A senior reporter for CNN slammed Fox News for suggesting that he and other reporters who were given a tour of Muammar Gaddafi's compound in Libya were used as human shields by the Libyan government.
Fox News' defense correspondent, Jennifer Griffin, reported on Monday that the British army had been due to fire seven missiles at Gaddafi's compound. But the attack was held off, she said, because Libya had brought journalists from CNN, Reuters, the AP, the Times of London and other news outlets to the compound for what, in the government's words, was a press tour. According to Griffin, the actual reason for bringing the journalists to the compound was to "effectively use them as human shields."
Speaking to Fox News' John Roberts, Griffin said that Fox News had kept its correspondent in the region, Steve Harrigan, away from the tour because the network was "concerned they could be used as human shields."
In an interview with Wolf Blitzer later on Monday, CNN's senior international correspondent, Nic Robertson, who was one of the reporters on the tour, lashed out at Fox News. He called the report "outrageous and absolutely hypocritical," and said that, when you come to somewhere like Libya, you expect lies and deceit from the dictatorship here. You don't expect it from the other journalists."
He said that Fox News had in fact sent a non-editorial, non-technical member of its team to the tour. And he had harsh words for Harrigan himself. "If they had actually been there, Steve Harrigan the correspondent here is somebody I have known for many years, I see him more times at breakfast than I see him out on trips with government officials here," he said. "...We very rarely see the Fox News team..if I sound angry, it's because I am."
Watch Griffin's report: