Views differ on CIA chief’s speech

Embedded video from <a href="http://www.cnn.com/video">CNN Video</a> It’s always interesting to see what news organizations covering the same event choose to emphasize. Take, for example, the coverage of CIA Director Michael Hayden’s speech yesterday on al Qaeda. The New York Times ran with the headline "C.I.A. Chief Says Qaeda Is Extending Its Reach," above a Mark ...

Embedded video from <a href="http://www.cnn.com/video">CNN Video</a>

It’s always interesting to see what news organizations covering the same event choose to emphasize. Take, for example, the coverage of CIA Director Michael Hayden’s speech yesterday on al Qaeda.

The New York Times ran with the headline "C.I.A. Chief Says Qaeda Is Extending Its Reach," above a Mark Mazzetti story focused on how al Qaeda is spreading its tentacles in North Africa, Somalia, and Yemen.

The Washington Post‘s Walter Pincus, writing under the headline "CIA Chief: Iraq Not Main Front," highlighted Hayden’s view that al Qaeda no longer sees Iraq as the central front in the war on terrorism. Think Progress, the blog of the liberal Center for American Progress, jumped on it.

James Joyner, blogging the speech for the Atlantic Council, which hosted the event, was intrigued at Director Hayden’s comment that, "today, virtually every major terrorist threat that my agency is aware of has threads back to the tribal areas [in Pakistan]."

Jason Ryan and Brian Ross of ABC News ran with the angle that Bin Laden is alive, but "appears to be largely isolated from the day-to-day operations" of al Qaeda, according to Hayden. The headline: "CIA Chief: Bin Laden Alive, Worried About ‘Own Security’."

It sure would be nice if the CIA published a transcript on its Web site so that readers could evaluate all of these different points of emphasis in their proper context.

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