Meanwhile, ABC scored a coup when anchor Peter Jennings attended Saddam's court hearing. CBS' Dan Rather reported on the appearance from an outside location.

NBC's Tom Brokaw, who had traveled to Iraq for this week's handover of sovereignty, left Iraq for the United States before the hearing because he was told only a pool reporter would be allowed in, NBC News spokeswoman Allison Gollust said.

CNN's Christiane Amanpour was also in the court hearing. Like Jennings, she received permission from Chalabi, the network said.

John Burns of The New York Times was the pool reporter, in charge of reporting details from the inside to fellow journalists who are not allowed in.

Sadiq Rahim, working for the widely circulated Iraqi newspaper Azzaman, was called a day before to attend the trial but was refused entry minutes before the start of the hearing, said Ahmed Abdul-Majeed, the paper's editor in chief.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=496&e=19&u=/ap/iraq_tv

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Dan Rather, the anchor for CBS News, also sought permission from Mr. Chalabi to be included, Sandy Genelius, a CBS News spokeswoman, said. "We aggressively asked to have a person in the room and we were denied," Ms. Genelius said. Asked if Mr. Rather was upset by being excluded, she said, "Oh, I think you can conclude he was unhappy."

NBC's anchor, Tom Brokaw, was not on the scene yesterday because he left Baghdad on Wednesday. Ms. Gollust said NBC's correspondent in Baghdad, Richard Engel, had attempted to win a place in the courtroom but was unsuccessful.

Those images were taken in the court room by a pool camera supplied by CNN. CBS then had the responsibility for editing the video, under the supervision of United States military officials.

Ms. Genelius said CBS gave a two-minute warning to all other television news outlets that the scenes of Mr. Hussein would be transmitted.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/02/business/media/02MEDI.html?ex=1089345600&en=ca4c5a3bb05b86e3&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE