah's reports from Baghdad to be very naive, and at times well out-of-date.

In spite of the disclaimers, he simply seemed to be peddling the Iraqi line a lot of the time. Often out of step with what we could see from CentCom and from the embedded reporters.

As the report says, this new angle will only encourage those of us who remain deeply critical of the BBC's coverage.

The BBC's World TV reportage has been bloody awful and quite biassed. But I'm with Mitch M on this one, the story's a beat-up. Omaar called things as he saw them, with very little spin. He's no John Simpson (a BBC reporter who I have the utmost respect for), but he played things straight. I don't think I would have done any better.
The real BBC spin-doctors and outright falsifiers were all in Jordan, Washington or London.
(Just seen yet another BBC-ism : Syria's "alleged" suport of Hamas - an organisation that has a very public head-office in Damascus. And reference to Osama Bin Laden as a "dissident". Agh!)

Alan

As you say, John Simpson is fine - and he posted some very vivid reports from northern Iraq.

The REAL bias in the BBC is applied from the top, in its editorial slant.

Some of the worst BBC reports/interviews I saw were from Washington. Appalling condescension to the Coalition, lots of sneering at the US position.