CNN reporter rounds on Wolfowitz
A top CNN journalist risked prompting a row with the US government after accusing the deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz of lying and engaging in a “character assassination”.
London-based chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour was robustly defending herself and colleagues after Mr Wolfowitz claimed journalists were reporting the Iraq war badly because they were too "afraid" to travel outside Baghdad.
He told a Congressional committee on Wednesday that one reason so many negative stories come out of Iraq was that "a lot of the press are afraid to travel very much, so they sit in Baghdad and they publish rumours and rumours are plentiful".
But, in a one-to-one dispatch from Baghdad, Ms Amanpour, among the world’s most highly-paid journalists, called the comment a "blatant" misrepresentation.
She said she refused to get into the kind of "character assassination" that Mr Wolfowitz had employed and questioned the deputy defence secretary’s stress levels.
Ms Amanpour, who has also reported on conflicts in, Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, Somalia, Rwanda and the Balkans, added that she and her colleagues travelled in Iraq frequently at "great personal risk".
