"I couldn't believe CNN was making me put what I knew to be government lies into my reporting," journalist Amber Lyon is quoted as saying in Glenn Greenwald's latest column for The Guardian  looking into the punches the news network may have pulled in a segment about Bahrain's crackdown on its opposition. Greenwald looks into the mystery of an unaired documentary entitled "iRevolution: Online Warriors of the Arab Spring" and specifically a 13-minute unaired (but available online) segment on the beginnings of the Bahrain uprising put together by journalist Amber Lyon and her crew. Lyon says that people risked their lives to talk to CNN; that the CNN crew was detained by the Bahraini regime--but CNN International never aired the documentary. And Lyon suspects the decision was in part due to pressure from the Bahraini government. Greenwald writes, "a senior producer emailed Lyon to say: "We are dealing with blowback from Bahrain govt on how we violated our mission, etc." If CNN bent to the pressure from a regime (CNN's responses to Greenwald were curt), then that's a miscarriage of journalism. If you recall in July, The Atlantic's Max Fisher pointed out that CNN curiously gave "effusive" coverage to one of its sponsors--the country of Kazahkstan.

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Alexander Abad-Santos