Octavia Nasr Canned at CNN for Twenty Years

Remember Octavia Nasr? She's been the chief Middle East correspondent at CNN for twenty years. Or she was until yesterday.

Over the weekend she tweeted "Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah... One of Hezbollah's giants I respect a lot."




Doing a little sleuthing it seems like it may be slightly overstating things to say he was a member or leader of Hezbollah, more like a spiritual mentor or a cleric closely associated with the movement. In any case, given CNN's record of running for the hills over a lot less, I can't say I'm completely surprised at their decision. And I'm a little surprised she'd tweet that myself. And in the internal memo CNN circulated explaining her termination, a CNN VP wrote, "she fully accepts that she should not have made such a simplistic comment without any context whatsoever."

But a twenty year run down the tubes over 140 characters?

That just doesn't seem right to me.