CBS - CBS CORRESPONDENT KILLED STORY AT PENTAGON'S REQUEST

CBS Pentagon correspondent David Martin acknowledged Monday that he killed a report about how the U.S. was dealing with Improvised Explosive Devices in Iraq after a senior military officer complained that it contained information useful to the enemy. Martin, writing on the CBS blog Public Eye, said that the report had been scheduled to air as the lead story on the CBS Evening News on Thursday and that he pulled it just one hour before airtime. "Not a good career move," he wrote. Martin further acknowledged that he had set aside other stories at the request of the Pentagon "a number of times over the years, and each time it's turned out that going with the story wouldn't have caused any harm." In the latest case, he said, he concluded that his report "might conceivably be news the enemy could use to make their IEDs more effective. It wasn't clear cut, but it was close enough."

21/02/2006