CNN fires senior editor and on-air personality over pro-Hezbollah tweet

From Mediaite:

In the latest case of new media (or oversharing) gone wrong, CNN’s Senior Editor of Mideast Affairs Octavia Nasr is leaving the company following the controversy caused by her tweet in praise of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah

Mediaite has the internal memo, which says “we believe that her credibility in her position as senior editor for Middle Eastern affairs has been compromised.”

Nasr tweeted this weekend: “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah… One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.”

Maybe Nasr will go to Al Jazeera?

It’s nearly midnight in Doha, and we are in a cafe on a pier jutting out over the shoreline of the Persian Gulf. The cafe is empty and the night air quiet—except for the insistent ring of mobile telephones. Al-Jazeera Managing Director Mohammed Jasim Al-Ali takes a call from an American TV network executive. The airstrikes are well underway, and the Qatar-based satellite news channel, by now well known to TV audiences and Washington decision-makers alike, is the only TV presence in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Washington, in early October, asked Qatar to rein in the satellite channel, claiming it fans anti-American sentiment. American broadcasters, though, want Al-Jazeera to make them a deal.

Across the table from Mr. Al-Ali is Octavia Nasr, CNN senior international editor. She’s on a mobile too, with an Arabic-language satellite channel which is wooing her in the same way that Western networks have been courting Al-Jazeera over the last several weeks. But a deal has been made between the giants of English-language and Arabic-language TV news, and both sides say they would be hard-pressed to find another partner that could serve them better.

A Liberal MP wakes up

Glen Pearson is the Liberal MP for London-North-Centre and is an avid blogger. He has some criticisms of the modern Liberal Party of Canada. I think he’s onto something. Here are some of his quotes:

“Like it or not, today’s Liberal Party is often viewed as elitist, out of touch with daily pressures of average people and groups.”

Michael Ignatieff is currently in China, getting in touch with the lives of everyday Canadians.

“Gone are the days when the Liberal Party could attract candidates from unions, social agencies, environmental groups, anti-poverty advocates, and even small business associations. This hurts, but it’s true.”

Three Liberal candidates have quit in the past month.

“[T]oday’s Liberal Party spends an inordinate amount of time talking about institutional politics and policy as opposed to the key role of the citizen as an agent of progress.”

Indeed, it’s more difficult to attract candidates when the reality of forming government seems too distant, but you need to attract candidates that are in it to make the individual lives of citizens better, not for a retirement plum or for a chauffeured car.

“One of our key weaknesses as a national party at present is our distance – physical, emotional, empathetic – from the average lives of citizens.”

Is it a problem of leadership? Of abandoning rural Canada and their concerns?

Is Pearson right? What do you believe plagues the Liberal Party of Canada?