By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 24, 2005; Page C01
In late 1996, veteran CBS foreign correspondent Tom Fenton pitched his network on a plan to use Saudi connections to land an interview with Osama bin Laden.
"Our bosses saw him as an obscure Arab of no interest to our viewers," Fenton says. "More concerned with saving dollars than pursuing the story, they killed the project."
Months later, Fenton says, he sat down with an Arab journalist who had interviewed bin Laden and described his violent designs on America, but "our navel-gazing executives" left that part of the piece "on the cutting-room floor." He says CBS executives asked that all references to bin Laden be cut because the story had "too many foreign names." <snip>
Fenton still has a copy of his 1978 script that CBS would not air after his reporting in Iran convinced him the shah was in trouble. But his New York producers had read more "upbeat" accounts "and did not believe" him. The shah was toppled less than three months later. <snip>
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31306-2005Jan23.html