I know it sounds stupid, but I’m a bit emotionally exhausted from my last post and the responses to it in the four places I’ve posted it. So instead of writing the post I wanted to, I want to take advantage of the fact that I’m a conservative writer with a liberal audience and conduct an informal and unscientific survey which is attempting to test how separate the conservative and liberals sides of the political blogosphere are.
Don’t google it, at least until after you answer. If I say "Eason Jordan CNN Scandal", do you know what I’m talking about?
I waited to write about until more information came out. And now I want to write about it, but don’t want to write anything.
The short version of the story is that CNN director Eason Jordan gave a speech at Davos where he said that American soldiers were targetting journalists. There is some controversy about what exactly was said, though Barney Franks (not exactly a conservative voice) suggests that Jordan really did say such things, and backed off slightly when Franks challenged him. Christopher Dodd and David Gergen also seem to back up the story. There is a tape and a transcript of the speech, but Davos refuses to relase it and CNN has not requested it. It seems to me the issue breaks down as follows.
A) Jordan one of the chiefs at CNN International made a damning charge to some of the most important people in the world.
B) If the charge is true, he is the head of a huge investigative team, why haven’t we heard about it? If it is true, it is a huge story. If it is true, it is something we need to know.
C) If the charge is false, what the hell is he doing making it? A large part of this war is the propaganda game, and that kind of charge can’t help. If the head of news division makes a statement like that at Davos, it means something. If he can’t defend the charge he really shouldn’t be saying it. If it isn’t true all he has done is feed into anti-American sentiment.
D) The controversy about what he actually said is easily resolveable. A media corporation should understand the need for transparency or they look like idiots next time they call for an important document to be released to the public.
Comprehensive reading on this can be found by reading up and down the main page at CaptainsQuarterBlog. See especially this post for a start
If I say “Eason CNN Scandal”, do you know what I’m talking about?
Sure. Eason is a CNN editor/executive/whatever who claimed that journalists are being intentionally targeted by the US military. Read about it on Orcinus. They had Ann Coulter’s take on it (looking it up now):
Yeah I know what you are talking about. I’m not sure it’s a scandal, but I know of which you speak.
Do you know what I’m talking about when I talk about “false claims of WMD leading the US into war and occupation of another country?”
And, which is worse?
Also, let’s shed a tear for the journalists who have actually died in the war, and maybe investigate those issues, and not just play political ping-pong.
riffle
I know about about it because I try to check instapundit every couple of days, mostly for the purpose of finding out what the conservative blogs are mad about right now.
I don’t watch CNN, FNC, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC.
I don’t read Times, Post, Newsweek, or Time
I don’t listen to Rush, Savage, or Air America
I do read my conservative Dallas Morning News, in order of close reading, Sports,Business,Local,National,Entertainment,Editorial
I do follow links of Yahoo, personalized, which are mostly AP and Reuters
I do follow blogs as aggregators and filters, and sometimes follow links, especially to technical or professional papers. However link to the Times or Post or Nation or Standard and I will likely skip it. Link to the Economist. maybe.
I am very tired of hearing about which side the press is mistreating;whatever filthy malevolent bias may exist, it is far outweighed by the incompetence, slack, irresponsibilty and general worthlessness of MSM.
This is like watching the players argue with the refs at an NBA game. Boring and irrelevant. No offense.
Fire the dude I had never heard of. Or whatever.
To answer your questions – no, I don’t know who Easton Jordan is, nor do I care.
Why? Let me bastardize your four questions, if I may:
Premise: SecDef Rumsfeld said on national TV (Meet the Press, IIRC) that Iraq had WMDs and we knew where thay were.
A. Rumsfeld is head of the most powerful military in the world. He says that another nation is violating numerous UN resolutions as well as the Gulf War I treaty. If it is true, it is a huge story.
B. If true, there are numbers of inspectors in the country with unlimited access that can verify his claims. Why has he not told them about his information so that they can verify it?
C. If the charge is false, what the hell is he doing making it? A large part of this war is the propaganda game. (Actually, I think I answered my own question)
D. The controversy about what he actually said is easily resolveable. Indeed.
So to be frank, I don’t care what a CNN employee said about whatever. And if my senario does not call for an internal investigation I don’t see why some remarks by Easton Jordan at some place I’ve never heard of should either.
Have I heard about Easongate? You bet. The secret transcript is right here. What happens in Davos, stays at Davos.
If I say “Eason Jordan CNN Scandal”, do you know what I’m talking about?
Yes: but I know because I read about it on Body and Soul.
The “scandal” of Eason Jordon pointing out that US forces have killed 12 journalists, and the right-wing blogosphere leaping on it and twisting his words to manufacture outrage, is very reminiscent of the “scandal” manufactured when Eason Jordan said in an interview that CNN had sometimes had (very responsibly) to keep quiet about atrocities they’d witnessed under Saddam Hussein’s regime, in order to protect the Iraqis who would have suffered had CNN reported them.
It would appear that the right-wing blogosphere really doesn’t like CNN. While I’ve never watched it, this makes me suspect that CNN is far too accurate, honest, and responsible, about reporting for regular FoxNews devotees to be able to enjoy their nightly news.
Is this piece of research concerned with Americans only? If not, then please note that I never heard of this particular Jordan or his speech.
The comparison Fledermaus makes with Rumsfeld is interesting. Why the disparity in levels of outrage? My guess is that Rumsfeld’s unfounded claim is seen as an attempt to promote American interests, like the story Bismarck told in order to get the Franco-Prussian war underway.
So the gripe is not that the media are dishonest, but that their dishonesty is not always patriotic, as the Bismarcks and Rumsfelds of this world understand patriotism. (Of course that charge cannot be directed at the likes of Judith Miller.)
Is that what is bothering Instahack and the like?
Should I be embarrassed to say that I haven’t followed this story at all?
Doug M.
Should I be embarrassed to say that I haven’t followed this story at all?
Only 12 journalists have been killed so far.
The “scandal” of Eason Jordon pointing out that US forces have killed 12 journalists, and the right-wing blogosphere leaping on it and twisting his words to manufacture outrage, is very reminiscent of the “scandal” manufactured when Eason Jordan said in an interview that CNN had sometimes had (very responsibly) to keep quiet about atrocities they’d witnessed under Saddam Hussein’s regime, in order to protect the Iraqis who would have suffered had CNN reported them.
Distortions abound, Jes. A reporter, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and David Gergen confirmed that Jordan accused the U.S. military of deliberately killing journalists. CNN didn’t hush up Saddam’s atrocities to protect Iraqis, they did it because they wanted to keep their Baghdad bureau.
For extra added fun, who else has heard of the softball-tossing White House Press Corps reporter who recently quit his job after being discovered faking his credentials, and who might, among other things, actually be a pr0n webmaster?
Geez, I was wondering what on God’s green earth you were bringing up that old scandal for. I reject Chas assertion here. Here is what the WaPo says about David Gergen’s quote
It also points out the following:
Hugh Hewitt and Michelle Malkin (sorry, no linking, I’m not going to give them any bloglove, no sirree). Is that who you (generic you) want to keep company with?
Ironic really, crackpot liberal newshead attempts to start ridiculous rumor results in feeding frenzy amidst the blogosphere to bring the big dog down. Woof!
I just watch Control Room a couple of days ago, and there does not seem to be to many doubts in Al-Jazzera’s mind about the fact that their employees were targetted by the military.
LJ, you have two Democratic Senators who were flabbergasted by what Jordan said, a reporter (MacKinnon) with ties to CNN who confirmed it and you have a Wall Street Journal member who was in the audience:
Of course, Jordan could clear the whole up by getting the videotape. As for Jordan’s history of CNN in Iraq, John Burns is no slouch:
Bird Dog: Distortions abound, Jes.
Indeed they do, don’t they? Especially when it’s the right-wing blogosphere reporting on Eason Jordan. Odd, that, isn’t it?
Had I heard of it? Of course. I try to keep up with the right side of the blogosphere as much as I can stomach. A lot of it I find to be ridiculous, but sometimes I completely agree with them. On this? Seems irresponsible, but I never watch CNN, so I don’t have much of a stake. General incompetence and cowardice seems to be a far greater factor affecting news coverage than ideology, though, so I’m far more interested in on-air output than someone saying something stupid in conversation and then retracting it, because we all know H.H. and M.M. have never done that. Well, at least the retracting it part.
I think the E. Jordan thing is such a cause celebre because many responsible right-wingers just can’t bear to look at the dishonest, anti-conservative ruin of a budget that Bush has just squeezed out onto Congress’ desk,or the bizarrely expensive and ineffectual social security “reform” Bush has been mealy-mouthing* (to say nothing of the increasingly disturbing Gitmo allegations noted by Hilzoy below). Nobody who claims to be a small-government conservative can honestly defend what Bush is currently pushing, so they look for things like this to get excited about.
Not that Sebastian is in any way wrong in his observations – if Jordan has proof that U.S. troops are intentionally targeting journalists, he should break the story RIGHT NOW, and not just use it to wow the international liberal clique at Davos. If he can’t prove it, then he should probably be fired, if it turns out he explicitly made the charge (and it sounds from the witness accounts like he did).
But I think current zone-flooding on the starboard side is due to the fact that there is not a lot to be proud of Bush for right now. But I’m just a stupid liberal and I hate America, so who cares what I think.
*no comment on whether or not SS reform in general is a good idea; just that Bush’s trillion-dollar half-plan that won’t even address the long-term solvency issue ain’t the right plan from any perspective.
Al Jazeera makes the same claim in Control Room regarding the death of Tariq Ayoub. Have any of the righty blogs been successful in debunking Al Jazeera’s claims? Here’s what Ayoub’s home newspaper said about the matter.
Sorry, but I did not hear that story. But will check it out.
LJ, you have two Democratic Senators who were flabbergasted by what Jordan said, a reporter (MacKinnon) with ties to CNN who confirmed it and you have a Wall Street Journal member who was in the audience:
OK, Chas, enjoy Hewitt and Malkin’s company. I would say you guys deserve each other, but that would really be uncalled for.
Sorry, but this was unscripted. Gergen was the moderator and I quoted what he said. Also, the WaPo article has the following
link
I love the way you invoke the Wall Street Journal without noting that it is the op-ed page (which, in Salon’s words is a “a cauldron of unethical journalism”) or that the piece was by WSJ member Bret Stephens, who was editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post when the newspaper chose Paul Wolfowitz as Man of the Year. But he was there, I’m sure that he would be truthful, right?
Also, thanks for the 2003 John Burns article. Nothing like up to the minute news. (yeah, I know, you are ‘presenting a pattern’ and giving some ‘historical background’ showing the ‘systematic bias’. Fortunately, no one could complain about Hewitt and Malkin in that regard, eh?)
nope. never heard of him.
but, i assume that he speaks for me and everyone else who disagrees with anything W has ever done, and that he is a perfect reflection of our opinions and attitudes. so please, feel free to repudiate him and all he says, thereby crushing the Wicked Left once and for all.
‘Grieving Journalist Accuses US Forces; RW Blogosphere Goes Insane with Rage’
‘Fake Journalist Was Given Classified Documents by White House to Expose CIA Operative; RW Blogosphere Leaps to His Defense”
A lot of posters here have a problem, for some reason, taking the RW blogs seriously on matters of law, professional ethics and national security. Gosh, I wonder why?
Oh, yeah –
RW Blogosphere Declares Iraqis Insufficiently Grateful for US Invasion; Suggests ‘Kill Them All”
‘Abuse, Torture and Murder at Abu Ghraib: RW Blogosphere Says ‘No There Wasn’t, But If There Was, Who Cares?”
That’s why.
I hadn’t heard about it; but then this is the only blog I read at all regularly anymore, and I don’t consume much other news apart from scanning headlines, so AFAIC, if you folks don’t mention it, it hasn’t happened.
I knew about it but was glad to read [i]Body and Soul[/i]s comprehensive review. My impression is that Jordan got angry about the term “collateral damage” and went too far the other way to counter what he felt was a callous disregard for the journalists’ deaths.
Like some others on this thread, I think the more important issue regarding the MSM is how its corporate mindset, ratings lust, and personality-driven drivel is hurting all of us, across the political spectrum.
It’s probably impossible, when moderates and liberals I support haven’t been in power since I started blogging, to assure someone like Charles that if “my guys” were in charge I would be just as frustrated and angry – and vocal about it – if they had done any of the things for which I criticize the Bush administration.
But I would be — and I’m increasingly confused by smart, decent people who seem (at least to me) to be pointing accusingly at the dog pooping on the front lawn while simultaneously ignoring the abuse going on inside the house; either because they don’t want to face the abuse or — worse — because they just want to “win” and they need everyone else to be distracted.
That’s why Sebastian’s post was so refreshing and heartening. He and I don’t agree on many, many things — but he is willing to criticize those he supports if he feels it’s important to do so — and he picks the big issues, rather than getting waylaid (or choosing to be) by lesser stories.
No, don’t know what you’re talking about.
Oh, the thing where one journalist said Coalition forces were targetting journalists, then retracted it. Read about it on Suburban Guerila, but the name didn’t stick in my mind.
War sucks. When you get hit by a bullet you generally don’t care which army shot at you, just that it hurts. Did I mention that war sucks?
Seb: yes, I have. I haven’t tried to follow it, but that’s mostly because I ran across first the accusations, then some of the more detailed accounts listed above, and filed it under ‘person just back from war zone loses it’. It probably helps that my opinion of CNN is such that neither a “gasp, someone from CNN said something idiotic!” nor “CNN must have a liberal bias!” was in the cards. (I.e., I think they’re equal opportunity bad.)
Did you know about this memo? “Message guru and former MSNBC contributor Frank Luntz says in a confidential memo to Hill leaders that Williams has emerged as the “go-to network anchor” because of his brains and “lack of detectable ideological bias.” Luntz credits NBC Executive Producer Steve Capus for “a flawless transition to a new generation of news anchor.” Still, Fox and CNN lead the nets when it comes to GOP loyalty.”
Of course, Jordan could clear the whole up by getting the videotape.
I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again: that’s charmingly naive of you, Chas.
[Not that I disagree with you that that should clear things up… but I’ll bet you dollars to donuts it wouldn’t.]
I’d heard about it — can’t say that I think it’s all that huge a deal. During the initial month or two of the war, I remember thinking that the death-toll among journalists was stunning: while I haven’t, and didn’t then, done the math to see if this was actually true, it seemed to me that the death rate among journalists, per journalist in the war zone, had to have been higher than among US soldiers. This kind of thing would naturally tend to disturb and upset other journalists, and to the extent that the journalist death-toll was unusually high compared to other wars, would invite theories about what had changed — perhaps there was, in fact, more aiming at journalists than has historically been the norm.
Whatever accusation Jordan made, you’ve divided the possibilities into true, so we should have seen it published with proof, or false, so Jordan should not have said whatever he said because it’s a lie. Aren’t you leaving out the possibility of tue but insufficiently proven to publish? Or false but supported by persuasive evidence? Whatever it was he said, he said it to a small, expert skeptical audience — I can’t get all that excited about this.
had heard the basic outlines. filed it under people say stupid stuff, then retract. given the discussions about the fog of war on this blog, it seems odd that SH finds this to be a binary issue.
Francis
Yes, I pick up this stuff from either conservative blogs (Redstate) or from liberal blogs responding to conservative outrage over same.
I’m exhausted, too.
Sebastian, I am curious as to your conclusion about this thread and its answer(s) to your test question.
No. Never heard of it before.
So Ward Churchill and Jordan Eason are the big deals on right-wing blogs? Good sense of proportion there.
This is a fun game. 😉
Pop over to Atrios and read his 8:53 a.m post about the estimable Marian Kester Coombs.
Who knew what and when?
I’ll trade you one Ward Churchill and a player to be named later for the Washington Times and Ann Coulter. I think I’ll get the best of the deal — I get two very effective, full-time, every day position haters for a low minor leaguer who may be coaching third base in Pougkeepsie soon.
This is a test.
This is only a test.
Had there been any point to be made other than that CNN is clearly biased against America, you would have been provided with further instructions.
This concludes the test of the Conservative Blogosphere Information Feed.
Well, if the question is whether liberals had heard about the ‘scandal’, I think the clear answer is that most had.
Not even in jest, Ann. I’ve been probably more tolerant of Coulter’s antics than I ought to have been, because I’d been of the mindset that it was counter-invective. But stuff like this just has no place in the world of journalism. No publisher ought to continue paying writers who say this sort of thing in public. And if you’re of the opinion that invective doesn’t really serve any sort of useful purpose (other than stoking some sort of primal fist-pumping need), then counter-invective doesn’t have a place, either.
So, this: I haven’t read Coulter since she was dismissed by National Review (which, by the way, was fairly close to the point where I stopped reading National Review on a regular basis), and have never really cared for that kind of journalism to begin with. I don’t normally bother to comment on what she says, but when things like this are brought to my attention, I feel like I’ve got to underscore it with: she doesn’t represent me in any way. Hopefully she doesn’t represent ANYONE, in any way.
“Well, if the question is whether liberals had heard about the ‘scandal’, I think the clear answer is that most had.”
I had only heard about it because of vague references in lefty sites leading to a direct “Here’s all the righty blogs are talking about and there’s nothing there there currently” remark somewhere. I sort of assumed the guy behind CNN must be on the other side and that I’d hear about it if passed the “person says what sounds like a dumb thing” stage or hit the NYT.
Incidentally, I thought there was a well-publicized instance of a hotel full of journalists getting mortared by us in what seemed at the time likely to be a case in point…
It sounds like most of you have heard of it, though an odd version of it. So I guess that is good.
But just to clarify, Barney Franks (a liberal Democrat senator) was shocked by the assertion that journalists were being targeted for death by the US military. NOT that they were subject to being among those in who die accidentaly in war.
I find it important because Eason Jordan is the head of CNN’s international news reporting and he made the statement at the Davos conference where many of the most important European leaders gather. The statement feeds directly into anti-American sentiment among some of the highest leaders.
SH, my question is, So is there any evidence of truth in the claim? Is he a righty? Is he getting booted? Is CNN covering the story?
yeah, my questions are.
OK, Sebastian: to answer your main question first: No, I did not know about “Easongate” until I read it here at ObWi.
Now that I have followed the story via the various links provided, I am more familiar with the issue, and, to put it plainly, underwhelmed. As I see it, the whole “scandal” boils down to:
1. Eason Jordan, at Davos, makes a dumb statement about “Coalition forces targeting journalists”.
2. Barney Frank calls him on it, Jordan retracts and clarifies to say he did not mean “deliberately target”
3. Right-wings bloggers work themselves up into a frenzy of self-righteous indidgnation; instant “scandal” (complete with idiotic “-gate” suffix) results.
4. Issue of journalist casualties in Iraq gets buried under blog-blizzard of accusations, defenses, counter-accusations, and overblown rhetoric.
Just another day in the blogosphere.
FWIW, Seb: I agree with you, if there are records of Eason Jordan’s comments which would clear this matter up, they should be released: but otherwise I will second st’s recommendation in his 8:26 post.
I know it sounds stupid, but I’m a bit emotionally exhausted from my last post and the responses to it in the four places I’ve posted it.
I meant to say: I don’t think this sounds stupid at all. I read the comments to this on RedState, and here, and I’m unsurprised that you’re emotionally exhausted: you’re entitled.
Perhaps I should wait a few days and ask if the folks across the aisle have heard about the views of a journalist at the Washington Times.
I remember hearing something about the premise and I think I saw a Day by Day cartoon about it yesterday, but Muir didn’t even mention a name.
More importantly, Slarti, that’s exactly right. Coulter is a &(*$&#(*#(&$(*#&$(*#@&(@&#(*$ that speaks for noone I know.
Read about it on various blogs. At this point (see the prior post from hilzoy) I’m finding myself unable to reject claims like Eason’s out of hand. I’m just sayin’.
Minor point, Sebastian: Barney Frank is a liberal Democratic Congressman, not a Senator. And rilkefan, the link in your 11:37 post was bum (for me anyway, AOL-slave).
rilkefan, my reaction to that link is “what an insecure imperialist rabid bitca”. May she be forever afflicted with recalcitrant, steroid-immune eczema. Or maybe psoriasis.
Slart: your sentiments on Coulter. Ditto mine on Ward Churchill. But you should know that I, for one, never believe Coulter and ilk represent any conservative blogger at Obsidian Wings.
The questions are: She does represent. As do the founders of the Washington Times. Who do they represent and why does the representation continue to occur?
One quibble. What Coulter does is not journalism, just as what Churchill does is not scholarship.
One other question. Why does Kudlow (again, no journalism in sight) interview Coulter? Why does he not interview Von or Sebastian on their largely faulty but civil views on Social Security reform, or Katherine on the legal spaghetti regarding torture?
As usual, that’s more than one question.
Quite right on Frank. Not a Senator. Still quite liberal.
Eason didn’t retract. He said he couldn’t offer evidence on any specific case.
“So is there any evidence of truth in the claim? Is he a righty? Is he getting booted? Is CNN covering the story?”
I think the question of evidence of the truth of the claim is exactly the point. If there is, CNN should be reporting it. If there isn’t, Jordan shouldn’t be making such assertions at the freaking Davos conference.
rilkefan, my reaction to that link is “what an insecure imperialist rabid bitca”.
Bitca! Buffy fans, unite!
Fearnot, though, Sebastian — if Thomas Sowell gets his way, we won’t have the perfidious, traitorous likes of Eason Jordan to contend with anymore.
Sebastian,
First, thank you for the Extraordinary Rendition thread, and my thanks to Katherine for her long and excellent work.
To answer your question directly, yes, I had read it. I’m not sure where I first saw it, possibly following a link from a comment thread on Political Animal.
I have no opinion as to whether either Eason Jordan’s comments or the reaction to them is justified. I saw Control Room so I was familiar with the case of Tariq Ayoub as presented by al-Jazeera.
I have to say, though, that the possibility that we might target journalists is at least plausible. After all, if we are willing ourselves to torture, and abet torture via extraordinary rendition, why not? This is a war for hearts and minds, so controlling the coverage could be thought vital to success.
I hope it is not true. I fear it may be based on what we have already learned about torture.
Jay C: “And rilkefan, the link in your 11:37 post was bum (for me anyway, AOL-slave).”
AOL doesn’t allow access to the Southern Poverty Law Center???
Anyway, I stole the link from Atrios if you want to read the gist, which is that the wife of the editor of the WaTimes is a vile bigot who broadcasts her poison in the newspaper.
“I have no opinion as to whether either Eason Jordan’s comments or the reaction to them is justified. ”
I don’t really have an opinion on whether or not his comments were justified either, because they won’t release the tape so I can’t judge the comments. But I’m pretty sure that Barney Frank isn’t going around looking for liberal bias at CNN, so if he was shocked I suspect that there may be something to it. But I find the idea that the tapes aren’t being released amazing considering that CNN makes requests for such things all the time and like all news media get very huffy when people won’t comply with their requests.
How about the neocon voice at the NYT saying on air that we’re picking the cabinet of the new Iraqi govt.? Is there a scandal about that beyond Okrent and Atrios et al?
Do I know what you’re talking about when you say ‘Eason Jordan scandal’? Sure. But only because I have too much time on my hands at the moment and I’m spending too much of it reading these type of blogs.
If I had relied on only the TV news I’ve been watching lately I wouldn’t have a clue. (I suspect if I tuned into Fox more often I would have heard how CNN is accusing our troups of assasinating reporters)
I would suspect that a man in the street survey would yield less than a 10% recognition rate. Probably about the same as ‘Ward Churchill’ and a order of magnitude more than ‘Jeff Gannon’. Ironic considering Gannon had a TV audience of millions while Ward and Jordan had a audience of … what… a couple hundred?
Sebastian: But I find the idea that the tapes aren’t being released amazing considering that CNN makes requests for such things all the time…
I am not by nature a cynical person, but I am past the point of finding anything amazing, especially including hypocrisy.
I certainly agree that the tape should be made public.
rilkefan:
Apparently, AOL, or someone does have a problem with the SPLC, since I have gotten a “500 Servelet Error” message every time I have tried to get in, your link, Google, or directly.
Anyway, I’ll take your word for that
“…the wife of the editor of the WaTimes is a vile bigot who broadcasts her poison in the newspaper.”
Gee, the Washington Times… who’d ‘a thunk it!!
she doesn’t represent me in any way. Hopefully she doesn’t represent ANYONE, in any way.
I don’t think your hopes are justified. She clearly has a substantial following – probably at least four orders of magnitude greater than Ward Churchill’s.
Never heard of it. Belgravia, Outside the Beltway, & Volokh are the only rightie blogs I can stomach any more.
OK, Chas, enjoy Hewitt and Malkin’s company. I would say you guys deserve each other, but that would really be uncalled for.
Where again did I link to Hewitt and Malkin? Oh yeah, I didn’t. As for my using the Bret Stephens link, it was an eyewitness account and it was consistent with the others made. Ad hominems don’t apply here, LJ. I included the link to the 2003 Burns piece because it shows that Jordan has exercised seriously questionable judgment more than once as an executive of one of the largest cable news networks on the planet.
re rilkefan’s link, the Southern Poverty Law center doesn’t seem to have a lot of bandwidth, so you may have to retry a few times.
Look, this may seem like spinning coming from a guy with my handle, but Dodd and Franks were in the _audience_, listening to unscripted comments. I don’t know about y’all, but I’ve never been at a conference where I’ve been attentive to everyone’s words, and fully parsed and analyzed them in real time so that I had a perfect idea of exactly what was said. The notion that because they are *Democrats* so therefore if they condemn this, obviously, this is what Jordan said makes no sense. It may be hard to believe, but politicians can summon outrage, regardless whether they are Republicans or Democrats. (reason #1435 that I will never be a politician) If I were Franks or Dodd and I thought I heard someone say something like that, I would complain about it too, and I see no reason why Franks or Dodd feels a need to protect CNN.
As for releasing the tapes, Davos has always had a very strong policy of keeping everything off the record to allow unfettered discussions
link
Could Eason just release the clip of what he said? Probably, but this notion that it’s just a question of Eason saying ok seems to be misguided.
Look, maybe he said it. Maybe he believes it. Maybe he believes that there are specially trained hit squads who are targetting journalists specifically. But leaping on this given the evidence that you have, compared with the reams and reams of evidence we have in regards to torture and extraordinary rendition really seems unbalanced.
You know, I made exactly this argument (although not as compactly stated) a while back, and was jumped on by JadeGold, who insisted that she was, in fact, a journalist. Odd, I thought. But I agree with you 100%, John.
Bernard: you’re certainly correct from a standpoint of name recognition (prior to the last week or two), but I wouldn’t care to speculate as to what fraction of the populace their respective viewpoints represents. I’d hope that Coulter doesn’t in fact wish that journalists in Iraq ought to be killed, and I’d guess that Churchill actually believes the WTC victims were in any way responsible for their own deaths. Which makes him the viler of the two, IMO, by quite a stretch.
YMMV, though.
Where again did I link to Hewitt and Malkin? Oh yeah, I didn’t.
Chas
I specifically mentioned Hewitt and Malkin in my post. You answered my post, so I assumed you read it. My bad.
You also flogged a WSJ op-ed by Bret Stephens whose previous work is a little lacking. I’m sorry you think that is ad hom, but ‘oh, he was an eyewitness’ doesn’t automatically prove someone’s veracity.
I included the link to the 2003 Burns piece because it shows that Jordan has exercised seriously questionable judgment more than once as an executive of one of the largest cable news networks on the planet.
I included that selection of links to Stephen’s work because it shows that [insert name] has exercised seriously questionable judgment more than once as an [insert position here]. Why is it ok when you do it, but not when I do it?
Sebastian — you say that Jordan didn’t retract.
from the WaPo article (I’m quoting at length because it all applies):
Jordan denied that last night, saying he had been responding to Frank’s comment that the 63 journalists who have been killed in Iraq were “collateral damage” in the war. “I was trying to make a distinction between ‘collateral damage’ and people who got killed in other ways,” Jordan said last night. “I have never once in my life thought anyone from the U.S. military tried to kill a journalist. Never meant to suggest that. Obviously I wasn’t as clear as I should have been on that panel.”
In some of the cases, “with the benefit of hindsight, had more care been taken, maybe this could have been avoided,” Jordan said, referring to shootings that involved mistaken identity. But, he said, “it’s a war zone. Terrible things happen.”
Two other panelists backed Jordan’s account. David Gergen, editor at large at U.S. News & World Report, said he “sort of gasped” when Jordan spoke of journalists being “deliberately killed,” but that Jordan “realized, as soon as he said it, he’d gone too far” and “walked it back.” Jordan then expressed “a very deep concern about whether our soldiers on the ground level are using as much care as they should” when journalists are involved, said Gergen, who moderated the discussion.
BBC World Services Director Richard Sambrook, in a note to New York University journalism professor and blogger Jay Rosen, said Jordan was objecting to the phrase “collateral damage.”
“He clarified this comment to say he did not believe they were targeted because they were journalists, although there are others in the media community who do hold that view (personally, I don’t),” Sambrook wrote. “They had been deliberately killed as individuals — perhaps because they were mistaken for insurgents, we don’t know. However the distinction he was seeking to make is that being shot by a sniper, or fired at directly is very different from being, for example, accidentally killed by an explosion.”
Just a suggestion, Jay C: ditch the AOL. Welcome to the twenty-first century.
“I’d hope that Coulter doesn’t in fact wish that journalists in Iraq ought to be killed”
I suspect your hopes are misplaced. This is a person (term used loosely) who stated she wished September 11 happened to the NY Times building, and who claimed all liberals are guilty of treason, after all. At the very least, she has a history of making such vile comments.
The more I think about it, the more this irritates me. The WaPo article I quoted seems to ratchet this whole thing down from “scandal” to “poor choice of words.” So once again, we’re back to “John Kerry Said Mary Cheney Was A Lesbian!! (sshh — don’t mention our candidate’s mistakes and poor debate performance).”
And for those who are screaming for the Davos tape or transcript, I’ll take you much more seriously when you give equal space and time to screaming for the names and information from Cheney’s Energy Policy meetings way back at the start of the first term.
Slarti
I’d hope that Coulter doesn’t in fact wish that journalists in Iraq ought to be killed, and I’d guess that Churchill actually believes the WTC victims were in any way responsible for their own deaths.
This is not a point scoring thing, I really want to know. Why does Ann get the benefit of the doubt but Churchill doesn’t? I suspect that the answer might be in the shape of this
felix – I saw that little spot on its first airing.
She was ENTIRELY tongue in cheek.
It was actually kind of funny. Im pretty sure that she made a follow up joke saying that the only network that would have to worry would be Fox too… you know – fox having the only real journalists.
Allot of what Anne says (actually pretty much all of it) reads TERRIBLY, but if you see the delivery its kind of comical.
if someone can lexis/nexis the actual transcript – I believe this happened right at the end of the show (and for the life of me I cant remember which day it was)
Id love to see if my memory about this quote being slightly out of context is true.
I find it important because Eason Jordan is the head of CNN’s international news reporting and he made the statement at the Davos conference where many of the most important European leaders gather. The statement feeds directly into anti-American sentiment among some of the highest leaders.
Sebastian-
You know, this is related, I think, to something that you and all the liberal commenters arguing with you (me amongst them) were getting stuck on back in the Useful Distinctions thread. (I’m going to characterize your reaction, here — I don’t mean to be offensive or presumptuous, I’m just trying to check and see if I understand your thinking. If I’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick, please correct me.)
This seems like no big deal to me: Jordan made his accusations that US soldiers targeted journalists, however exactly they were phrased, to a private gathering; Frank spoke up and made it clear that Jordan had no hard evidence supporting the allegations; the audience could take them for what they were worth. At the end of the exchange, everyone knew what Jordan thought, and that his basis for his beliefs was factually no better than sketchy. No one is misled.
You (and I’m guessing all the other right-wing bloggers who are excited about this) think that Jordan’s statements are important, and importantly wrongful, because saying bad things about the US increases anti-Americanism, which is a very bad thing. Bad things should only be said about the US or those acting for it when they are impeccably factually supported and important enough that they really must be said. If people don’t make damaging allegations against the US, then the world climate of opinion will be more favorable to the US, and this will have significant good effects. Generally, anyone who says anything against the US should be perfectly certain of their facts and careful to phrase their remarks in the fashion least damaging to the US, or you will consider them (illegitimate? an enemy of the US? outside the realm of decent discourse?).
This covers your feelings about AI as well — while you don’t generally disagree with their facts (as far as I can tell), you think that their delivery, media emphasis, etc. lends support to anti-Americanism, and that this effect is strong enough to render AI generally a bad thing, and not a respectable source of information.
If I’ve characterized your feelings correctly (or close enough to be recognizable), I disagree. I want the US to be loved and respected overseas, but I don’t think message discipline is a practical or well advised route to that end. We do some bad things, and many good ones, and we can’t possibly or effectively keep people from talking about the bad things we’ve done, or speculating about bad things we may have done — in the end, world opinion of the US will rest on our behavior, not on Eason Jordan’s speculations about what US troops may have done. Further, I don’t think that Jordan’s willingness to believe that US troops did something very bad means that he is in any way generally opposed to the best interests of the US.
Ah, the always-popular “I was just kidding” defense. Something tells me its applicability is not universal, and that one’s propensity to cut people slack under the IWJK defense corresponds with the overlap between political sensibilities. Usually, though, it’s just a post hoc justification after being called on outrageous and offensive crap.
Opus — It’s too late. The meme is out there. And once people do start seeing what Jordan actually said, he’ll then be accused of using “weasel words” without specifically “denouncing” or “retracting.” The opinion is expressed, and it is decreed by the Outrageosphere that Jordan must own it no matter what he actually said.
I don’t dispute that at all.
Some things can’t be made funny by anything, including witty delivery.
LJ: possibly. But neither of them gets the benefit of a doubt, just to be clear.
Lizardbreath, calling the Davos conference ‘a private gathering’ is really dismissive.
“The WaPo article I quoted seems to ratchet this whole thing down from “scandal” to ‘poor choice of words.'”
Hey, the fact that Jordan has now retracted is great. He apparently didn’t retract at the meeting which is important (I say apparently because of course he won’t release the tape so I can’t be sure). And if there hadn’t been the current publicity, a large part of his audience would still have the impression that one of the head honchos at one of the main international new sources believed that the US was targeting journalists. So mission accomplished.
But see Kaus on the subject which includes:
It appears to me (once again appears because of the lack of a released tape) that what happened is this:
A) Jordan said that the US military was targeting journalists in front of a mostly European audience which includes some of the most powerful men in the world.
B) Some Americans objected and asked why he thought that.
C) Jordan backpedaled slightly by suggesting that targeting journalists was not official US military policy–phrasing which of course suggests that it might be unofficial policy. That interpretation of the phrasing is bolstered by the speculation which follows.
D) Apparently it was quite possible to leave the meeting believing that Jordan thought there was evidence that US soldiers were targeting journalists.
E) There was a lot of pressure from the blogosphere regarding the issue.
F) Two weeks later Jordan finally clarified that he didn’t mean it–a good clarification though one which many of the Europeans in the audience will probably never see, so we must certainly hope that they didn’t recieve the message the way some of the liberal Americans who attended did.
She was ENTIRELY tongue in cheek.
It was actually kind of funny
I don’t see the humor in advocating the killing of journalists. Perhaps you could explain the joke to me?
BTW, I was inartful when I called this post “This is a Test”. It isn’t a test in the sense of “do you stupid liberals know when something important is going on” it was a test of how divided the left and right halves of the blogosphere are. On the right this story is EVERYWHERE. I think if you read even two major to moderately influential right-oriented blogs you would have come across it. On the left boards I normally read, it was nowhere. So I wanted to see if my impression of it being nowhere was correct. Apparently it isn’t nowhere on the left, though it seems to have been rather scarce. No insult intended.
Would “non-public” be better? I didn’t mean to suggest that Davos was unimportant, but that it was literally out of the public eye. Davos has rules about proceedings remaining off the record for this exact reason — to encourage uncensored, untrammeled expression of the participants’ thoughts.
On the right this story is EVERYWHERE.
And on the left, or at least on the left- and left-leaning blogs I read, the main stories are Social Security and extraordinary rendition. Hey, nice to know where the right’s priorities are!
. . . he said, tongue only partially in cheek.
Not to belabor an already well-beaten point, but…I’ve not seen mediaresearch.org issue a CyberAlert on Coulter’s latest. Searching MRC’s website, it seems the only times Coulter’s mentioned is when someone is criticising her, not when she’s engaging in over-the-top rhetoric.
I know, big surprise. But it seems to me that we on the Right ought to be reigning in and disavowing the Coulters; many of us have berated those on the Left for failure to do likewise. I know: mote, beam, etc.
“Davos has rules about proceedings remaining off the record for this exact reason — to encourage uncensored, untrammeled expression of the participants’ thoughts.”
That is the official reason why they won’t release the tape. But you have to understand that it doesn’t make things better. If ‘off the record’ a CNN International head is willing to make a statement to a group which includes some of the most powerful European decision-makers that quite a few non-conservatives interpret as strongly suggesting that journalists are being targeted by the US military, that isn’t a good thing at all. If the uncensored thought of Jordan is that he should share that with people that isn’t good at all. He is now retracting, which is good. But apparently it was quite possible to leave that meeting and have the impression that the head of one of the most prominent international news services believed that the US military was targeting journalists.
Note that my interpretation is supported even by Kurtz’s very friendly article:
Both of these comments were made by Democratic Congressmen AFTER the alleged back-pedaling in the conference.
I didn’t recognise the name when I saw it, but recognised the story when described.
On Coulter, she didn’t actually say she wished the 9/11 attackers had targeted the NYT building, but Timothy McVeigh. More chillingly, she suggested that his choice of target was her “one regret” about his bombing in Oklahoma City.
As for the “It was a joke!” defense, I am normally very open to this, but jokes are required to be funny. Coulter’s liberal-killing “jokes” are about as funny as nigger and paki killing jokes, to my mind. And I’d feel the same way if the target were folks on the right too, yes.
If ‘off the record’ a CNN International head is willing to make a statement to a group which includes some of the most powerful European decision-makers that quite a few non-conservatives interpret as strongly suggesting that journalists are being targeted by the US military, that isn’t a good thing at all. If the uncensored thought of Jordan is that he should share that with people that isn’t good at all.
This goes back to my earlier post — what makes you think that’s an important bad thing? Do you think that Jordan’s belief that (based on whatever evidence he has, clearly not enough to publish) that US troops targeted journalists (to whatever extent he actually said that) shows that he is an enemy of the US, and is working to injure America, and as such he should be removed from any position of power? If so, I disagree, I don’t think it shows anything of the kind.
Do you think that expressing this belief before an audience of world leaders is likely to have damaged their opinion of the US significantly enough that it should not have been said? I very much doubt it — there is reliable evidence that the US has done worse things than target journalists (i.e., torturing prisoners); I can’t see this allegation shifting world opinion of the US significantly.
I’m not just trying to be combative here — I genuinely have trouble understanding what about this is, in any important sense “not a good thing at all”. I know it seems self-evident to you, but believe me when I say that what’s bothering you about it does not clearly cross ideological lines: is there any way you can explain, on a very elementary level, what was so wrong about Jordan’s statement or what ill-effects you expect to come from it?
“Do you think that expressing this belief before an audience of world leaders is likely to have damaged their opinion of the US significantly enough that it should not have been said?”
Yes. Because it reinforces all sorts of things bad opinions about America and if you don’t strongly suspect it is true you shouldn’t say something like that.
“I can’t see this allegation shifting world opinion of the US significantly.”
Change the word “shifting” to “soldifying” and you have the problem.
I’m working under the assumption that he did strongly suspect that it’s true (with ‘it’, again, being poorly defined in that we don’t know exactly what he said), in fact, that he believed what he said to be true. The levels of proof necessary to create belief in an allegation and to support publication of that allegation on CNN are very different. Not having all the information available to Jordan, I don’t find the allegation (whatever it was, but at any level from “Some journalists were killed by misdirected sniper fire, not by explosions” to “There were occasions in which soldiers took action that killed journalists, knowing that the death of journalists would be a likely result”) incredible on its face.
It’s an allegation that’s been made before: other commenters mentioned that it was made in the documentary about Al-Jazeera. I’d heard it before. I’m sure the world leaders had heard it before. If there’s a problem with world opinion of the US, the problem is not that leaders know that Jordan believes the allegation, but that our conduct has made the allegation believable. Better control of what Jordan says, or what other figures vulnerable to US public opinion say, will not change what the rest of the world thinks about us — they’ll hear the same things from people out of our control.
One more thing — obviously, no one should say bad things about the US without believing that they’re true. If you are convinced that Jordan was lying (saying something he knew to be false), while I don’t see your basis for it I do clearly understand why the lie upsets you. If he believed it to be true, even in the absence of enough evidence to publish it, I don’t think he was wrong to state that belief.
“If ‘off the record’ a CNN International head is willing to make a statement to a group which includes some of the most powerful European decision-makers that quite a few non-conservatives interpret as strongly suggesting that journalists are being targeted by the US military, that isn’t a good thing at all.”
If the warblogosphere has even a trace of regard for the opinions of Europeans something remarkable has happened since I last looked at its output. Admittedly it’s been a while. The usual line was that Euros are appeasers, wimps and weenies; the expression “powerful European decision-makers” would have been greeted with hoots of derision as a double oxymoron, Euros being both feeble and incapable of making decisions.
“It’s an allegation that’s been made before: other commenters mentioned that it was made in the documentary about Al-Jazeera. I’d heard it before. I’m sure the world leaders had heard it before.”
The problem is that there is a HUGE difference between saying that world leaders had heard it from Al-Jazeera and saying that they heard it from one of the heads of CNN International.
Considering that he now doesn’t want to back up the statement at all, it lends the impression that he was just currying to anti-American sentiment in a crowd where he knew it would be welcome. And for someone who works at CNN International to make such a statement is a huge deal. CNN does not equal Al Jazeera.
In my opinion, saying something like that at a place like Davos is at least as bad as reporting it publically with no backup. At a meeting like Davos, you lend the impression that you are sharing confidences or secrets known to you by your position. That is every bit as damaging from a CNN chief as a public announcement. Perhaps more so in terms of actually having an effect on leader’s minds.
Considering that he now doesn’t want to back up the statement at all, it lends the impression that he was just currying to anti-American sentiment in a crowd where he knew it would be welcome.
Got it — if I understand you correctly, you believe he was lying. You wouldn’t be equivalently disturbed by the statement (again, whatever, exactly, it was) if you thought that he believed it.
I can’t say as I think your basis for that belief is sufficient, but I can certainly see why you would be upset if you thought Jordan was baselessly slandering the US for commercial gain. If you’re confused by the lack of reaction on the left to the incident, I think it comes down to the fact that most of us see know reason in the facts that have come out to believe that Jordan’s statements were knowingly false.
LizardBreath: Better control of what Jordan says, or what other figures vulnerable to US public opinion say, will not change what the rest of the world thinks about us
Nope. Furthermore, journalists have been killed by US soldiers, under circumstances where it was not “collateral damage”. From most accounts, what Eason said was that the soldiers who killed the journalists were deliberately killing individuals, not that they were deliberately targetting journalists. The circumstances have varied widely, from the two bombings of al-Jazeera broadcasting stations, to the attack on Terry Lloyd. An attack on an al-Jazeera broadcasting station may be the result of carelessness or malice in the upper echelons: a double attack on a British journalist may be the result of carelessness or malice among those on the front line. We don’t know.
What we do know is that no one took public responsibility for the mistakes – let’s assume they were all mistakes – that led to the killing of Terry Lloyd, and Hussein Othman, and Tareq Ayyoub, and Taras Protsyuk, and José Couso, and Mazen Dana, and Ali Abdel Aziz, and Ali al-Khatib, and Asaad Kadhim, and Hussein Saleh, and Hamid Rashid Wali.
(And Salem Ureibi, Ahmad Mohammad Hussein al-Badrani and Sattar Jabar al-Badrani, who were abused by US soldiers: no independent investigation carried out, but the US military found itself innocent.)
Yet all the outrage is being expended on Jordan Eason, for mentioning that something very, very wrong is going on here. Kind of like blaming Joseph Derby for Abu Ghraib. Or John Kerry for Vietnam.
Jeez. Trouble with homonyms, much? That should be “see no reason in the facts that have come out”.
Wonderful. You condemn a man (and please, don’t disingenuously deny that) whose words you do not even know, because if he did say what some people think he said, he should actually have checked his facts before he said them. No double standards there, no sir!
Rob, he is the head of fricking CNN International talking about the interaction between the US and reporters. He isn’t just ‘a man’.
Sebastian: Rob, he is the head of fricking CNN International talking about the interaction between the US and reporters. He isn’t just ‘a man’.
What is he, a robot? With a permanent broadband connection to Google? Is he wired for sound with a Bush backpack to feed him the right answers?
Unless you’re asserting any of the above, yes, Sebastian, Eason is “just a man”: if he misspoke himself, he seems to have corrected his mistake very rapidly. There’s sufficient evidence to say that the US military have deliberately killed journalists – that is, soldiers have deliberately shot at and killed people who were journalists: the people whose names I listed did not die as a result of “collateral damage”, but because of an intentional attack. If that’s what Eason meant to say, he spoke within the facts, and it appears that when he realised what he said had been interpreted by the audience to mean “The US deliberately targets journalists” he retracted it and said it more clearly.
Given that the right-wing blogosphere has already targetted Eason Jordan and distorted his words once, it’s hard for me to see this as anything but another manufactured outrage whipped up by misinterpreting something Jordan said: whether because the right-wing blogosphere doesn’t like CNN, or doesn’t like Eason Jordan, I don’t know.
On Imus, Chris Dodd said that “Davos ought to release the tape”.
I know where you’re coming from, Sebastian, and I’ve no doubt that if Jordan had a similar position working for Fox had made a claim that similarly antagonized the left – about the press stabbing soldiers in the back, for instance – the lefty commentariat would be all over him. And with good cause – as the right would, if he really made those comments.
Before I jump on him, though, I want to know what exactly he said – was it a misstatement, was it sloppy emotionalism, was it a precise communication of his views? The Davos conference was closed, and no recording or accurate transcript of Jordan’s words have come out, to my knowledge.
Jordan claims he was trying to make another point entirely, and the point he was trying to make – that the military has been careless with regards to target selection and targets’ proximity to journalists – is a valid one (see the Palestine Hotel). At present I don’t have any reason to believe that Jordan is guilty of anything more than the crime of sloppy communication. He should be roundly criticized for this, he should be rhetorically smacked up the head, he should be pressed to correct and clarify, which he has done. His head doesn’t need to be served on a platter.
Felixrayman, re: Coulter – I used to do satire of this sort of thing. I think I’m giving up. I can’t keep up with these people.
Outside of America it’s not considered controversial to believe Americans deliberately targeted journalists. I watched the live coverage of the tanks crossing the bridge, the attack on the hotel and Al jazeera seemed coldly deliberate, especially considering the constant nasty propaganda directed against them and the fact their office was attacked in Kabul.
It doesn’t surprise me, anymore than the torture and abuse of prisoners surprised me. Everyone knew what the sight of those hooded,goggled chained gitmo detainees meant, their dehumanization along with the rhetoric that they were the worst of the worst and capable of chewing through the hydraulic lines meant bad things were going to happen to them and the Americans seemed proud of it. They were portrayed as evil doers who had killed thousands and were planning on killing more, why the surprise on what happened to them? Journalists from Al Jazeera are also portrayed as terrorist sympathisers, is that to pave the way for attacking them?
There seems little in the way of cold hard facts from the Bush admin, just a constant flow of rhetoric, hateful stuff for the bad guys and glowing unreal claims about their own goodness. This is backed up by Bush friendly media and bloggers. How do you stand up against this constant barrage of propaganda from all directions, it weighs you down, smothers you.
Criticism against the admin is deflected by pointing to major threats to world peace from people like Jordan and Churchill. I don’t even know who they are and care even less. How can anyone worry about the effect of Jordon being critical of America in public when you have the Bush admin representing you!
I find this discussion very wierd. Would any reasonable person be surprised to find that soldiers were deliberately targetting journalists? Especially Al Jazeera ones? Im a lefty, but if I were a soldier over there and I felt that a reporter was putting me at risk, I doubt I would hesitate. I didn’t claim to be the best troop in the world when I was in the air force, but I feel sure that many of the people I knew in the service would do the same.
Ann Coulter is an interesting case, she says what Republicans really think. As a Democrat I think thats a valuable service. Her statement certainly suggests that many on the right would think it a good thing to target journos.
I guess Im saying your article has all but convinced that american soldiers are deliberately killing ‘troublesome’ journalists.
Just a short test for Sebastian: There have been various posts in this thread that assert that there is a solid body of incidents, which do at least suggest that Eason Jordan said is not completely off the mark.
Postulating for a moment that EJ is not completely wrong, should he be censured for making that remark, even if circumstantial evidence points toward it being right?
Should he be censured if it were provably true?
In other words, is the “crime” not the accusation, but making that accusation specifically in davos?
Because with all respect, that’s how your comments read so far.
Oh dear me. Man makes inflammatory comment in a forum. Man immediately backpedals, claiming he phrased it poorly. Man corrects — even according to his detractors — statement to one that is not disputable (journalists were targetted and killed, but not because of their job. Because they were thought to be an insurgent, armed, etc. The usual fog of war).
This is news?
No, seriously. This is news? Why?
I mean, let’s face it, there’s only so much time a day, and as far as “journalistic outrages” go, a man who instantly corrects an inflammatory statement to something much blander is really low on the “Things to be pissed over”. Had he defended it enough to make it clear it’s what he really believed, then capitulated, yeah…you’d have a point.
But I’m not jumping on a man — left or right — for misspeaking. Not without some serious evidence that he meant it the way the right-wing blogs are claiming.
Speaking as a lefty, and for scientific purposes, I had heard about it, but only sort of. From Julian Sanchez’ blog a couple days ago, I think, and I’m still a little unclear on what happened. Jordan claimed knowledge of something like a dozen deliberate killings, right, then immediately backed off the claim to a dozen cases where ‘insufficient care’ was taken and admitted that in some of the cases the soldiers would have know way of knowing that those being targeted were journalists. Something like that? I’ll have to go back and read this post and comments to see how close I came I guess.
Oh, and about the test Sebastian posited:
Yes, I had heard about it and it failed the LGF filter. If Charles Johnson goes all frothy, I will safely ignore it in the secure knowledge that it is either irrelevant, untrue or a good thing.
Bender: A lot of what Anne says (actually pretty much all of it) reads TERRIBLY, but if you see the delivery its kind of comical.
I have managed to avoid Ann Coulter until I found a flyer in my mailbox several days ago, advertising a book club calle “American Compass.” On the front were pictures and quotes from three of their recommended books, one being Coulter’s HOW TO SPEAK TO A LIBERAL… Here is the quote: “I am often asked if I still think we should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity. The answer is: Now more than ever.” I cannot imagine any delivery that would make that line funny to me!
Sebastian — I’ve been gone all day but wanted to tell you that I see your point about where and how he clarified. And I agree with the point that it was a stupid thing to do, no matter how he feels, because things are chaotic enough in Iraq without unsubstantiated allegations making their way into a public forum like that.
The Ann Coulter defense — She’s only kidding.
IOW — The military shouldn’t target journalists but wouldn’t it be funny if they did.
Maybe the reason all the fuss is being made over Eason Jordan is to distract attention away from the far more serious issue of Jeff Gannon?
To directly answer the original question: I read most of the big lefty blogs, and the most I’ve seen of it was this piece at Language Log. I recommend said piece, by the way, for its attempt to unravel the various things that Eason might have meant.
That story really annoys me — that it didn’t get traction until the gay angle came out. It should be news that the White House is handing out press credentials under a phony name to some guy who works for a pretty-much nonexistent ‘news’ organization so he can feed them softball questions. That he also has a couple of gay prostitution related sounding domain names really doesn’t add anything to the story. (Not that I think there was anything wrong with publishing the fact — the domain names you have registered are public information.) That the last fact was necessary to get the story to take off just annoys the heck out of me.
Lizardbreath brings up a point that needs to be emphasized because of the way the RW blogs will use it, and in fact are already using it.
1. The Left couldn’t give a rat’s ass about ‘Gannon’s’ social life, what he does in his spare time, who he does it with. That he’s unmasked as a hypocrite is small beer: there are so, so many high-profile RW moralists who get caught with their pants down it’s axiomatic by now.
2. No, what infuriates us on the Left is that ‘Gannon’ was a fake journalist. He has no degree in journalism, no prior experience in journalism, and his only journalist ‘credential’ is attendance at a workshop hosted by a RW think tank which focused on how to aid and assist Bush Admin propaganda. He was apparently created for the express purpose of being a useful idiot for the Bush Admin.
3. What also infuriates us is that ‘Gannon’ was a very useful idiot in the Plame matter as well, in that he was apparently given access to the classified material that exposed Plame and played a role – so far undefined – in exposing her.
4. Now, here’s the kicker: the RW blogs leaping to his defense address none of the issues in #2 and #3. No: instead, it’s the RW blogs who are focusing on ‘Gannon’s’ private life, esp. his trolling-for-gays websites; and they’re saying that’s the reason the Left is angry. They’re calling us homophobic bigots for attacking ‘Gannon.’
5. And the MSM/SCLM are following their lead (and their lede :), concentrating on the seamier side of the story and overlooking the substantive matters. Why? Because that way, ‘Gannon’ can be portrayed as a ‘victim of hypocritical bigotry by the Left.’ When, no, it’s not about that at all.
The way the RW twists the story to suit their own agenda – and, not incidentally, to distract attention from the main issue – is wearisomely typical of the RW blogosphere: distortion and trivialization of important points, distortion and magnification of minor points.
If I say “Eason Jordan CNN Scandal”, do you know what I’m talking about?
Well yes, I don’t expect anyone to be surprised. I see that felix in the first comment tried to change the subject and no one objected. Color me unsurprised.
I do wonder why Eason hasn’t demanded the release of the video tape though.
Sebastian, for your test purposes, I identify as a leftist (and my reading material generally reflects that bias), and I hadn’t heard of Easton’s remarks.
That said, I’m worried about the number of journalists who have been killed in Iraq. It almost scares me more that the deaths may have been accidental rather than targetted.
I don’t know how to phrase this right so as not to be jumped on. During earlier conflicts, Americans weren’t as aware of regional media outlets, I think. I also suspect that fewer American media outlets employed regional nationals or emmigres as reporters or stringers. I guess what I’m proposing is that the deaths of journalists–who might vaguely resemble, to a scared and overexcited US soldier, the insurgeant population–have become more visible to the domestic polis.
This worry doesn’t fit into neat categories, left vs. right, now vs. then, but I hope we can all get behind the orange Media vest and protection of those who wear it. At the very minimum, killing media reps (on purpose or on accident) is very bad PR.
JM, the old-time War Correspondents were very visible, and celebrated, precisely because they were going into danger and ‘weren’t even soldiers!’ Which points up 1) how rare they were; and 2) how their readers, and they themselves, considered risking their lives to cover the war an honorable thing.
Now, I’m thinking mostly of the Civil War, WWI, WWII, and Vietnam when I think about legendary War Correspondents. That’s significant, because those were wars that were about the Fate of the Nation, the Fate of the Free World or (in Vietnam’s case) mattered because they were so polarizing the whole country was up in arms, pro- or anti-war, in a constant, years-long, noisy debate.
I think it’s also significant in that the reporters in those wars were not media stars to start with, were not products of a ‘media industry.’ Most of them came up in the ranks the hard, old-fashioned way. There was an entirely different kind of ethic at work; even a different philosophy of journalism. I really doubt that kind of ethic/philosophy still drives most of today’s journalists. (A shining exception being Christiane Amanpour, who has SFAICT pretty much dropped out of sight.)
I should note here that I’m referring to American journalists. I don’t know enough about non-US news media, what drives it, what kind of passions or professionalism shape it. I imagine that Arab journalists have the fervor that once motivated US war reporters, esp. since it’s their world and society at the heart of the conflict.
The ’embedded journalist’ thing was a spike through the heart of old-style war reportage for the US new media. Embedding reporters with the troops changed the way the war was experienced, perceived, and reported. It was useful for the Admin, useful for the media conglomerates, and probably safer for the journalists. But I don’t think it made for better reportage. Quite the opposite, actually.
LizardBreath: That the last fact was necessary to get the story to take off just annoys the heck out of me.
Yeah.
CaseyL: The way the RW twists the story to suit their own agenda – and, not incidentally, to distract attention from the main issue – is wearisomely typical of the RW blogosphere: distortion and trivialization of important points, distortion and magnification of minor points.
Exactly. It ought to worry all regular journalists (and everyone who cares about the debasement of the MSM) that this guy Gannon was apparently granted a White House day pass for the specific purpose of being able to take the heat of McClellan (and through him, off Bush) by asking nice easy questions, loaded towards the Bush administration’s PoV.
But I’ve seen no major explosion of wrath from the MSM or from the right-wing blogosphere about it – instead, they’re all over Jordan Eason’s saying something possibly inflammatory, about a very important topic, that he apparently almost immediately corrected himself on and restated in a much more factual manner.
Exactly. It ought to worry all regular journalists (and everyone who cares about the debasement of the MSM) that this guy Gannon was apparently granted a White House day pass for the specific purpose of being able to take the heat of McClellan (and through him, off Bush) by asking nice easy questions, loaded towards the Bush administration’s PoV.
It ought to worry them more that this guy had access to classified CIA memos. And it ought to make you wonder why the White House is lying about it – they claim Guckert was given a press pass because the company he worked for was regularly publishing news stories. The White House is lying. When he was first given access, the company he was working for had only been in existence for 4 days.
Felixrayman: It ought to worry them more that this guy had access to classified CIA memos.
Oh, but that’s part of the Plame Affair, and the general tendency of the right-wing blogosphere, whenever the topic of someone senior in the Bush administration betraying the covert identity of a CIA agent comes up, is to promptly change the subject to the public actions of the CIA agent’s husband.
So I can understand why the right-wing blogosphere is ignoring that aspect of the Gannon story: they don’t want to think that someone senior in the Bush administration is most likely guilty of treason, and if they looked at that aspect of the Gannon story too closely, they’d have to think about that.
“Perhaps so many members of the Washington media have been impersonating reporters over the years that they’re not troubled to discover an imposter in their midst.”
– James Wolcott
Sebastian: I am by American standards a lefty and had heard about it from ‘body and soul’. I allready heard allegations about the targetting of journalist long ago though; there were/are quite a number of suspicious incidents that should have been properly investigated.
About the Gannon case: not being American I have not really followed it intensively, but I find it weird that the White House would take such an unusual step since their strategy so far seems to be more in line with ‘sponsoring’ preferred journalists.
“that he apparently almost immediately corrected himself on and restated in a much more factual manner.”
We don’t know this because they won’t release the tape. Which is really the whole point.
We don’t know this because they won’t release the tape. Which is really the whole point.
Is it really the whole point? Assume he said the most aggressive thing you think is compatible with the stories you’ve heard — what results do you think should flow from that?
If a CNN head said to a group of the most powerful people in the world that the US was targeting journalists AND his ‘back-off’ explanation was only a retreat from ‘offical policy’ (especially if he had an unofficial policy insinuation) but can’t bring evidence of it, it should be brought to light because it would shed light on his news choices.
Sebastian: We don’t know this because they won’t release the tape.
You do appear remarkably willing to take eyewitness evidence providing it’s negative, but unwilling to accept eyewitness evidence that shows Eason in a positive light. Why’s that?
Which is really the whole point.
You’re not in the least interested in why US forces have killed so many journalists – the “whole point” for you is exactly what Eason said about US forces having killed so many journalists? I think that shows a certain misplaced moral outrage.
I’m being a noodge here, and I apologize if it’s annoying, but “shed light on his news choices” is still pretty vague. Would you consider it evidence that Jordan was likely to cause CNN to publish false information to defame the United States? That Jordan is motivated by malice toward the United States, and so is likely to to work to cause us harm in other ways? If you believe either of those things, I think you’re mistaken.
It appears that Jordan thinks US soldiers have done some very bad things (what, exactly, is not determined), and is angry about that. I (and you, and lots of other people posting here) think that US soldiers have done some very bad things (different ones from the ones at issue here) and am very angry about that. This does not make me (or you, etc.) disloyal to the US, nor does it mean that my contributions to public discourse are wrongfully calculated to injure the US. Likewise, Jordan’s belief in US bad acts doesn’t say a thing about his loyalty to the US.
Even further — I’m an American patriot. I do not consider that there is any requirement that, to be the head of CNN’s international news reporting, Jordan must be an American patriot. Say, for the sake of argument, that he isn’t — that his anger about journalist’s deaths has led him to a general emotional bias against America (I seriously doubt that this is true). Still, what of it? We are one country in the world — we can complain if false news coverage of us is published, but complaining because not all news is published by those biased in our favor seems insane.
I can’t see Jordan’s words as any evidence that he is not trustworthy as a newsman, and I don’t see why you do.
“You do appear remarkably willing to take eyewitness evidence providing it’s negative, but unwilling to accept eyewitness evidence that shows Eason in a positive light. Why’s that?”
I do no such thing. I note deeply conflicting eyewitness accounts about what happened. I note that some of those criticizing Jordan are not of a poltical persuasion that typically overreacts to attacks on American character. I note that gives some additional credence to their accounts. I note especially that a lot of this could be cleared up IF THEY WOULD RELEASE THE TAPE.
“You’re not in the least interested in why US forces have killed so many journalists – the “whole point” for you is exactly what Eason said about US forces having killed so many journalists? I think that shows a certain misplaced moral outrage.”
There is a difference between ‘killed’ and ‘murdered’. Jordan’s initial comments seem to have implied ‘murdered’. (‘Seem’ because I’m not allowed to see the tape). He may or may not have backtracked from that at the time. I’m not particularly worried about the fact that journalists are killed in war zones. Many people in the West seem to have ridiculous assumptions about ‘pinpoint’ accuracy in wartime. I would be worried about journalists murdered by US soldiers. That is a very serious charge.
“Would you consider it evidence that Jordan was likely to cause CNN to publish false information to defame the United States?” Of course. If Jordan is willing to privately tell some of the most powerful leaders in the world that US soldiers murder journalists even though he apparently has no evidence of the same he is apparently quite willing to act directly against American interests by communicating falsehood.
“Jordan is motivated by malice toward the United States, and so is likely to to work to cause us harm in other ways?” I don’t care at all what is motivations are. If he, as head of one of the largest international news services, is willing to tell some of the most important people in the world–without evidence–that the US is murdering journalists, that would strongly tend to suggest that he is willing to work to harm us in that particular way and probably in other ways.
“I (and you, and lots of other people posting here) think that US soldiers have done some very bad things (different ones from the ones at issue here) and am very angry about that.” There is a context here that you seem to be ignoring: I am not the head of CNN International, you are not saying that the US murders journalists, neither of us are were at the Davos conference. Those are three very key distinctions that you aren’t giving any weight to.
Not to bring up a sore point, but I really am beginning to understand how you could not think that Amnesty International could give more weight to anti-American stories if you don’t even want to admit that the head of one of the largest news services has enough wieght on journalist issues that he ought not accuse the US of murdering journalists without proof. The AI case–not as clear. This one–pretty much crystal.
so much for confidentiality . . .
since SH seems to feel so strongly that capital letters are appropriate, here’s my view: THIS ISSUE IS NOT IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO JUSTIFY BREACHING THE PROMISE OF CONFIDENTIALITY, NO MATTER WHAT CONSERVA-BLOGGERS FEEL ABOUT CNN.
francis
I don’t care at all what is motivations are. If he, as head of one of the largest international news services, is willing to tell some of the most important people in the world–without evidence–that the US is murdering journalists, that would strongly tend to suggest that he is willing to work to harm us in that particular way and probably in other ways.
You keep on coming back to this “without evidence” thing. Of course there’s evidence that journalists were killed by soldiers aiming at them — I mentioned some of it, Jesurgislac linked to other bits of it — and by virtue of his position Jordan probably has some evidence that wasn’t publishable. This isn’t proof that the US military had a general policy of murdering journalists, but no one’s asserting that Jordan made that accusation.
He may have alleged that some journalists were deliberately killed by soldiers who knew they were journalists. Again, there is at least some evidence of that that I’m aware of, and Jordan may be aware of more. If he had an evidence-based belief in the truth of his statement, why was it wrong for him to say?
Is the standard that you are applying that it is always wrong for anyone affiliated with a news organization to express a personal belief based on evidence that doesn’t rise to the level necessary to support publication? Or wrong only to express such a belief when it’s against the interest of the US? I think these are both unreasonable standards.
Something that I can’t pin down about your posts (I thought I had, but now I’m unsure again): You sometimes seem to be saying that Jordan’s words were wrongful because he was lying — he didn’t really believe what he was saying, or he knew that he had absolutely no basis in fact for it. Your “without evidence” comment, the earlier “he now doesn’t want to back up the statement at all” both lend themselves to this interpretation. I’m just not sure if this is fundamental to what you think about the situation. As I said above, if you’re convinced he’s lying to slander the US, I completely understand your outrage, although I don’t see the factual basis of your position. If he’s not lying — that is, if he is relying on the evidence that Jesurgislac drew your attention to and whatever other evidence he has, and, based on that evidence, is convinced of the truth of his words, do you still consider his words wrongful?
“He may have alleged that some journalists were deliberately killed by soldiers who knew they were journalists. Again, there is at least some evidence of that that I’m aware of, and Jordan may be aware of more. If he had an evidence-based belief in the truth of his statement, why was it wrong for him to say?”
But he doesn’t have such evidence, or at least he is completely unwilling to share it.
“As I said above, if you’re convinced he’s lying to slander the US, I completely understand your outrage, although I don’t see the factual basis of your position.”
If he said what I think he said, I doubt it was for the purpose of slandering the US maliciously. I would personally speculate (please note the word) that he did it because he knew that it was the kind of thing that his audience wanted to hear. It was the kind of thing that would let him soldify his place in that group of powerful people
C.S. Lewis, in what I think is one of his most insightful speeches “The Inner Ring“: says:
The gathering at Davos is one of the most exclusive Inner Rings in the world. I would be unsurprised–though I admit this is speculation–that Jordan said what he said not out of malice to the United States, but to soldify his position in a ring he wanted to impress. That is my speculation on motivation–but I find motivation a completely separate issue from the apparent fact that Jordan was soldifying bad beliefs about America, using his position as head of a journalist firm, without proper evidence.
(BTW I firmly believe that the Ring problem described above is one of the ways that practices like torture start running out of control in closed societies like the CIA.)
Sebastian Holsclaw: If a CNN head said to a group of the most powerful people in the world that the US was targeting journalists AND his ‘back-off’ explanation was only a retreat from ‘offical policy’ (especially if he had an unofficial policy insinuation) but can’t bring evidence of it, it should be brought to light because it would shed light on his news choices.
Wouldn’t his news choices shed light on his news choices? Seriously, you are putting a lot of energy into trying to uncover this one little bit of video while this guy’s news organization is pumping 24 hours of video into your home. Why do you need this smoking gun to prove some sort of anti-American bias? Is his actual work not enough? Is the real goal here simply to humiliate CNN? What other purpose could be served by digging up this footage, airing it for the whole world to see, then saying “Shame, shame, this is sending the wrong message to the world!” I’ve got no love for CNN, but this sort of blood thirst is kind of astounding.
This “release the video” call sounds an awful lot like the John Kerry “sign Form 180” mantra of months ago. Regardless of its content, the only thing the video will do is give the story more momentum, moving this from being a right-wing blog hobby horse to a Dean scream endless loop for the Fox News pundits to rail against. Now we’ve got more than just hearsay, we’ve got video to show! It doesn’t matter what is on the video, the worst parts will get airtime and the explanatory context will not, and if CNN or Jordan have any pull in this regard, they are wise to simply ignore all this howling. CNN is not a government institution, so FOIA doesn’t apply, and no crime or ethical breach has been committed, has it? So if a few folks are fishing for something, anything to use against CNN, what purpose could be served in taking the bait?
I note especially that a lot of this could be cleared up IF THEY WOULD RELEASE THE TAPE.
Cleared up where? Here, on Obsidian Wings? Sure. But anywhere else? Lets say the official record shows that Jordan really did misspeak and promptly corrected himself. Is LGF going to make a big to do about how wrong they were? Are the likes of Michelle Malkin and Hugh Hewitt going to apologize? Should CNN really worry about clearing stuff up on a handful of reasonable blogs, when so many of the other, more widely read and viewed outlets will simply pick apart the transcripts or video to suit the predetermined narrative? Releasing the video would be a lose-lose scenario even if confidentiality agreements weren’t involved.
And Sebastian, if you are surprised that a couple of liberal Democratic congressmen are willing to fall all over themselves to avoid even the appearance of tolerating anti-American comments, where have you been the past four years?
I would personally speculate (please note the word) that he did it because he knew that it was the kind of thing that his audience wanted to hear.
So you think David Gergen’s take on it is wrong? (see liberal japonicus @ February 10, 2005 06:28 AM) Can you give us a reason to side with your speculation over his?
Oh, and in the service of the original question, if I had heard about this “scandal” I must have promptly forgotten it to make room for useful information.
“Regardless of its content, the only thing the video will do is give the story more momentum, moving this from being a right-wing blog hobby horse to a Dean scream endless loop for the Fox News pundits to rail against.”
Noted. And may be used against you in the future. 🙂
“And Sebastian, if you are surprised that a couple of liberal Democratic congressmen are willing to fall all over themselves to avoid even the appearance of tolerating anti-American comments, where have you been the past four years?”
Umm, ok. Barney Frank isn’t just a random liberal Democratic congressmen and neither is Dodd. But this leads us to ken’s:
“So you think David Gergen’s take on it is wrong? (see liberal japonicus @ February 10, 2005 06:28 AM) Can you give us a reason to side with your speculation over his?”
Can you give any reason to side with Gergen over Dodd? Of course you can’t. The question is completely reflexive. There are two very conflicting interpretations of what was said and we don’t have deeply compelling reasons to believe either side. However there are two bits of evidence that I think are circumstantially revealing– A) the witnesses who complained are not pro-Bush right wingers who can be accused of making it up on that grounds, B) the tape (which could easily clarify things) is not being released. That doesn’t PROVE that the more damning interpretation is correct, but it does somewhat suggest it.
Sebastian: it may be that my reaction to this was colored by the fact that the WaPo article was one of the first I read on this subject, and it contained this:
“Gergen said Jordan had just returned from Baghdad and was still “deeply distraught” over the journalists who have died in Iraq. “This was a guy caught up in the tension of the moment,” Gergen said. “He deserves the benefit of the doubt.” ”
But that, rather than the inner ring hypothesis, is the one I find most plausible, for several reasons. First, I tend to trust David Gergen. I don’t agree with him on everything, but in my experience he’s a decent guy who plays fair. Second, I don’t know whether you have been anywhere near a war zone — I haven’t been in one, but I’ve been in somewhat analogous places, like a countryside where a civil war is going on generally, though no firefights at that particular moment, so I’m extrapolating a bit from that experience — but my sense is that when people come back from one, especially into a comfortable place full of sleek powerful people (like Davos), one reaction is to sort of want to shake everyone and say: there are these horrible, horrible things going on; how can you all just sit there so calmly? Or (minor variant) to turn into something like the Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner: grabbing people on their way into a wedding, fixing them with your glittering eye, and bearing witness to the horrors you have seen. It can make you just want to shake people out of their complacency.
(Not entirely unrelated note: when I came back from living in Israel, I was, for a month or so, absolutely unable to watch normal TV because of this: whenever commercials with happy bouncy families etc. would come on, I would be unable not to think about all the things that had to be in place in order for them to be so happy and bouncy — the missiles just offscreen, the people elsewhere who were desperately trying to claw their way into the world of that commercial, and who had to be kept out, and so on and so forth. It’s a state of mind in which you have lost some sort of psychological skin that enables you to function in the world without going mad.)
Anyways, when I read the story, and especially Gergen’s account, I just assumed that something like this was what was going on. It struck me as entirely understandable, though also entirely unfortunate.
Can you give any reason to side with Gergen over Dodd?
I guess I missed where Dodd speculated about Jordan’s motivation. As for your speculation vs. Gergen’s, even leaving aside the fact that he was there and you weren’t, I’ll stick with the more understanding interpretation until proven otherwise, because that’s just the kind of guy I am.
“since SH seems to feel so strongly that capital letters are appropriate, here’s my view: THIS ISSUE IS NOT IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO JUSTIFY BREACHING THE PROMISE OF CONFIDENTIALITY, NO MATTER WHAT CONSERVA-BLOGGERS FEEL ABOUT CNN.”
And this is FAR LESS IMPORTANT than the Gannon/Guckert matter, which so far only people on the left side of the spectrum have mentioned (and people on the right side HAVE ENTIRELY IGNORED).
Sebastian: I do no such thing.
Oh, come off it. You certainly are – I note you’re now extrapolating accusations of murder, when not one eyewitness claims Eason used that word. What’s this thing the right-wing blogosphere seem to have against Eason? This is the second time they’ve seemed determined to distort what he said out of all recognition. Why’s that?
I’m not particularly worried about the fact that journalists are killed in war zones.
Did you feel differently when an American journalist was killed? Or is your “not particularly worried” exclusive to non-American journalists being killed?
If Jordan is willing to privately tell some of the most powerful leaders in the world that US soldiers murder journalists even though he apparently has no evidence of the same
Nor do you have any evidence – except your willing bias to believe ill of Jordan Eason – that he said anything of the kind. Your claim to be unbiased is looking more and more shaky.
Eason has, at least, the evidence of 12 dead journalists, noncombatants, killed by US forces. (Further, as Hilzoy has pointed out just above, he was just back from a war zone, which I think gives anyone some excuse for speaking hastily.)
You are sitting comfortably at home, apparently willing to believe anything negative said about what Jordan Eason said, but desperately unwilling to believe anything positive said about what Jordan Eason said. Since you have no evidence either way, why are you tilting towards the negative? Why do you want to think badly of Jordan Eason?
“I guess I missed where Dodd speculated about Jordan’s motivation. As for your speculation vs. Gergen’s, even leaving aside the fact that he was there and you weren’t, I’ll stick with the more understanding interpretation until proven otherwise, because that’s just the kind of guy I am.”
Why are you focusing so much on unprovable motivational issues? I speculated on it only because so many on this thread seem very interested in suspected motivations. That isn’t what I was talking about. I was talking about conflicting reports of what was said. Dodd and Barney say one thing, Gergen says another. They are very different reports of what was said. That conflict is a factual conflict which is easily resolved.
“THIS ISSUE IS NOT IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO JUSTIFY BREACHING THE PROMISE OF CONFIDENTIALITY, NO MATTER WHAT CONSERVA-BLOGGERS FEEL ABOUT CNN.”
Then Jordan should waive the ‘promise of confidentiality’. Journalists ask public figures to do that all the time. Jordan should be quite familiar with the concept.
Sebastian Holsclaw: Noted. And may be used against you in the future. 🙂
Feel free. I have no illusions, for instance, that Bush would have gotten any benefit from releasing his NG records.
Though I hope you recognize that the governance (and even private enterprise where the public interest is clearly concerned) calls for a different standard of openness. Cheney’s energy task force meetings are an entirely different ball game than what we are talking about here.
Can you give any reason to side with Gergen over Dodd? Of course you can’t.
I’m not siding with anyone on the actual events. Conflicting eyewitness accounts are par for the course. Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable. That said, Frank and Dodd are elected officials. They have constituencies, and they owe not only their jobs, but their level of influence in those jobs, to a political process. I don’t think they would lie about such a thing, but they are probably more anxious to distance themselves from Jordan’s comments and get out ahead of any controversy than Gergen would be.
Jesurgislac. Daniel Pearl was not inadvertantly killed. He was murdered. Do you understand the distinction? I fully expect that journalists in war zones–both American journalists and non-American journalists–will get killed. When I hear that a US soldier ‘killed’ a journalist, it isn’t the same as if I hear that he targeted and killed a journalist. It isn’t the same because “targeted and killed” strongly implies ‘murdered’.
I specifically made the distinction between inadvertantly killed and murdered. You then link to Daniel Pearl’s murder, label it ‘killed’ and insinuate that I only care about him because he was an American. Do you understand the distinction and are ignoring it, or do you have trouble with the distinction?
Sebastian: When I hear that a US soldier ‘killed’ a journalist, it isn’t the same as if I hear that he targeted and killed a journalist. It isn’t the same because “targeted and killed” strongly implies ‘murdered’.
And it seems clear that the journalists who were killed were “targeted and killed” – if not as journalists, at least as individuals, noncombatants. They’re not alone in this, of course: other noncombatants have been targeted and killed by US forces in Iraq and in Afghanistan. You’re the one calling that murder: if you think it’s murder, I suggest to you that it’s inappropriate to target your anger at the person who talks about it in public, rather than the people who would prefer to ignore it happening.
Do you understand the distinction and are ignoring it, or do you have trouble with the distinction?
I find it difficult to understand the distinction you’re making. You know that US forces target and kill noncombatants in Iraq, both journalists and others: if you’re as avid a reader of the news as you’ve asserted in the past, you can’t possibly have missed stories like these from April 2003 onwards. If you call this murder, what’s your objection to Eason Jordan saying, however he said it, that it happens?
Sebastian-
I agree with you that motivation is unimportant (and I’ve always been fond of the Lewis speech you quote). What I thought of as the operative word in my earlier post “lying to slander the US” was “lying”, rather than “slander”.
Assuming Jordan said that journalists were deliberately targeted by US forces, I see two possibilities:
(A) He does not believe that this is true, and said it anyway for reasons of his own.
(B) He believes, based on evidence that he finds convincing, but that does not meet CNN’s standards for publication, that it is true.
(The third possibility, that there is evidence that does meet CNN’s standards, seems to be ruled out by the fact that CNN has not broadcast such allegations.)
As I’ve said before, I comprehend your outrage if you believe he’s lying — I’m just not sure why you think so.
If situation (B) is the case — he has an evidence-based belief in the truth of what he said — why do you think he was wrong to say it? (You have said a few times that he had no evidence. I assume you are speaking loosely: again, Jes has linked to some evidence. You may (I am sure you do) regard it as insufficient, but it is some evidence. Further, he may have more evidence which does not meet CNN’s standards for publication, but which nonetheless he finds convincing.)
OK. I am truly & totally stunned to learn that this is what right-wing blogs are all up in arms about today. This blows me away.
Is there seriously nothing more important going on in the world?
People are being killed in Iraq every day, Americans and Iraqis and others, and nobody has been held responsible for the f*ckup there. People are being tortured in Iraq, and nobody has been held responsible for that. People in Gitmo have been there for almost 3.5 years without ever seeing a lawyer — and nobody has been held responsible for that.
People with real power are destroying real people’s real lives. Day in, day out, every day. And nobody is being held responsible.
And the only thing the right cares about is whether or not one person — with no power — expressed an OPINION, which may or may not be true, and which might somewhat damage the reputation of the United States? It is now critical that this JOURNALIST be held RESPONSIBLE??
For what? For undermining the reputation of the United States?
You have got to be kidding me. You have got to be f*cking kidding me.
If the United States wants a better reputation, why not, you know, actually GIVE SOME PEOPLE A F*CKING TRIAL at Gitmo? Why not STOP TORTURING PEOPLE and justifying it? Why not stop committing war crimes — and start holding responsible the people who did?
Our reputation in Europe does not, believe me, hang in the balance over unconfirmed reports that the U.S. may or may not be targeting journalists.
If we’re targeting journalists, that is only another in a long line of war crimes being committed.
If we’re not targetting journalists, then I understand the outrage, sort of. I mean, hell, there are real war crimes we are committing, every day. It’s just unfair to make up extra ones.
From the declaration of the International Federation of Journalists with their annual report over 2004:
There is more about other counries too, I just quoted the bits about the USA.
Kent: OK. I am truly & totally stunned to learn that this is what right-wing blogs are all up in arms about today. This blows me away.
But if they weren’t up in arms about Eason Jordan, they might have to pay attention to Jeff Gannon – a much more serious issue, if we’re talking about integrity in the media.
(If the issue is journalists being killed by US forces, then Eason Jordan is an inappropriate target.)
I might have heard about it allready in May. I found the IFJ made a statement that day about the killing of journalists in Iraq too:
Jesurgislac, first you link to Nick Berg as an example you parallel to accidental killing and now you link to another accidental killing as something I should think of as murder. It is clear you aren’t interested in making moral distinctions. Therefore I’m done.
“If situation (B) is the case — he has an evidence-based belief in the truth of what he said — why do you think he was wrong to say it?”
Then he should say it now, even if it would not normally meet CNN’s standards. I think B) is highly unlikely. If he had evidence he would now provide it.
““Too often governments display a heartless and cruel indifference to the suffering endured by the victims and their families,” said Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary. “Too often so-called investigations into the killings of our colleagues are merely a whitewashing exercise.””
Welcome to the dangers of war. Frankly the IFJ is revealed as dangerously naive in this quote:
““It is a sorry tale of incompetence and lack of political will, made worse by the absurd notion that journalists can only protect themselves by taking up guns,” said White. “This is precisely the sort of abdication of governmental responsibility that will only make life even more dangerous for journalists.””
Once again welcome to the dangers of war reporting. Governmental responsibility my behind. Take some personal responsibility. The people who suggest reporters should have guns are noticing that you can’t wait for the police to arrive when you are being kidnapped by terrorists. Civilians die in wars. Journalists are a non-special class of non-combatnat for most purposes. If the US is intentionally targetting and killing non-combatants that is a problem. If that is the case, I want to know about it. But journalists put themselves into dangerous places. The fact they they get killed sometimes while doing that is unsurprising. You may notice that Marines get killed too. That isn’t shocking. You may notice that Marines sometimes get killed by other Marines.
That is very different from saying that Marines are targetting and killing other Marines.
People who don’t make that distinction aren’t bringing anything to the discussion.
Sebastian: If the US is intentionally targetting and killing non-combatants that is a problem. If that is the case, I want to know about it.
Not by the evidence available, you don’t. I linked you to one of the initial examples of US soldiers intentionally targetting and killing non-combatants: if you want a still earlier example, the use of cluster bombs in built-up areas amounts to the intentional targetting and killing of non-combatants: and you’re right, it is a problem, but I’ve not seen that you want to know about it.
Dutchmarbel has cited you some further independent evidence that this is not just Jordan Eason mouthing off: that twelve journalists have been killed by US forces – not as “collateral damage”, as they were in the area when a bomb went off, but apparently intentionally shot at by US soldiers, just as brutally as if they were Iraqi civilians – is something that is of widespread concern to journalists around the world. It doesn’t do any good to stick your head in the sand and pretend that if Eason isn’t allowed to talk about it, the problem will go away.
Jes: Sebastian is probably best placed to know what he does and does not want.
Hilzoy: Sebastian is probably best placed to know what he does and does not want.
If someone says to me “I want chocolate!” and I offer them chocolate and they turn me down and say “That’s not what I want!” and then say “I want chocolate!” again, I have to argue that while they may say they want chocolate, by their actions they evidently don’t want chocolate.
Similarly, Sebastian may say he wants to know about US forces deliberately targeting noncombatants, but his actions throughout this thread have been the reverse.
Then he should say it now, even if it would not normally meet CNN’s standards. I think B) is highly unlikely. If he had evidence he would now provide it.
If this is your position, than I think this is an idiotic tempest in a teapot. There is evidence that’s publicly available. You talk about some of it in the rest of this post. You find it unconvincing. Jordan apparently finds it convincing enough to support his statements (whatever, again, they were).
On the subject of whether he should come forward with additional evidence that he may have that doesn’t meet publication standards, I think you are lacking in self-knowledge if you believe that, e.g., a string of suggestive anecdotes in this regard would make you any happier with Jordan. I am absolutely certain that offering such soft evidence would inflame, rather than resolving, the issue generally.
If you have a hard time believing that anyone with a negative belief about the actions of the US holds it honestly, you should grow up. People believe bad things about the US for lots of reasons other than holding or catering to anti-American bias. Sometimes they believe bad things because they’re true.
And all this argues against releasing the clarifying tape because?
Jesurgislac, you seem utterly unable to distinguish between unintentional killing and murdering–a moral failing I can’t understand, but it makes it impossible for me to talk to you about the issue at hand because the issue is that Jordan accused US soldiers of one and you are offering evidence of the other. Killing is a broad category. Murder is a subset. Evidence of the broad category is not evidence of the subset.
Sebastian-
I’m a soldier, in a city with civilians in it:
1) I see you pointing a gun at me, and I shoot you. Intentional killing, not murder. That’s war.
2) I mistakenly think I see you pointing a gun at me, and I shoot you. Still intentional killing, justified by a mistake of fact. A tragedy, but not murder.
3) Out of caution, I decide that I’m going to shoot anyone I see moving, in case they’re going to shoot me. You (a civilian) move, and I shoot you. Murder? By the definition you seem to be using, yes. Certainly a targeted killing of a civilian.
Do you think this kind of thing doesn’t happen? If so, I think you’re wrong — several of the stories Jes has linked indicate that it does happen. I think your suggestion that Jes can’t make moral distinctions for bringing it up is, to say the least, misplaced.
Sebastian Holsclaw: And all this argues against releasing the clarifying tape because?
Why do you believe the tape would clarify anything? This story isn’t news. It is gossip. It is the domain of shouting pundits, not journalists. You might as well ask Angelina Jolie why she doesn’t release documentary evidence proving she didn’t break up Brad and Jen’s marriage. LGF and company have their narrative all plotted out, and releasing the video (if such a thing is even possible) just means they have a picture to point to while they talk about what an awful, awful man this Jordan fellow is.
You don’t make a pest go away by feeding it.
“”THIS ISSUE IS NOT IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO JUSTIFY BREACHING THE PROMISE OF CONFIDENTIALITY, NO MATTER WHAT CONSERVA-BLOGGERS FEEL ABOUT CNN.”
Then Jordan should waive the ‘promise of confidentiality’.”
The promise of confidentiality is not entirely Jordan’s to waive. If you are seriously suggesting that everyone who was at that conference will waive their right to confidentiality to satisfy your concerns, I think we need to revisit the issue of your naivite.
Can you give any reason to side with Gergen over Dodd?
Dodd and Franks were in the audience while Gergen was the moderator of the panel (and therefore presumably attending more closely to what the panelists were saying)
Sebastian: you seem utterly unable to distinguish between unintentional killing and murdering
No, I don’t think so. LizardBreath conveniently outlined three kinds of killing that can happen when you’re a soldier fighting in a war like the one in Iraq: I generally agree with them.
I also think that, demonstrably, US soldiers in Iraq have been rather too jumpy and making too many mistakes, killings of the kind LizardBreath categorized under (2). I don’t think this is (necessarily) the fault of the soldiers in question: it’s very much the fault of the Bush administration, who decided to fight a ground war in Iraq without enough soldiers to do it competently, and without doing the proper planning. But the effect on the noncombatants killed is just the same: they’re dead.
“The promise of confidentiality is not entirely Jordan’s to waive. If you are seriously suggesting that everyone who was at that conference will waive their right to confidentiality to satisfy your concerns, I think we need to revisit the issue of your naivite.”
Nope, I’m suggesting that Jordan waive confidentiality for his speech only. That doesn’t violate anyone else’s.
“3) Out of caution, I decide that I’m going to shoot anyone I see moving, in case they’re going to shoot me. You (a civilian) move, and I shoot you. Murder? By the definition you seem to be using, yes. Certainly a targeted killing of a civilian.”
If you or Jordan think a journalist has been killed under 3, we should know about it. If you don’t, he was being misleading.
2) is indeed an expected and unfortunate part of war, and would not normally be described as “targeting civilians”.
As such the same is true of journalists. If 1 or 2, I don’t really care. If 3, we should know about it. But even that isn’t targeting journalists, that would be targeting civilians who happen to be journalists. Targeting journalists would be finding out that someone is a journalist and killing him for being a journalist. If I say that the mafia is targeting informants, I’m not talking about the physical act of using a target scope to kill them with a rifle, I’m talking about the process of identifying an informant and killing him. That is the regular usage of the phrase, and the other interpretations offered of the phrase are torturous.
I get the impression many reporters believe that they were targeted by Americans. Even before the war reporters had been warned off being independent, they were repeatedly warned they could get hurt, that using sat phones could get them killed. Was that one round just adding a little extra zing to the threat, maybe some soldiers thought it was funny.
Al jazeera being hit was no surprise, Americans had complained frequently about their showing of gruesome images of war and their showing of captured soldiers. Would soldiers enjoy killing reporters who they felt responsible for their fellow soldiers shame and humiliation?
I don’t find that a great stretch of imagination.
America has always been arrogant but the Bush admin has taken this to new heights, their contempt, (mirrored on blogs) for so many things including the media has permitted a climate where differing points of view are seen as major dissent, treasonous or terrorist sympathizing. The Bush admin and their mouthpiece Fox has been encouraging hatred, it’s not harmless rhetoric it’s extremely dangerous. People are following it’s lead and the acceptance of demonizing rather ordinary, harmless people is extremely ugly to watch. I think a lot of people jump to their defense, not necessarily because they think the person is completely innocent but because the reaction is so over the top to the supposed crime. Reading the blogs is a bit like watching lynch mobs in action or the old western posse.
“Nope, I’m suggesting that Jordan waive confidentiality for his speech only. That doesn’t violate anyone else’s.”
No you’re not, as you want the Q&A session, too. The confidentiality right typically runs to all participants, both speakers and audience.
Targeting journalists would be finding out that someone is a journalist and killing him for being a journalist.
We killed two journalists on the roof of the Palestine Hotel, occupied by journalists. We killed a journalist in Al Jazeera’s Baghdad headquarters. It could have been accidental — we don’t have signed confessions — but there is some reason to believe that US forces were at least aiming at places where journalists were known to be. I don’t ask that you find this convincing, but you really do have to admit that the allegation isn’t simply out of the blue.
“I get the impression many reporters believe that they were targeted by Americans. Even before the war reporters had been warned off being independent, they were repeatedly warned they could get hurt, that using sat phones could get them killed.”
Gee, could it be that we knew the insurgents were using sat phones and were trying to lock onto those? Seems like a prudent warning, not a threat to target. Sheesh.
And the Palestine hotel was situation 2 correct?
Aiming at places where journalists are known to be isn’t a problem when the place where journalists are known to be is the same place that Iraqi soldiers were. That is why it was bad that Iraq was placing their people in civilian areas–the war crime underreported by Amnesty International if I recall our discussion on the issue.
Sebastian: Aiming at places where journalists are known to be isn’t a problem when the place where journalists are known to be is the same place that Iraqi soldiers were.
Which wasn’t the case with the Palestine Hotel. Or with the bombings of the al-Jazeerah offices. So why bring it up?
Nope, I’m suggesting that Jordan waive confidentiality for his speech only. That doesn’t violate anyone else’s
It wasn’t a speech, it was a panel discussion. Perhaps I’m projecting, but I’m assuming that Davos is like an academic conference, where the meetings are often just an excuse for talking to people outside of the meetings.
Also, as Melissa points out, the opinion probably is held by many journalists. The whole embed philosophy was debated in this light. The US spokesmen were saying ‘there is no way we can guarantee your safety if you are independent’ was taken by journalists as a warning.
Also, hilzoy‘s point about just returning from Iraq, if what Gergen says is true, is something that should be underlined. CNN depends on stringers more than a traditional news operation and if this is a result that he is distraught about his employees, well, I wish everyone were as responsible for the people they were sending there.
Here is a few link of interest
here and the comments are interesting for the fact that the idea surfaces that MSM folks can’t report on this because they would go on a blacklist because Jordan has so much power, which thus justifies their reporting. Also interesting is the accusation of log-rolling, though Rosen’s blogging seems to be balanced (of course, it is the balanced ones who are the most dangerous :^)).
Here’s a few more a 2nd Rosen link (which notes the silence of the WSJ, even though their reporter was present, suggesting that there are rules for attendance and the WSJ is not going to break them or they will find themselves disinvited in the future) There are a number of other interesting points, but the organization is not there, so please dig around.
One of the other interesting charges, made in passing here, but that I have seen elsewhere, is that Howard Kurtz, because he works for both the WaPo looking at the media and for CNN, is in the tank. Of course, this has long been a meme of the left, so it is interesting that it has been picked up by the right.
The links to the interviews and other things are also worthwhile. The interview is notable in that it probably has exactly what Jordan said (because what you say impromptu is usually something that you have written before) It is:
Here’s a del.li.cio.us page set up by someone to bookmark news stories. (apropos to nothing, I would love to see the ObWi folks set up their own del.icio.us pages so we could peer more deeply into their minds)
I also like this point that links to the blogger’s <http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/000215.php>code of ethics. Interesting story, interesting times.
apropos to nothing, I would love to see the ObWi folks set up their own del.icio.us pages so we could peer more deeply into their minds
You sick, sick bastard…
The top post at Rosen’s blog is quite interesting
Especially the discussion of CNN and Fox at war, and Scarborough’s quote that there is “a cancer growing on CNN”. You can’t make this stuff up.
Anarch
(●-●)
(Japanese smiley of someone in dark glasses i.e. ‘who, me?’)
Sebastian: one more point. I also assumed two things from the WaPo article (or somewhere, but I think it was that. At any rate, I had these two assumptions somehow…). First, that Jordan did not say what he did as part of a prepared speech, but in response to someone else’s use of the phrase ‘collateral damage’. This makes a difference to me, since obviously one has the chance to be much more careful in any prepared remarks.
The second is that what I read suggested that what happened was that Jordan said something that was ambiguous between two claims:
(a) the army is (deliberately killing) people, some of whom turn out to be journalists (where ‘deliberately killing’ means something like: trying to kill, not trying to do something else and inadvertently killing someone.)
(b) the army is deliberately (killing journalists), where this means: it’s not just that they are killing people on purpose; they are targeting journalists as such.
There are all sorts of ways in which one could intend to say (a) and have it come out sounding like (b), especially if one were speaking off the cuff. This would explain the gasps, the backtracking, and the ultimate understanding of what he said. Maybe I just tend to look for such explanations because I spent lots of my youth being one of those people who always said things that came out wrong, and as a result I’m allergic to taking things wrong myself, but for whatever reason, that’s the explanation that I ended up with. (Possibly it helps that I saw the WaPo article before the blog comments on the episode.)
Anyways, that’s why I don’t think it’s an indication of anything dire, though I do think it’s a pretty unfortunate thing said in a pretty unfortunate venue. — I should add that I don’t think I have any investment in defending CNN; except for Aaron Brown, I don’t like them at all.
This view into my psyche provided (a) so that you (Seb) can get some sense of how someone could not think this was a big deal, and (b) to LJ, since I don’t know what a del.icio.us page is, and don’t really see how much more exposure my puny little thoughts could stand anyways.
Since I mentioned it, I should explain it. A del.icio.us page is basically a public list of bookmarked webpages that is kept on a central server and available to anyone. You can also create a set of tags so that you classify your bookmarks into categories. If you plan your tags carefully, your tags can be the same as other people’s tags, and you can search. It could be a rather embarassing look into your psyche, so forewarned is forearmed. The rival service http://www.furl.net (which looks a lot slicker so I am therefore more suspicious of, but does some very neat things like export bookmarks as Bibtex or MLA citations.
Here is the about page for del.icio.us. As they note, the system is pre-pre-alpha, but because it is not running on your computer, the risk you run is only in losing things you have bookmarked and I feel sure they are backing things up, so you should never lose everything. Here is a beginner’s guide to the service.
From Australian newspaper ‘the age’ (registration, http://www.bugmenot.com helps):
“There are combatants in both of these conflicts who are trying to kill journalists, and that is unusual and a very nightmarish situation.”
I hate statements like this. You’re a freakin journalist, report. Are you talking about Iraq? Say so. Are you talking about insurgents trying to kill you? Say so. Are you talking about the US trying to kill you? Don’t freaking use innuendo, say it.
“This would explain the gasps, the backtracking, and the ultimate understanding of what he said.”
But it doesn’t explain why even after the backtracking Democrats like Frank and Dodd still left the conference with the impression that Jordan believed the US was targetting journalists. That for me is a really revealing detail that nobody here seems to want to even try to explain away. Except Jesurgislac who typcially thinks ‘of course the US targets journalists’, which even if correct is something I would want actually REPORTED not thrown to people with cheesy innuendo in Davos.
“This view into my psyche provided (a) so that you (Seb) can get some sense of how someone could not think this was a big deal” I have an excellent sense of how someone could think it isn’t a big deal. I’m ok with other people having other priorities. I’m getting annoyed here because I’m being piled on as a complete freak for thinking that when someone says something that even Democratic Congressmen interpret as anti-American even after the backtracking that there might have been something serious said even after the backtracking.
As for the video, Jordan could request a transcript of the portion of the talk in question with other people’s names not revealed. He won’t, of course, but we don’t need to pretend that it is impossible to both protect general confidentiality and get to what he actually said.
Apparently Eason Jordan has resigned.
Jordan’s resignation is quite telling. He never personally called for the release of the videotape, which would have settled this thing one way or the other. If he thought the videotape would have exonerated him, he would have called for its release a week ago. He didn’t. And during this period, he obfuscated and was not forthcoming. A simple apology at the outset would have defused this whole sorry episode. Instead, he dropped a cone of silence over his head and he let a passel of webloggers step into the breach and call him on his statements. Given his history of monumentally poor judgments, good riddance. CNN could do better.
Apparently Eason Jordan has resigned.
Which, regrettably, proves nothing. Thanks for the update, though.
Since we xposted, Bird Dog: irony, thy name is juxtaposition…
Sebastian Holsclaw: I hate statements like this. You’re a freakin journalist, report.
He should report while he’s being interviewed about a story in progress? How about he reports when the story is actually finished?
But it doesn’t explain why even after the backtracking Democrats like Frank and Dodd still left the conference with the impression that Jordan believed the US was targetting journalists. That for me is a really revealing detail that nobody here seems to want to even try to explain away. Except Jesurgislac who typcially thinks ‘of course the US targets journalists’, which even if correct is something I would want actually REPORTED not thrown to people with cheesy innuendo in Davos.
And except for the two other commenters who gave reasons why Frank and Dodd might have reacted more strongly.
Apparently Eason Jordan has resigned.
And, the fifth column having been vanquished, I expect the insurgents to lose all hope and unconditionally surrender any moment now.
Bird Dog: Jordan’s resignation is quite telling. He never personally called for the release of the videotape, which would have settled this thing one way or the other. If he thought the videotape would have exonerated him, he would have called for its release a week ago.
How do you know this? Be specific please.
I’d suggest that there is a lot more to this than meets the eye. Jordan suggests in the interview I linked to that they are working on two ‘enormously costly’ and ‘extraordinarily dangerous’ stories. If one of these is what he is mentioning, him resigning is a strategic withdrawal. I really have no idea, but the ‘blog swarm’ to use Hewitt’s phrase, is quite amazing. I also think that the term is more accurate that some on the Right might care to admit. If we think of a swarm like an exercise in raw computing power, the optimal solution is to devote resources to semi-plausible smears that, as they say, may ‘stick’. I think some here who could point to the literature that questions whether this kind of approach actually merits being labeled ‘intelligence’. I assume that Seb’s title ‘this is a test’ meant that it was dipping his toes into the water, which is the one tiny silver lining of this, that at least he hesitated a bit before jumping on the bandwagon.
I actually don’t know what to think about the resignation at this point. I think it adds some circumstantial evidence that there was something in the tape that would have been damning, but I’ll admit that it isn’t conclusive.
Inferences that the resignation suggests something bad for Eason–you typically don’t resign over a scandal where you believe you are innocent even before it really breaks. Despite the fact that there was clamor on conservative weblogs, it really hadn’t broken into the wide-audience media very much.
I can’t think of a really good reason to walk away from that job if the statements at Davos weren’t bad–if you are super-honorable perhaps you could suggest that the mere hint of controversy was going to hurt CNN. I’m loathe to ascribe that level of honor to very many people, and even then it would typically be employed only if you thought you were at least slightly culpable.
I think a resignation at this point–if he didn’t say what has been alleged–would be unfortunate because it is likely to leave the question unresolved. If he did say what has been alleged it makes sense to me.
if you are super-honorable perhaps you could suggest that the mere hint of controversy was going to hurt CNN.
Or, conversely, that CNN’s high-ups are too chickensh** to weather the flak they knew was coming. As I said, the resignation proves nothing.
Sorry to interrupt the post-facto rationalization of the hounding of a man out of his job for possibly expressing an unpopular view, but now seems like an appropriate time to pay respects to the author of “The Crucible.”
God knows it doesn’t hurt to balance out this monstrous post at RedState.
Please note that it is in the diaries of RedState. In a precise mirror of the diaries at dKos we don’t exercise editorial control of non-front page items.
This is just speculation, but seeing how the Rather scandal played out, if there were a big story in the works, and I were Jordan, I would get myself out of play.
Sebastian Holsclaw: In a precise mirror of the diaries at dKos we don’t exercise editorial control of non-front page items.
I guess it’s lucky for Thomas that he isn’t a bigwig at a major news network, huh? Them guys, you can put a hurt on.
Ahh, I see. Want me to criticize him? He’s an ass. And interestingly that is likely to have almost the same effect as my criticism of Eason Jordan. I also seem to think that those in high positions tend to attract more criticism. You may have heard criticism of George Bush? You may have engaged in some youself? Uh-huh.
Bitter, table of one.
Please note that it is in the diaries of RedState. In a precise mirror of the diaries at dKos we don’t exercise editorial control of non-front page items.
Seb,
A small correction. I believe that there is some control of diaries, but it is exercised over a longer period than one diary entry. I’m not a dkos member, so perhaps someone could chime in, but from the FAQ, because they are getting over 200 diaries a day, it is not possible to keep watch over diaries. This is slightly different that ‘not exercising editorial control’. I’d be curious how many diaries Redstate is getting. A count of 11 Feb suggests about 5-10 a day while at dkos, there were about 250.
Also, there is this:
A dKos tradition for dealing with trolls’ diaries is to post recipes on them, rather than address the substance of the post. This has caused a number of trolls to stumble off the board in confusion, as well as distributed some delicious food ideas.
from the community guide page.
This doesn’t mean that nasty stuff is stopped (there is a Buck Fush diary, and I am sure you could find lots of things that I would not really accept, which is why I have signed my practially exclusive contract with ObWi), but this belies the claim that Redstate is a ‘mirror’ of dkos.
Ahh, I see. Want me to criticize him? He’s an ass.
Just pointing out the irony of the grossly disparate spheres of influence and responsibility, in perhaps an excessively snide manner. And FYI I was using the plural “you”, in direct response to “we don’t exercise editorial control…” I do realize you are only a fraction of RedState and don’t really hold you personally responsible for anything that goes on there outside your own contributions.
Bitter, table of one.
The idea of hounding journalists out of their jobs for ideological reasons is starting to really raise my hackles, yes. Dan Rather, he stepped in it, sure (or his producers did and he failed to catch it). But this guy (who I don’t know from Adam) finds himself unable to continue in his job for the simple crime of phrasing something imprecisely, and off-the-record at that. And Bob Novak still gets his paycheck after compromising a U.S. intelligence agent. Sorry, but that’s some deep bullsh*t right there.
“But this guy (who I don’t know from Adam) finds himself unable to continue in his job for the simple crime of phrasing something imprecisely, and off-the-record at that.”
He wasn’t ‘a’ journalist, he was the head of CNN International. If the CEO of my company said something that misguided in his area of expertise I would be unshocked to find him hounded out of the position. By the accounts of such well known conservative hacks as Rep. Barney Frank and Sen Dodd, he didn’t clarify on the alleged backtrack.
I’m not thrilled by this outcome, because now I don’t know if what he said was really that bad, and I’ll probably never know. But that isn’t my fault. And he hadn’t gotten hounded yet, the story was just barely in the mainstream media.
Let’s sum up:
Jordan, according to the strongest argument, claimed the United States military deliberately targeted journalists. If the links above are accurate, the United States military according to its own reports has in fact targeted broadcast facilities in at least 10 separate instances and killed journalists in the process. Jordan is out of a job.
Ann Coulter said she wants the US military to kill American journalists. Coulter still has a job and a huge audience.
Someone claiming the US targets journalists? Unforgivable, whatever the truth may be (and, as we have seen on this thread, there is no need to wait to find out what that truth might be). Someone wishing the US would target journalists? Unremarkable (or even amusing), for some.
Consider the test failed.
“Jordan’s resignation is quite telling.”
Yeah, because resignations are always voluntary. Why, about half of the President’s cabinet felt a hankerin’ for the private life right after the election, right?
Why, about half of the President’s cabinet felt a hankerin’ for the private life right after the election, right?
60% of the cabinet, actually. And if they had been able to find a candidate for Treasury who was both smart enough to be a viable candidate and moronic enough to take the job…
Felixrayman: Consider the test failed.
Indeed. I’ll bear in mind this thread next time Sebastian claims he wants the MSM to raise its standards: it looks as if he means “no criticism of the US allowed, not even when backed by facts”.
If he thought the videotape would have exonerated him, he would have called for its release a week ago.
I think you can retire the Karnak Award, because this is enough to award it to yourself for the rest of history. I can think offhand of about ten dozen scenarios under which Jordan could both think the videotape would “exonerate” him (I use the scare quotes because he isn’t accused of a crime), yet still not call for its release. That you can imagine no such scenarios is quite stunning, actually.
He didn’t. And during this period, he obfuscated and was not forthcoming. A simple apology at the outset would have defused this whole sorry episode.
Riiiiiiiiiight. I’ll tell that to Trent Lott, James Ryan, and Dan Rather.
“I can think offhand of about ten dozen scenarios under which Jordan could both think the videotape would “exonerate” him (I use the scare quotes because he isn’t accused of a crime), yet still not call for its release.”
I’d love to hear just three.
Ok, people I’ve said upthread that the resignation does not PROVE that he made the statements. But can we admit that quick resignations before the story has even broken tend to lend some circumstantial evidence could fairly lead someone to believe that there was something to the story? People typically don’t just resign from positions like that for absolutely no reason. Is this just a purely confirmation instance where you are going to say (without evidence I may add) that it is MORE likely that there was nothing bad on the tape (though we cannot see it) but that CNN directors freaked out and got rid of him because of a growing ‘scandal’ that hadn’t even really hit the big media yet? Is that a fair use of the evidence available?
Does this blog do new posts these days? And was there an update on Edward?
rilkefan
seconded. I thought it was just me who was worried.
lj, we can’t both turn into my mom.
rilkefan: your wish is our command, at least as far as new posts are concerned. I have no news about Edward, which I’m hoping is actually a good sign.
“your wish is our command”
Ha ha ha – mine is the power to bind and to loose, to break and to build, to …
“, at least as far as new posts are concerned.”
Shoot.
I’d love to hear just three.
Three? I would settle for one scenario in which the tape makes things better for CNN and Jordan (make that one that doesn’t involve pixies or unicorns). I’ll give you one scenario, then maybe you can return the favor.
Lets start with a historical analog, to head off any doubts about how such a PR fiasco can snowball from a simple misunderstanding. Remember how Al Gore “invented the internet”? First-hand accounts exonerate Gore of making such a claim, with blame falling on a careless reporter. This fact fails to kill the story, because the media likes it and Gore’s opponents are more concerned with hurting him than they are with the truth. Ditto “Love Canal”, “Love Story”, etc. Folks who are too lazy to sort out the sordid details simply assume the truth is somewhere between “he’s a liar” and “he’s being screwed by a careless or malicious media” and so Al Gore is pegged as a serial exaggerator for comments he never made. The truth is available for all to see, but to no effect.
Now, I’m no media analyst, but I see this as the most likely scenario for Jordan: Fox’s pundits could play the damning sound bite over and over, sans context. CNN might play the whole clip a couple of times as a rebuttal, but since the truth turns out to be a non-story, folks who believe Jordan’s account will change channels out of boredom while folks who believe his detractors will keep watching Fox, get fired up, and flood CNN’s sponsors with truckloads of angry letters (with addresses handily provided by right-wing bloggers). The tape could bear out Jordan’s account, and the Michelle Malkins of the right-wing media would only slightly shift angle of attack and still pound away at Jordan and CNN for being insufficiently nationalistic (remember how she implied John Kerry intentionally wounded himself to get a purple heart, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary and dozens of chances to correct herself?). Viewers who can’t sort it out will split the difference — maybe he didn’t say that but surely he said something wrong. Airtime devoted to this story is money out the window for CNN, who is losing sponsors and viewers to Fox, and Jordan is still taking a beating from the lynch mob. Fox now has some rope, and even if it isn’t a noose when CNN first hands it over, these folks are really skilled with knots.
And this is assuming the content of the tape is crystal clear, not subject to interpretation.
Now, what is your scenario in which getting this magic tape released helps CNN (i.e. causes them to lose fewer viewers or sponsors than they will by cutting Jordan loose now) or helps Jordan (i.e. right-wingers admit they were wrong and stop trying to get him fired) in the big picture?
I find this resignation unbelievably disturbing. I don’t expect blogs to do journalism, exactly, but I had really hoped they would be good for something other than blacklisting journalists. It’s one thing when they actually seriously breach journalistic ethics & do something really incompetent, as with the CBS Killian memos thing and with Raines (whose resignation I think had way, way more to do with internal politics at the Times than anything written on any weblog). It’s still shows a disturbing lack of priorities to think the Killian memos are the biggest scandal in the last four years, but whatever. It’s another thing when they say something stupid in a confidential forum–which they then, if David Gergen is to be believed, immediately clarify. I realize this is partly Jordan’s or CNN’s decision, and I suppose I blame CNN more than the blog noise machine. Instapundit, Malkin, Powerline, Hewitt, LGF, Belmont Club, the overwhelming % of the highest-traffic right wing weblogs–their entire raison d’etre is to bully people who criticize President Bush too much. But CNN is supposed to have a different purpose. One day, one cable network and one national newspaper are going to realize that there is nothing at all they can do, short of becoming knockoffs of Fox, the NY Post or the Washington Times, to please these people, and that there’s plenty of room for an audience among the rest of the country, and stopped pulling their punches, and start showing some independence and judgement again and refuse to be bullied any long. But God, that day is nowhere in sight, and we seem to be getting further away from it. The New Yorker magazine, the few unintimidated reporters and columnists at the dailies & weeklies, NPR, PBS and the left-of-center weblogs (who have their own problems about prioritization–Gannon never should have had a press credential, but I agree with Dan Froomkin that’s it’s gotten too personal) can’t break every story in the country worth covering. And even if they do, most of the country will never hear it through all the noise made by the right-of-center weblogs, TV news networks, and talk radio.
Wait. The head of CNN INTERNATIONAL? That is up there with the BBC as the best TV news coverage in the English speaking world.
I’m now twice as disturbed.
Sebastian–this is WHY the left half of the blogosphere wants less and less to even think about, let alone read or link to, most of the right half. I don’t want to have anything to do with people who think that a much-better-than-average journalist making a single stupid remark (which was apparently immediately corrected, and possibly immediately corrected by Jordan himself) is a scandal, and extraordinary rendition is not. (They don’t just ignore the latter–they actively deny it, or complain that it’s getting too much press coverage, or actively defend it.) I don’t want to waste my time listening to people go on about how something said by an idiot like Ward Churchill represents “The Left”, while they are utterly unconcerned with what John Yoo’s–a man so much more powerful than Churchill it’s absurd to compare them–remarks to the New Yorker say about “The Right”.
after writing this, I saw that Kevin Drum had said essentially the same thing in a more contemplative and balanced way.
What’s funny is that ol’ Bird Dog managed to finally get his rocks off on the Ward Churchill Affair just about the time you wrote that, Katherine. It’s almost getting to the point where it’s predictable.
I don’t want a journalist to go on TV and state as a proven fact that the US is targeting journalists, but if someone believes this and says it off the record, it’s absurd to me that he’d lose his job over it. He didn’t broadcast it on CNN. End of issue.
Going a little further, I wouldn’t mind it at all if CNN ran a story examining the question. It hardly seems unlikely to me that the US government would target Al Jazeera, though again if a professional journalist is going to make that charge on TV, he should have higher standards than, for instance, journalists have when they unthinkingly repeat US government charges about other countries possessing WMD’s and treat such statements as though they possessed factual status. But in this case, a guy makes a private statement off the record and the rightwingers go nuts.
We’re apparently in the realm where you aren’t allowed to have voice unkind opinions of a government which practices torture.
I probably just repeated what fifteen others have said, but I was too lazy to read the thread.
On the bright side, with Jordan and Rather gone maybe someone will FINALLY rise to Giblets’ challenge and claim that gold doubloon.
Sebastian: But can we admit that quick resignations before the story has even broken tend to lend some circumstantial evidence could fairly lead someone to believe that there was something to the story
No. There’s no reason for anyone to believe there ever was something to the story – unless they’re starting out with an anti-Eason bias – but it looks as if CNN was afraid to stand by Jordan Eason if the right-wing anti-MSM attack pack have taken against him.
Sad. As Katherine says, this kind of bullying from the right is what makes journalists afraid to act like journalists. As I said above: now we know what to think when you call for higher standards in the media. What you mean is: “No one’s to criticize the US. Not even when the facts are on their side.”
Has it occurred to you that in a world where journalists didn’t fear bullying attacks from the right-wing whenever they said anything critical of the US and especially of the Bush administration, news about the US military torturing people, sometimes to death, might have broken sooner – might have been granted more attention by the MSM?
Riiiiiiiiiight. I’ll tell that to Trent Lott, James Ryan, and Dan Rather.
I’m not that familiar with Ryan and 7 of 9, but if Lott had apologized right away and Rather hadn’t of stonewalled, their careers would have been much better off. Tell me, Phil, when exactly did Jordan call for a release of the videotape?
I forgot the other parallel, which is of course the Swift Boat Veterans. I’m not the only one to see the parallel, either (those are all RIGHT of center sources). It’s not only Kevin Drum who likens it to “collecting scalps,” either; here are some reactions from right-of-center weblogs:
Now, I’m sure not everyone who wrote about this story sees it that way. Sebastian’s comments about Jordan, by themselves, were perfectly fair. But when it comes to the Michelle Malkins and Glenn Reynolds and Hugh Hewitts and Powerlines of the world, there is a point after which I no longer assume good faith.
And one more thing: This idea of a bunch of scruffy underdogs, ordinary citizens outgunned but holding their own against the dreaded “MSM”, is smart self-marketing, but it’s really just utter crap. A lot of weblogs are less powerful than the people they target (though not in all cases) but they choose their targets directly in the service of the most powerful people in the country. That’s why they get results, too–it has relatively little to do with the merits.
(Obviously, people do make themselves vulnerable–there’s a reason that this happens to CBS, Mapes, Churchill and Jordan, and not the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh, Paul Krugman and Dana Priest. What I’m saying is, out of all the people who say or do stupid or wrong things…it’s how they help or harm President Bush and the Republican party that determines whether right-wing weblogs write about them or not; which stories “get a -gate” and which don’t; whether or not someone gets fired; how much coverage the story gets.)
That’s why I used the word “blacklist” before, though I had hesitated to at first because I don’t think it’s REMOTELY on the same level as the McCarthy era blacklist. We’re talking about what, maybe half a dozen jobs lost, instead of thousands. This is the first case where I think the resignation was clearly unjustified, whereas–again, thousands. And these are pretty much all powerful people who will land on their feet, which was often not the case in the 1950s, where it included a bunch of very ordinary people, and made it hard to work in their field at all. And this is a bunch of private citizens, not a committee of the United States House of Representatives. So all of that changes things an awful lot.
The thing is, though, when you combine this with media concentration under corporate owners–people who really and truly only care about profits, and do not care about journalism–it means that a single resignation or firing can have an enormous chilling effect on journalism that is critical of the administration. I am not so worried about what happens to Eason Jordan. I think he’ll be all right. I am worried about a competent, independent press corps.
Very bad things happen in the dark, and this is true whether the dark is created by government censorship or by the profit motive; whether true and important stories do not get heard because reporters are afraid to write them or because they are drowned out by a din of noise.
I certainly wish the tape of Eason Jordan’s comments were released. I find this outcome (the resignation) extremely unsatisfactory.
There is a larger problem here. It’s not just the adversarial environment created by the attempted collection of scalps (pick your metaphor, “all out war,” “politics of personal destruction,” whatever). It’s not just the weak reporting that picks two opposing views and assigns them equal weight, as if “my facts are just as good as your facts.”
We have a society where decisions have to be made by an informed citizenry. Rather than promoting dissemination of accurate information, all the privately-owned media outlets have inherent biases that influence their content. Fox News is perhaps the most nakedly partisan (as I recall, Roger Ailes as much as admitted this back in 2001 when he was profiled in the New York Times Magazine), but the influence of money and power over what is covered is undeniable in all the major media. The news media have become an adjunct of very sophisticated political advertising and opinion management.
I doubt that the blogs attacking the most egregious examples of bias, incompetence, lying or corruption will be enough to make the system provide higher quality information reliably. I don’t think it will restore trust, either. Rather, I think it’s more likely to result in a further erosion of trust.
For suggestions on what to do about this, I recommend John McManus’ comments at the Aurora Forum held on Nov. 4, 2004 at Stanford. John McManus is the director of Grade the News, a media research project focusing on the quality of the news media in the San Francisco Bay Area.
[I posted this over at Political Animal also.]
Tell me, Phil, when exactly did Jordan call for a release of the videotape?
Where did I claim or imply that he had? You stated that had he thought it would “exonerate him,” he would have called for the release; I called you on a mindreading penalty and indicated that there are scenarios under which he would believe it would “exonerate” him and still not call for its release. Is there some way in which I was unclear?
I do believe that there are no, absolutely no, circumstances under which the people in the cast of Bring Me The Head of Eason Jordan would have given up trying to drum him out of a job. They’ve been trying to do so for over a year now, ever since the Silence For Access stuff. Which, for the record, I thought was the wrong thing for CNN to do.
Phil: Which, for the record, I thought was the wrong thing for CNN to do.
Really? You think CNN ought to have deliberately caused the deaths/torture of innocent Iraqis, too?
That spin “silence for access” was a classic: I remember having to track the story back through at least half a dozen right-wing blogs all linking to each other, before I discovered a link to the original story… and found that it was Jordan Eason admitting that CNN had behaved in a responsible and sensible manner. That is, when there were stories they could have broadcast about Saddam Hussein’s atrocities, but doing so would have gotten innocent Iraqis killed, they chose to remain silent. This got spun, in exactly the same way as this story has been spun: so I conclude that the right-wing blogosphere just doesn’t like CNN, and my guess is, it’s because CNN isn’t as laudatory of the Bush administration as FoxNews devotees have come to expect.
You think CNN ought to have deliberately caused the deaths/torture of innocent Iraqis, too?
No, I think CNN should have either reported honestly and openly about the goings-on in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, or not reported from there at all.
Phil: No, I think CNN should have either reported honestly and openly about the goings-on in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, or not reported from there at all.
So, you think CNN should have chosen either to have more innocent Iraqis die because CNN chose to disregard the risks to them, or to ignore Iraqis completely by not going near Iraq.
I think both choices would have been bad choices: I don’t think that CNN ought to have regarded Iraqi lives as expendable, as you appear to, and I do think that it is useful to have news sources from inside countries: direct reportage is valuable.
I’ll be super-honest with you here, Jes: I’m not even remotely interested in having this discussion with you, because your preferred method of argumentation is to attempt to frame the argument using the most inflammatory characterization you can think of in an attempt to make the other person buckle under to opinions they don’t necessary hold, whether or not those opinions are logical sequlae of opinions they do hold. And, frankly, I don’t have the energy to undergo such a charade with you.
Phil, if you want to accept the right-wing framing of the reason why they targeted Eason Jordan last time, that’s your decision. I just figured you should be aware that’s what you’re doing.
See? It’s not possible for me to have reached an indepdendent conclusion, especially not if it disagrees with yours, right? Not interested.
As long as you’re reading my mind, though, can you tell me why I get so pissed off in heavy traffic? That would be a lot more useful to me than whatever else you think you’re reading in there.
As long as you’re reading my mind, though, can you tell me why I get so pissed off in heavy traffic?
Because, as a lefty, you’re furious at the failure of the free market to provide you with the commodity you desire and are planning a socialist revolution to put all other drivers into gulags where they belong?
…no?
Well, hell. Guess it’s just me then.
Actually I’m a libertarian, but given traffic in the DC Metro area, that gulag idea actually doesn’t sound too bad. Hood-mounted artillery is also a decent solution.
While this is a good indication of why left-wing plots are never going to get very far, I think a much funnier exemplification is the Crooked Timber post and comments. I think it is the fatal dose of ironic humor that is the key ingredient. As a challenge, I’d like to find any RW blog post about Jordan that illustrates the poster has a sense of humor.
Actually I’m a libertarian…
Oops… sorry about that. Don’t know why I had you pegged wrong, not that it really matters.
Hood-mounted artillery is also a decent solution.
Ah, spoken like a true individualist. Kill’em all and let the free market sort them out! 😀
Sebastian Holsclaw: I note especially that a lot of this could be cleared up IF THEY WOULD RELEASE THE TAPE.
Bird Dog: He never personally called for the release of the videotape, which would have settled this thing one way or the other. If he thought the videotape would have exonerated him, he would have called for its release a week ago. He didn’t.
I’m still interested to hear how the release of the tape could have benefited CNN or Jordan. This does not go without saying, so please paint me a picture of just how that could work.
Every time I hear conservatives calling for the release of the tape, I can’t help but think that they simply want incendiary sound bites they can use as ammunition. We know the exact quote, we know the context, and we know that he backed down immediately from something said off the cuff. This is a tempest-in-a-teapot witch hunt I’d expect from the likes of Charles, but which disappoints me greatly coming from Sebastian.
“I don’t want to have anything to do with people who think that a much-better-than-average journalist making a single stupid remark (which was apparently immediately corrected, and possibly immediately corrected by Jordan himself) is a scandal, and extraordinary rendition is not.”
Katherine, I’m surprised that you are willing to just buy the defense side on this one. Barney Frank and Chris Dodd both attended and both of them thought that he accused the US of targeting journalists and thought that he only backtracked to it not being ‘official policy’ as if even Bush would make it ‘official policy’. Even if the US really were targeting journalists specifically, it would be an unofficial policy so that is a lame backtrack. Why in this case do you have trouble trusting first-hand witnesses whom you would normallly trust?
Gromit, what in the world does this mean: “I’m still interested to hear how the release of the tape could have benefited CNN or Jordan. This does not go without saying, so please paint me a picture of just how that could work.”?
If Jordan did not in fact say that the US was targeting journalists, or if he in fact backtracked to something that made sense, of course releasing the tape would benefit him. It would benefit him because it would show that his accusers were wrong.
Of course, since Barney Frank and Chris Dodd were there, are not conservative Republicans, and claim that he did say the US was targeting journalists, you are probably quite right–the tape wouldn’t have helped any more than a tape of OJ murdering his wife would have helped his defense.
The amazing thing to me is that you all can take evidence from Democrats combine it with Jordan resigning and spin him up as if he must be innocent and then go off about how unfair it is. Have you even considered the fact that he might have actually done exactly what is alleged? That he might have been at one of the most exclusive meetings of powerful world leaders and spun a yarn that he can’t defend with evidence? Does that even cross your mind for a second? Or does the fact that he is on your side innoculate him from suspicion?
The only reason I use such strong language is because you all are fricking attacking me for drawing utterly normal conclusions given the fact that two perfectly liberal Democratic Congressmen agree with the damning interpretation, and the fact that Jordan isn’t trying to release the tape or transcript, and the fact that he resigned before there was even more than a minor blip on the mainstream media. It is not ridiculous to take those three things together and come to the conclusion that Jordan actually said what was alleged.
“We know the exact quote, we know the context, and we know that he backed down immediately from something said off the cuff.”
Don’t be silly. We don’t know the exact quote. What is it? We don’t know the context. Tell me what it was? And all I hear is that he backed down to ‘not official policy’ which isn’t backing down at all, it is just realizing that you don’t have any real evidence.
“No, I think CNN should have either reported honestly and openly about the goings-on in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, or not reported from there at all.”
I looked up the original Op-Ed that Jordan wrote on this. I do think that this has been distorted somewhat, as I had this vague idea that they had actually cut a deal with the Iraqi government, and it was more that by telling the stories they would have informed the Iraqi government that they knew them. Here are the specific incidents he describes:
I don’t quite get all the relevant facts here. I assume that the employee got out of prison, or they would not have known what he was questioned about. Now, ordinarily a man comes to a reporter and tells him off the record that they tortured him but asks him not to write about it because it would endanger his family–you don’t write about it, period, end of story. I also assume that if their employee had consented, they would have run with the story. So probably you have a situation where journalists know this has happened, but they know not because a source voluntarily contacted a reporter, but because this was their employee who had to explain why he didn’t show up to work.
Maybe the strict canon’s of journalistic ethics say too bad, report it anyway. But I can’t imagine doing that, as a human being….to exploit an employee of yours’ trust, someone who has already been tortured because he was working for you, and against his will risk his life and his family’s?
Imagine how you would feel if it was a U.S. soldier’s life on the line and CNN had gone with the story?
This one’s a bit different. If you know that you cannot report anything really newsworthy that Uday Hussein says without him murdering the translator, what the F*CK are you doing interviewing Uday Hussein? I can’t imagine him saying anything that would be newsworthy in a positive way–what was this, an Olympic preview?
This is an easy one: if the source consents, you run the story. If he doesn’t, you don’t. With a politician if they don’t say “off the record” they don’t get to decide afterwards, but with an ordinary citizen who tells you something in confidence, you don’t say “well, I’m sorry if it gets you killed but it’s a hell of a story.”
Now this is the point at which you close the bureau. If you’re too afraid to report atrocities, not because they endanger specific sources who have not consented but because they’re going to attack your entire Baghdad bureau–what are you doing? You’re risking people’s lives AND you can’t even tell the truth. Get out of there, and do an expose that reveals as much as possible as what’s happened without betraying a confidential source.
He doesn’t give the context of this one, so I just don’t know–again, the ethics of it hinge on the source’s consent. If the father was willing to let them run the story and they didn’t for fear of their own safety, that’s terrible. If the father told it to them in confidence, they did the right thing–though if so, assuming this was a Kuwaiti family, they should have followed up after the war ended–but it may not have been possible.
All in all I’d say they made some very serious mistakes, but I think this was unfairly portrayed by the right-of-center media–sitting safely at home, thousands of miles away, without having ever dreamed of uncovering an atrocity by the Hussein regime, or risking their own lives, or being forced to choose between covering up and atrocity and causing the deaths of innocents. If you don’t do any factual reporting you’re not going to be faced with these dilemmas, and you can’t be accused of bias if you don’t claim to be unbiased–but at the end of the day what have you accomplished?
My high school U.S. history teacher could have avoided any hint of bias in the way he taught us about the Vietnam War or the Cuban Missile Crisis if he had us watch Court TV coverage of the OJ trial all day instead. But you know, I really don’t think we’d be better off for it. That’s why, whatever their flaws, the BBC and CNN international are more worth watching in a single week than an entire year of Fox News or MSNBC.
Sebastian, I don’t much care whether Dodd’s or Frank’s version or Gergen’s version is more accurate. Neither is a firing offense. He should have been chewed out thoroughly and apologized abjectly–as I understand it he did apologize–but I don’t like journalists being fired for saying something stupid and impolitic and inappropriate, especially if there is any possibility that he is being honest in saying that what he really meant was the difference between collateral damage to a TV station from bombing a government target, and actually hitting the TV station. Getting him fired was the clear, obvious desire of a lot of the major weblogs that have covered it, and if you didn’t realize that it was pretty naive of you. (Like others have said, the “release the tape to resolve this” from certain quarters reminds me a lot of the SF-form 180 thing. The tape should have been released, but I’m guessing it wasn’t strictly his decision–I’m guessing his bosses preferred to fire him rather than risk the bad PR the tape would bring, and/or Davos would not consent.) If he said it on the CNN news that would be one thing. That isn’t what happened here.
I mean, I’m sure Seymour Hersh is going to say something equally stupid at some public appearance at some point if he hasn’t already–especially he believes it’s off the record. Should he be fired when that happens?
He won’t be, because the New Yorker is the New Yorker. But most of our press is owned by people like Time Warner now. The next person to be drummed it out is going to deserve it even less than Jordan does.
On what basis do you assume that it was ‘something stupid’? That isn’t what Frank or Dodd seem to think.
Here’s another recollection of Jordan’s remarks.
Based on this account, and Gergen’s, and Dodd’s, and Frank’s–all four of whom I find trustworthy–it sounds like two sets of people are remembering slightly different versions of this exchange based on their emotional reactions to it. It sounds like a genuine miscommunication. If you know all about the Palestine hotel, you will understandably think “yes, ‘targetting’, the tank gun actually physically aimed at that window, it wasn’t like they were just in the wrong place when a car bomb exploded” If you don’t, you will understandably think “he accused American soldiers of murdering journalists–how DARE he?” Now, he should have realized this. He ought to have been much, much more careful with how he chose his words about what he must have known was an extremely sensitive topic–for his own effectiveness’ sake if nothing else. (OT, but I could also kick the idiot who titled the Reporters Sans Frontiers report on the Palestine Hotel case “Two Murders and a Lie”, when in fact they conclude that the troops had no IDEA there were journalists staying there, and that the real fault was with central command’s failure to tell the troops that this is where the press was, and take other very basic precautions to prevent this from happening). He ought to have released the video if it was within his power. But it’s a sad day for the country when this is a scandal, whereas there’s not even the most minimal inquiry into what went wrong with the Al Jazeera station bombing, and I’d never even heard of it before I saw Control Room. (Can I tell you how NOT in our country’s interest it is for the Al Jazeera newsroom to believe that the U.S. killed there cameraman on purpose and is now covering it up? Because they clearly do honestly believe that, however erroneously.)
And I repeat: even if Dodd’s and Frank’s version is true and he is lying about his intent, he should not have been fired and this will have a chilling effect far more damaging to the country than Jordan’s remarks.
Do you think he would have “been chewed out thoroughly and apologized abjectly” had people like instapundit not caused a stink?
Do you think he would have “been chewed out thoroughly and apologized abjectly” had people like instapundit not caused a stink?
Apologized to those whom he had actually hurt? Of course. Hell, as far as we know he’d done that by the time everyone left the room. Which is sort of the point, if you think about it.
It seems to me that this is the real problem (from Richard Sambrook posted on PressThink, linked by Katherine above):
The same applies to the seeming absence of results of investigations of prisoners held, or torture, or civilians killed or almost any crime committed in Iraq (where kidnapping, for example, is a daily occurrence).
This lack of public scrutiny is not helping the United States.
Don’t be silly. We don’t know the exact quote. What is it? We don’t know the context. Tell me what it was?
Given that you admit you don’t know what the man said, and that you admit that you don’t know what the context was for the things you admit you don’t know whether he said or not, your statements in this thread are so far out in left field I think you just smashed a windshield.
Perhaps in the future, we should just call for journalists to be bound, gagged, and tossed into the river if there is a question about something they said in an unofficial context. If they are innocent, we can assume they will drown, and that will clear the matter right up.
If Jordan did not in fact say that the US was targeting journalists, or if he in fact backtracked to something that made sense, of course releasing the tape would benefit him. It would benefit him because it would show that his accusers were wrong.
This is an argument by assertion. Having the facts in public record didn’t help Gore, in my previous analogy. Having the facts in the public record didn’t help John Kerry with the vicious Swift Vets attacks. Why? Because there are enough lazy and dishonest folks out there to keep a juicy story going, and there aren’t nearly as many conscientious folks out there to follow up on the boring truth. Ted Koppel sent a team to friggin’ Vietnam to get eyewitness accounts, and what was the response from the blogs? “The facts are biased!” (Or under the thrall of commies, at least.)
Anyway, for your logic to hold, two conditions would have to be met:
1) There must be a plausible scenario in which the release of the tape not only supports Jordan’s account, but in which this new information persuades the bulk of Jordan’s detractors to retract their charges in a public and meaningful way, leading to some repair to CNN’s reputation. Can you honestly imagine this happening?
2) There must not be a plausible scenario in which the release of the tape supports Jordan’s account, but in which the availability of this new media ends up exacerbating the situation for CNN anyway. See my February 12, 2005 01:20 PM post for an example of just such a scenario which I find completely plausible. So far you haven’t indicated any disagreement, maybe you just haven’t had the chance to comment.
So I’m still waiting for anything on #1 more detailed than “It would benefit him because it would show that his accusers were wrong.” What is the scenario in which Malkin apologizes or at least admits she was wrong? What is the scenario where right-wing bloggers stop calling for Jordan’s ejection from CNN? What is the scenario in which Fox doesn’t get that much more mileage out of the story and CNN doesn’t lose precious airtime, viewers, and sponsors to fumbling, defensive rebuttals? That’s what I’m asking for, not just another iteration of “because it would clear things up.”
This wasn’t just some-ole place ‘off the record’. It was the freaking Davos conference. This wasn’t ‘a reporter’, it was the head of CNN International. It wasn’t a verbal miscue, it was accusing US soldiers of targetting journalists. It wasn’t a misunderstanding, he just downgraded from the implication that it was official policy to the implication that it was not ‘official’ policy. The witnesses who think he said something atrocious–even after the backtrack, aren’t conservatives, they are Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd. There is a video, that they won’t release. He resigned before it was a focus in the main-stream media.
Summarizing that as ‘a reporter made a mistake which he corrected but has been slammed by a few of the people who heard it’, is glossing over all the important facts.
Give the facts available, I’m not going to feel bad for Jordan. If I had the video, I could judge for myself whether or not Democratic Representative Barney Frank misjudged Jordan’s assertion. But I don’t. And I could if CNN International got the tape and released it, like they would for other scandals.
“There must be a plausible scenario in which the release of the tape not only supports Jordan’s account, but in which this new information persuades the bulk of Jordan’s detractors to retract their charges in a public and meaningful way, leading to some repair to CNN’s reputation. Can you honestly imagine this happening?”
Wrong. Completely, totally wrong. In order for releasing the video to be helpful, Jordan’s comments must appear ok to the average viewer. Nobody expects to convince the rabid partisans, and no-one cares. You don’t expect a Bush speech to impress James Carville–that isn’t important. The question is whether or not the video would convince most viewers. Clearly Jordan believes the answer is no.
“What is the scenario in which Malkin apologizes or at least admits she was wrong?”
Who cares? It is what the average viewer of the video thinks that is important.
“What is the scenario where right-wing bloggers stop calling for Jordan’s ejection from CNN?”
Who cares? It is what the average viewer of the video thinks that is important.
We won’t ever know for sure, quite possibly because Jordan is smart enough to know how he would look to the average viewer of the video.
In order for releasing the video to be helpful, Jordan’s comments must appear ok to the average viewer.
Wrong. In order for the video to be helpful, there must be no soundbites that can be played ad nauseum (possibly out of context) by the right-wing’s various organ-monkeys — yes, FOX News, I’m looking at you — to destroy him or CNNI’s reputation. Until you acknowledge that, you’re arguing from premises that are, as the late great Wolfgang Pauli used to remark, “not even false”.
Re my comment above: That’s a necessary, but not sufficient, condition I’m outlining. [Sufficiency is a much harder proposition.] In order to be “helpful” it must first not be amenable to use as a weapon… because if it can be so used, it will be.
Anarch–transcripts from tape. I’d be happy with that, and they aren’t as easy to soundbite.
No offense, but are you guys making any headway in reaching common ground? Or should I check in after another 30k+ words?
Or should I check in after another 30k+ words?
Try 40k, just to be safe 😉
In order to spare rilkefan‘s word-count, I’ll say to Sebastian what I said to Bird Dog up-thread before I check out:
Anarch–transcripts from tape. I’d be happy with that, and they aren’t as easy to soundbite. [Emph mine.]
That’s charmingly naive of you, Sebastian.
Who cares indeed. You get major bonus points for being unintentionally funny here. Keep the laughs coming, Sebastian.
BTW, I wondered where the # 12 came from….I come up with 8 from the Reportiers Sans Frontiers website. None of these 8 overcome my very strong presumption that U.S. troops would never deliberately kill a journalist. (insurgents have killed many more journalists and are clearly deliberately murdering them as journalists–no surprise there.) But they are cases where you could use the word “targetted” in the very literal sense of “aimed and fired at a TV station or individual journalist”, which Jordan claims he meant. As far as where he gets 12, I don’t know. Some of the details on the site were ambiguous as to who did the shooting but I don’t see how Jordan would know it was coalition troops if RSF didn’t. But, it’s worth noting, RSF lists “media assistants killed” (meaning, translators, drivers, etc.) as a separate category and does not individually describe their deaths, so that could be where the other 4 (or more if I am wrong that Jordan had any of these in mind).
1.
“Al-Jazeera cameraman Tarek Ayoub (35), a Jordanian, was killed on 8 April 2003 when a missile hit and badly damaged the station’s offices near the Mansour Hotel in the centre of Baghdad.
Ayoub, who was the station’s permanent correspondent in Amman, was sent to beef up the team in Iraq when the war broke out. He was seriously wounded in the attack and died soon afterwards.”
2, 3.
“Two TV cameramen, Ukrainian Taras Protsyuk and Spaniard José Couso, were killed on 8 April 2003 when a US tank fired on the hotel Palestine in Baghdad, where many foreign journalists were staying.”
4.
“Palestinian cameraman Mazen Dana, 43, was shot dead by an American soldier on 17 August 2003 as he was filming Abou Ghraib prison in a suburb of Baghdad. US officials said the soldier mistook his camera for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.”
5.
“Dhia Najim, an Iraqi freelance cameraman working for the news agency Reuters was shot dead in disputed circumstances on 1st November 2004 in the town of Ramadi, west of Baghdad.
A US army communique said that Najim, 47, was filming clashes between US marines and Iraqi rebels in the Andulus district of Ramadi when he was shot in the neck. The US military authorities said they had looked at the footage he had taken and claimed that it showed rebels preparing to attack coalition forces.
Reuters said it had seen video footage of Najim’s death. The agency, which did not identify the source of the footage, said it indicated that he was killed by a sniper shot without any signs of fighting going on at the time.
A Reuters dispatch also noted that press photographs taken on 31 October showed US marine snipers taking up position in Ramadi. Reuters ruled out any possibility Najim being linked to the rebels and called for a thorough investigation by the US army. Najim’s colleagues and family believe he was killed by a US sniper.”
6.
“Palestinian journalist Mazen al-Tomaizi, who worked for the pan-Arab TV news station Al-Arabiya and the Saudi TV station Al-Ekhbariya, was reporting live on Al-Ekhbariya at the scene of a burning Bradley fighting vehicle on 12 September 2004 in Baghdad when he was hit by the impact of a missile fired from a US helicopter.”
7, 8.
“Two Al-Arabiya journalists were hit by American shots on 18 March 2004 near the Borj al-Hayat Hotel although their vehicle was clearly marked “TV.”
Cameraman Ali Abdel-Aziz was killed instantly, and reporter Ali Al-Khatib died early the next day from his injuries at Baghdad’s neurosurgical hospital. Both worked for the Dubai-based, pan-Arab TV news network Al-Arabiya.
The TV crew was there because the Borj al-Hayat Hotel had just sustained a rocket attack. Abdel Aziz’s brother, Haidar Abdel Aziz, said Al-Arabiya had been given permission to film by the US army. “Suddenly, a Volvo did not stop at the roadblock and the soldiers began to open fire,” he said. “My brother and the journalist wanted to leave, they ran towards their car, and at the moment that it was starting up, an armoured vehicle fired on it.”
Look at the BBC reporter’s account. He is the one who comes closest to Jordan’s mindset, who knows the facts Jordan knows, and therefore I think he is in the best position to guess what Jordan meant. (Well, actually Jordan is, but Jordan has a motive to lie about it whereas the BBC guy doesn’t.) Barney Frank, much as I love him, is an unbelievably cranky and stubborn SOB (read about his little feud with Gavin Newsom) and Jordan started by apparently attacking him–I don’t think he would be anything less than completely honest, but he was a participant in the argument, not an observer. Dodd is not going into enough detail to be helpful and seems like he’s grandstanding a bit. (Imus? Come on.)) Gergen has no reason to be anything other than truthful, but also I think genuinely doesn’t want to see someone fired.
As for the “release the tape” thing one last time: I agree. I seriously doubt it is Jordan’s decision alone. His bosses at CNN pretty clearly decided to fire him in a cowardly attempt to avoid bad press and angry letters from bloggers. (They come off worse than anyone in this in my view.) The tape did not have to make Jordan look worse, and may indeed have made him look better, and yet fed the controversy. The very existence of Fox News guaranteees that.
Once again I predict:
This will make reporters, editors and networks more reluctant to report critically about the administration, in a way that does more damage to this country than Jordan’s remarks ever could have. Someone else will be fired under similar circumstances in the not too distant future, and they will deserve it less than Jordan did. When that happens, I sure as hell hope none of you will have helped.
Ann Coulter’s stated wish that the military should kill journalists will have no harmful effect at all on cable networks’ decision to book her as a guest.
“Anarch–transcripts from tape. I’d be happy with that, and they aren’t as easy to soundbite. [Emph mine.]
That’s charmingly naive of you, Sebastian.”
That’s nice. And it is charmingly naive of you to think I wouldn’t notice that you have neatly set up a situation where I am not supposed to criticize what it has been alleged was said nor am I supposed to ask for proof about what was actually said to see how it compares with what is alleged. Choose one position or the other, you can’t have both.
Ann Coulter’s stated wish that the military should kill journalists will have no harmful effect at all on cable networks’ decision to book her as a guest.
There is a large and growing audience in this nation that will pay to hear someone advocate killing journalists (and grow livid at the suggestion that the US military kills journalists).
Everything else in this thread must be evaluated in that context.
“What is the scenario in which Malkin apologizes or at least admits she was wrong?”
Who cares?
Given that she’s convinced any number of people that there was a better than even chance that my grandparents and uncles and/or aunts were actively involved in espionage against the US and only with the defeat of Japan, slipped back into the woodwork and therefore avoided punishment, that who cares is telling. Of course, this is not about my ancestors (because if it were, I would be dismissed as being biased, right), this is about a CNN higher-up who has a history of anti-American bias, eh? (I hasten to add that you haven’t pulled that one out, but it’s all over the posts that you link to)
“Do you think he would have “been chewed out thoroughly and apologized abjectly” had people like instapundit not caused a stink?”
I don’t really f***ing care, because there are much worse and more harmful things going on in this country right now, and not only does Reynold not care, he actively attacks the people who do care. I am currently up to my eyeballs in them–which I brought on myself, I admit–but it is putting me in a truly awful mood, and you are probably getting more of it than you deserve because Glenn Reynolds & friends would never ever post here. All I can say is, they don’t deserve you on their side as far as I’m concerned. (If you’re wondering whether I mean that as an insult to them or a compliment to you: both.)
Does Ann Coulter convince anyone of anything? Isn’t she sort of a shock jock? Can’t we go be upset about the recent evidence the admin got warnings up the wazoo in ’01?
I think he would have been chewed out with or without Instapundit. Among the people who were there are people who I imagine would have called someone at CNN even if this had not been reported anywhere, and that would have been enough, if their owners/managers are at all competent.
I see no reason to think he didn’t mean what he says he meant, namely that among the people who were not just collateral damage, but were aimed at and shot, some were journalists. Not being there, I obviously don’t know, but I don’t see any reason not to think this is what happened.
In particular, the fact that it was at Davos is not such a reason. I mean: my tendency to have things I say come out all wrong, which is mercifully less than it used to be when I was a clueless adolescent, has always been strongest in important situations, and I don’t think this is something peculiar to me. Its being Davos does make any misunderstanding, especially this one, more unfortunate, but it does not mean that he would not have said something that was open to misinterpretation. (I mean: am I the only person who does this? The only one who has such thrilling memories as the time when I was 15 and the guy I was horribly in love with said ‘so, what have you been doing?’, and I thought: sleeping, lying around, and said: sleeping around? And the only one who wonders: what on earth would have become of me if I had been famous and Instapundit had been around?)
Does the fact that he resigned let us infer anything? Not much. Again: I cannot be the only person here who has been involved in, or a witness to, personnel decisions, and just about the only constant is that if you know what went on and you have the slightest shred of decency, you can’t tell anyone, even when speculation about why X has resigned/been fired/whatever is rampant, and everyone is saying “if only you’d tell us why this happened, we’d understand.” He could have been asked to leave because CNN was afraid of controversy. He could have resigned because he felt that his continued presence would undermine CNN’s claim to objectivity, given the firestorm. He could have been thinking of resigning anyways and had this be the last straw. He could have been, quite independently, caught selling crack to second graders, or been diagnosed with a terminal illness. — OK, I just threw the last two in, but the first two especially are obvious possibilities.
The point of this is not to stick up for CNN. And it’s also not to pile on Sebastian. It’s just that I don’t see how any of us can know enough at this point (possibly ever) to draw any conclusions about what happened. Except, I think, for Katherine’s, with which I concur.
rilkefan:
“Very bad things happen in the dark, and this is true whether the dark is created by government censorship or by the profit motive; whether true and important stories do not get heard because reporters are afraid to write them or because they are drowned out by a din of noise.”
As someone who wanted desperately to be a journalist, gave up, still secretly wishes, who never could have gotten a job on any news network if she dreamed of it–every single second of time on a TV “news” network or program devoted to yet another vicious shouting match is a lost opportunity. What the press doesn’t cover at all is so much more destructive than any bias, real or perceived. But no one notices. I suppose that’s part of what I hold against Powerline, Coulter, Reynolds, etc. I take it personally. I tried to make in this field and I didn’t–partly my own choice, but not only. In the last year I have worked so hard on this extraordinary rendition stuff (I’ve gone offline with most of it, but at this point I’ve got 44 pages outlining all the cases I know about in excruciating detail)–and for what? How many people have read it or will ever read it, compared to the audience of the lamest cable TV new show (Kudlow and Cramer might BE the lamest cable TV news show actually) or any of Coulter’s books, or Malkin’s? Our media, with the oldest and strongest constitutional protection in the world, is pathetic compared to every other English-speaking country I’ve encountered. (England, Australia, Canada, South Africa.) Not close, in any case. Even if it really was completely harmless to have her talk about the deaths of journalists–and I really do not believe it is–every minute of that is a minute more lost to decent news coverage.
Does Ann Coulter convince anyone of anything?
Compared to who? Jordan? Ward Churchill?
Compared to Jordan, yes Coulter convinces people of something. Compared to Ward Churchill, yes Coulter convinces people of something. How many books has Churchill sold? Jordan? Coulter? Millions of people love what Coulter is selling. You can deny it all you want…but it just makes you look silly.
Those who thought the admin got the warnings right in ’01 can be upset about the recent evidence, I guess. I don’t expect any of them to be upset or to change their minds, they will invent a new justification. It goes on and on.
Phil: As long as you’re reading my mind, though
Curiously enough, Phil, I don’t need to read your mind to see that your comments on this thread about the first Eason Jordan “scandal” simply accepted the right-wing framing of it. (I’m interested to see that Katherine too had misremembered it in the terms the right-wing framed it – as CNN “cutting a deal” with Hussein’s regime. It was obviously a very successful framing.)
I suspect that this “scandal” will also be remembered, a year or so down the line, not in terms of a bunch of right-wingers unfairly hounding a man who made an off-the-cuff comment off the record, but in terms of “Jordan said the US military were deliberately killing journalists.”
And I am certain that the killing of journalists by US military will still go uninvestigated: the scandal to the right-wing was talking about it, not that it happened.
It’s notable, isn’t it, that the right-wing framing of any story about Iraq invariably wipes out of the picture the people who have been killed there.
Sebastian Holsclaw: Wrong. Completely, totally wrong. In order for releasing the video to be helpful, Jordan’s comments must appear ok to the average viewer. Nobody expects to convince the rabid partisans, and no-one cares. You don’t expect a Bush speech to impress James Carville–that isn’t important. The question is whether or not the video would convince most viewers.
So we are having this discussion because average viewers have been clamoring for Jordan to get the axe? This isn’t trial by jury. Nobody can be compelled to hear out both cases and render an objective judgment. The people who will write angry letters to sponsors aren’t average viewers. There are no average viewers for CNN to gain here, only those who can be lost, as rabid partisans undertake a campaign to erode CNN’s credibility among the general audience. (And again, for the record, I’m no big CNN fan myself.)
Your formulation mistakenly assumes that fairness in any way enters into the equation. If it turns out Jordan didn’t make the accusation you seem to think he made, there is no big story for CNN to run, and consequently, no audience. If he did, there is a scandal, and folks will tune in to Fox for the gory details. In either case, Fox now has more material to use against CNN. They can just leave the footage in the hands of the O’Reillys and Hannitys, who get to show whatever part of the video they deem appropriate, and then host a “debate” on anti-American bias at CNN between a firebreathing righty and a cardboard cutout of a liberal. The righty will almost certainly argue that Jordan should be kicked to the curb, pronto, because if he didn’t say it he probably was thinking it, and besides, he was a Saddam patsy. The cardboard liberal will argue that Jordan should at least get two weeks notice.
Clearly Jordan believes the answer is no.
Well, then, that makes one of us who clearly knows what Jordan believes.
Sebastian: Choose one position or the other, you can’t have both.
Actually, I’m choosing neither. What I’ve been trying to say is that Jordan’s resignation means nothing insofar as the allegations him are concerned, and that furthermore the “decision” (if there was a formal decision) not to release the video footage is orthogonal to the question of whether he’s guilty of that which you think he is.
In case it wasn’t clear before: I don’t begrudge you your skepticism. I think you are perfectly capable of evaluating the evidence presented and giving Jordan a fair judgement, whether or not I happen to agree with it. You are, however, in the rather extreme minority here. As we’ve been trying to say — and in my case, with perhaps too much snark — is that irrespective of whether Jordan said the things he was alleged to and independent of what a reasonable individual (such as most everyone here at ObWi) might conclude, if there is anything even tangentially malleable into a scandal, a scandal will ensue. Video clip, edited transcript, it won’t make a damn bit of difference. FOX will have it on permaplay, MSNBC will jump in the act like a starving weasel and every pundit from here to Saratoga’s gonna have a field day because there’ll be blood in the water. [I shudder to think what the NYT or WaPo would have to say on the matter. SCLM/VRWC ain’t got nothin’ on the delight of journalists covering, and screwing, their own.] Frankly, I’ll be surprised if CNNI makes it out of this with just a single scapegoat; it’s fairly clear to me that the Outrageosphere’s outrage here has little to do with the substance of Jordan’s remarks since, well, we don’t actually know what he said. And nor, it seems, does it actually matter.
Or, to be really blunt about it: your desire to know the truth of this incident, sincere though it may be, is utterly irrelevant to the matter at hand. Same as mine.
Curiously enough, Phil, I don’t need to read your mind to see that your comments on this thread about the first Eason Jordan “scandal” simply accepted the right-wing framing of it.
****yawn**** Try your shtick with someone who’s buying, Kreskin.
They Shoot Journalists, Don’t They? by Chris Paterson, AlterNet. Posted February 15, 2005.
Found via Jeanne at Body and Soul: Avedon Carol with the best post yet on Eason Jordan.
Open letter to David T Johnson, Acting ambassador, US Embassy, London, dated Saturday December 4, 2004:
Open letter to David T Johnson, Acting ambassador, US Embassy, London, dated Saturday December 4, 2004:
Still, what matters isn’t whether or not US troops are eliminating journalists: what matters is silencing any American who raises the topic.
Sorry for the double post. Got an error message the first time, but really, I should know better…
John Simpson, BBC World Affairs Editor, wrote in June 2003:
John Simpson has not, and will not, met the fate of Jordan Eason. We may not have a First Amendment in the UK, but we still value good reporters.
John Simpson isn’t stupid enough to make the same charge as Jordan either. He plays the statistical game instead of using words like target (even though he may be making the same innuendo.)
“I don’t think this figure has been brought to public attention in this way before; and as far as I know, there have been no public apologies for the deaths which have taken place.”
As far as I know, almost a larger number of Marines have been killed by other Marines than journalists killed by Americans, but I don’t think this figure has been brought to public attention in this way before and there are rarely public apologies for the deaths which have taken place.
This is of course the ‘journalists are super-important’ standard. Is any profession more self-absorbed? Oh wait, lawyers. 🙂
As far as I know, almost a larger number of Marines have been killed by other Marines than journalists killed by Americans, but I don’t think this figure has been brought to public attention in this way before and there are rarely public apologies for the deaths which have taken place.
Comparing absolute numbers here is moderately ludicrous, unless you’re saying that there are an equal number of journalsts and Marines in Iraq, and that they are equally likely to be engaged in combat. Rhetorically cute, but silly.
Sebastian: John Simpson isn’t stupid enough to make the same charge as Jordan either.
Oh, you’ve decided you know what Jordan said? How did you find out? Can you share your source?
This is of course the ‘journalists are super-important’ standard.
You’ve complained in the past about poor standards of media coverage, Sebastian. It comes oddly from you to complain that journalists shouldn’t object to being shot at by US soldiers in a war zone… Is that really an argument you wish to make? Would you care to rephrase?
“It comes oddly from you to complain that journalists shouldn’t object to being shot at by US soldiers in a war zone… Is that really an argument you wish to make? Would you care to rephrase?”
Nope, you should rephrase. Simpson doesn’t claim that they are being shot at by US soldiers. Journalists are going places where lots of shooting is occurring. It isn’t at all shocking that some of them also get shot. That is how Marines get shot by other Marines too–and morally that isn’t shocking to anyone who knows anything about war.
Some of them are in fact being murdered, but that has tended to involve kidnapping and head severing and has been taking place on the other side–which for some reason seems less worth reporting than accidental deaths.
I’m sticking by the Marine analogy–because it has the exact same moral connotations as the journalist deaths. When you put yourself in dangerous situations, you shouldn’t be shocked that dangerous things happen. The difference may be that journalists like to pretend they aren’t in a dangerous situation. If there is evidence of more than that, I would love to see it. There isn’t, because I am absolutely certain that the BBC would revel in it if they had any.
“Oh, you’ve decided you know what Jordan said? How did you find out? Can you share your source?”
Democratic Representative Barney Frank. Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd. Thanks for asking.
So, what was all the asking for the tape about, if you know to your own satisfaction what was said?
My view of Frank and Dodd’s reports has been solidified by the fact that Jordan doesn’t want the tape released, doesn’t want a transcript released and that he resigned before the story got much play in the mainstream media. It is also bolstered by the fact that he has said such things before. That is my considered opinion after the stonewalling of the last week–it was a much lower grade suspicion before.
So back to the Marine analogy. Do you agree that there is something rather different between accidental deaths and going after journalists to kill them?
Nope, you should rephrase. Simpson doesn’t claim that they are being shot at by US soldiers.
Actually, in polite, ever-so-British style, he says exactly what [at least one interpretation of what] Eason Jordan said. That journalists have been killed by direct fire from US soldiers.
When you put yourself in dangerous situations, you shouldn’t be shocked that dangerous things happen.
It’s news to me that Marines are clearly marked out as noncombatants. Are they?
Democratic Representative Barney Frank. Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd. Thanks for asking.
So, you don’t know. You’re just (as you’ve been all the way through this thread) assuming that you can assume the worst – because it was Eason Jordan who said it. Whatever it was. 😉
My view of Frank and Dodd’s reports has been solidified by the fact that Jordan doesn’t want the tape released, doesn’t want a transcript released and that he resigned before the story got much play in the mainstream media.
Throw him in the river, Sebastian. If he drowns, he’s innocent. If he floats, he’s guilty. (Or a duck.) Either way, you’re rid of the nasty witch.
“That journalists have been killed by direct fire from US soldiers.”
Yup, and Marines who wear US uniforms also get killed by direct fire from US soldiers. So it is entirely un-fricking-surpising that journalists have gotten killed. Unless you can say that the US was targetting journalists in the sense of knowing they were journalists and shooting them anyway, this should be entirely unshocking.
“Throw him in the river, Sebastian. If he drowns, he’s innocent.”
I didn’t ask for the river, I asked for the tape. I asked for further information–just like the media always does. The fact that they expect full disclosure from other sources but prefer to hide when they are questioned is arrogant and unhelpful. Asking for information isn’t a witchhunt–especially when 2 sources who are not at all pro-Bush support the idea that something highly inflammatory was said by Jordan.
You know, this is slightly off the main thrust of the conversation, but I’m kind of stunned that the fact that whatever the words he uttered at Davos, Jordan has now (‘now’ being apparently at Davos, but certainly on the record immediately after this story broke) characterized them as a misstatement to the extent that they went beyond the non-controversial statement that journalists have been killed by aimed fire (in contrast to, say, high-altitude bombing), has had no effect on this controversy.
You (SH) have been arguing throughout as if Jordan were still out there saying “US armed forces murder journalists” (and I have been responding as if that were the case). This simply isn’t true — whether whatever he said was the non-controversial statement above, that was misinterpreted by his audience, or whether it was something that literally did assert that the US armed forces were intentionally killing journalists as journalists, he has clearly said that he does not believe the latter to be the case and that anything he said to that effect was a mistake.
There’s something really strange about this — it seems that in the eyes of the right blogosphere, Jordan had to be hounded out of his job not because he misled anyone, or did any damage, but apparently because he slipped and revealed that he harbored bad thoughts about the US.
Sebastian: Unless you can say that the US was targetting journalists in the sense of knowing they were journalists and shooting them anyway, this should be entirely unshocking.
Clearly it is to you, yes.
Further, a point that has been made repeatedly by non-US journalists: many journalists have been killed by US soldiers under circumstances when it certainly looked as if the US knew they were journalists and targetted them anyway. No independent inquiry into those incidents has ever been carried out: the US military simply declared itself innocent – and journalists have continued to be killed.
I didn’t ask for the river
You’re not a Monty Python fan, Sebastian? I’m disappointed at you.
LizardBreath: There’s something really strange about this — it seems that in the eyes of the right blogosphere, Jordan had to be hounded out of his job not because he misled anyone, or did any damage, but apparently because he slipped and revealed that he harbored bad thoughts about the US.
This is precisely what Avedon Carol said –
And with the enthusiastic assistance of their supporters.
Jesurgislac: Throw him in the river, Sebastian. If he drowns, he’s innocent. If he floats, he’s guilty. (Or a duck.) Either way, you’re rid of the nasty witch.
This is spot on. Sebastian, you still haven’t addressed my assessment of why releasing the tape was quite likely a lose-lose scenario for Jordan/CNN (posted on February 12, 2005 01:20 PM). Yet you still argue as if it is self-evident that releasing the tape would help them if it bears out his account (presumably based on your “average viewer” standard, which I’ve answered above, to no evident response). This is an assumption on your part that needs to be logically supported.
A) He wasn’t being hounded out of his job, he was being hounded into revealing what he actually said.
B) If he had not been forced to clarify, quite a few people would have apparently believed that he meant ‘target’ in the absolutely most normal sense of the word.
C) That clarification would not have taken place if the right half of the blogosphere had not called him on it.
“This is spot on. Sebastian, you still haven’t addressed my assessment of why releasing the tape was quite likely a lose-lose scenario for Jordan/CNN (posted on February 12, 2005 01:20 PM). Yet you still argue as if it is self-evident that releasing the tape would help them if it bears out his account (presumably based on your “average viewer” standard, which I’ve answered above, to no evident response). This is an assumption on your part that needs to be logically supported.”
I don’t care if it would be a lose-lose situation. Whining about that isn’t good enough for the media when they are hounding someone else now is it? I strongly suspect it would be a loser situation for them because it looks as if Jordan actually said some stupid things, and he didn’t backtrack as much as he wants to claim. If I were calling for him to resign–which I did not–I would be forced confront the idea of the lose-lose situation. I was asking for disclosure–that only has to be defended from a disclosure point of view. And Jordan got hit with the exact same disclosure standard that his team applies to people all over the world.
The fact that he chose to resign rather than disclose is not something I worry about–and tends to SUGGEST though not prove that the tape wouldn’t have helped him much.
“Jordan denied that last night, saying he had been responding to Frank’s comment that the 63 journalists who have been killed in Iraq were “collateral damage” in the war. “I was trying to make a distinction between ‘collateral damage’ and people who got killed in other ways,” Jordan said last night. “I have never once in my life thought anyone from the U.S. military tried to kill a journalist. Never meant to suggest that. Obviously I wasn’t as clear as I should have been on that panel.”
This is a quote from a February 8th WP story. Most of the eye-witnesses say he made an equivalent statement at the original panel, but he certainly said it by February 8th. Obviously, disavowing the objected-to statement did not shut the controversy down.
(Your last post, BTW, assumes that Jordan has the power to release the videotape at his own option. DO you have reason to believe that to be true, or are you just blowing smoke?)
Some of them are in fact being murdered, but that has tended to involve kidnapping and head severing and has been taking place on the other side–which for some reason seems less worth reporting than accidental deaths.
Are you really claiming with a straight face that there’s been a lack of adequate reporting on the topic of kidnappings and murders by terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East? Really?
Your last post, BTW, assumes that Jordan has the power to release the videotape at his own option. DO you have reason to believe that to be true, or are you just blowing smoke?
I am quite confident that he has the power to publically ask for its release.
Phil, I am absolutely claiming that the fact that a CNN head can talk about dangers to reporters in Iraq and then choose to focus on those killed accidentally by Americans rather than those who killed say the husband of the woman he was having an affair with, is rather a bit much.
That is, of course, a different decision that to “resign rather than to disclose.”
In any case, my point stands — whatever he said, he disavowed it at least by February 8th. This appears totally irrelevant to the controversy in your eyes — why?
“and then choose to focus on those killed accidentally by Americans rather than those who killed say the husband of the woman he was having an affair with”
Cites please. At least as many as those killed by American soldiers.
Sebastian: I am quite confident that he has the power to publicly ask for its release.
Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them? (Henry IV Part I: Act 3)
1. Anyone has the power to ask publicly for the release of a video-recording or transcript of a Davos session. As Davos is explicitly off-the-record – something all attendees agree to – no-one, and a fortiori no attendee, will get what they ask for. So why should Eason have asked?
2. You have never answered the cogent point that – whatever Eason said – there is no reason to believe that releasing the video-recording would have helped him, and every reason to believe it would have hurt him. So why should Eason have asked?
Phil, I am absolutely claiming that the fact that a CNN head can talk about dangers to reporters in Iraq and then choose to focus on those killed accidentally by Americans rather than those who killed say the husband of the woman he was having an affair with, is rather a bit much.
Uh-uh. No weaseling out here — you said “reporting”: Which for some reason seems less worth reporting than accidental deaths
So, I’m asking you point-blank, what has CNN reported on more: Journalists being killed, or kidnappings and murders by terrorists?
“Cites please. At least as many as those killed by American soldiers.”
I don’t even know what you are asking me to cite. You want a cite to the fact that Jordan was having an affair with the widow of Daniel Pearl? Is this good enough? You want me to show what Jordan was focusing on in his chat? I can’t freaking cite that because he won’t release it. But it appears from reports of Frank and Dodd and others that he was focusing on US soldiers ‘targeting’ journalists rather than the terrorists who slit his mistress’ husband’s throat.
Which has CNN reported more? I have no idea, I don’t watch their awful news station. Which has Jordan talked about more? He gets reported talking about US soldiers.
So I’m asking you point blank. Is there a difference between accidentaly killing journalists and ‘targetting them’? Is there a difference between having a chat with your friends and discussing something at Davos?
“You have never answered the cogent point that – whatever Eason said – there is no reason to believe that releasing the video-recording would have helped him, and every reason to believe it would have hurt him. So why should Eason have asked?”
Because he is subject to disclosure of actual information just like all the people his team covers. You are right that there is no reason to believe it would help him–he probably said exactly what is alleged by Democratic Congressmen. It is ridiculous for a media person to suggest that an actual tape which could actually resolve what he actually said should remain hidden.
“whatever he said, he disavowed it at least by February 8th.”
Ridiculous. You want the blogosphere to have not mentioned it, when if we had not he would never have disavowed his comments. And when he did, he played the ‘who me?’ game of pretending to be misunderstood. The tape is evidence for whether or not that is true. It speaks directly to the question of his credibility.
“I don’t even know what you are asking me to cite. You want a cite to the fact that Jordan was having an affair with the widow of Daniel Pearl? Is this good enough?”
I had not read the language I quoted as saying he had an affair with Daniel Pearl’s wife (and would not have cared enough to ask the question if I read it that way). I read what you said as saying that journalists were killed for having affairs with local women in Iraq. As Emily Latella would say, Never mind.
Sebastian Holsclaw: I don’t care if it would be a lose-lose situation. Whining about that isn’t good enough for the media when they are hounding someone else now is it?
The “media” isn’t being judged here. Jordan is. Lets stick to his crimes for the moment. Unless you mean to make him answer for everyone who ever took up a camera or notepad?
And, to answer your question, when speaking to the matter of presumption of guilt it absolutely should be good enough, and whether it is depends on the integrity of the journalist. To read anything into the unavailability of the tape is to bank on the idea that Jordan and CNN would necessarily benefit from and could not be hurt by the response to a tape that favors his account. Not caring if it would be a lose-lose situation means not caring that you are making a baseless assumption on meaningless evidence.
Obviously this alone is not an argument for letting the story die. That argument has been made pretty well by other folks in this discussion. If we were talking about the coverup of a crime, an actual erroneous report (a la the 60 Minutes fiasco), or folks in government trying to hide their activities, even a clear public accusation of atrocities — i.e. an actual matter of consequence — then that would be one thing. But this was a tempest in a teapot until the public lynching.
It is ridiculous for a media person to suggest that an actual tape which could actually resolve what he actually said should remain hidden.
Did he say that the tape should not be released? You keep arguing that no evidence for equates to evidence against. That is a ridiculous notion.
“And, to answer your question, when speaking to the matter of presumption of guilt it absolutely should be good enough, and whether it is depends on the integrity of the journalist.”
Exactly. And if you would like to say that Congressman Barney Frank and Senator Christopher Dodd do not have integrity on this point please do so forthrightly in your next post on this topic.
“To read anything into the unavailability of the tape is to bank on the idea that Jordan and CNN would necessarily benefit from and could not be hurt by the response to a tape that favors his account.”
Nope. On a case in controversy, the media will demand such a tape EVEN IF THEY KNOW IT DAMNS THE SPEAKER.
You claim that we can’t be sure whether or not the tape hurts Jordan. You are entirely correct. Unfortunately for your argument, that is entirely irrelevant.
Which has CNN reported more? I have no idea, I don’t watch their awful news station.
Ah — so you were making shit up. Noted.
So I’m asking you point blank. Is there a difference between accidentaly killing journalists and ‘targetting them’? Is there a difference between having a chat with your friends and discussing something at Davos?
Why are you asking me? Have I insinuated anywhere that there isn’t? Pretty sure I haven’t. Did you insinuate that CNN had reported more about journalists being killed than about terrorists kidnapping and murdering people? Yep, you did.
I’m not going to stand for the public lynching analogy either.
Asking for clarifying information does not count as public lynching. Lynching implies using force to carry out a punishment without due process. Bloggers didn’t have the power to fire him. Most of us weren’t even asking for a punishment. The only power we had was the ability to shine some light on his statements and ask for more information to clarify. That is what we did. That the stonewalling has been coupled with a resignation rather than revelation of what was actually said is not our fault.
Phil, please feel free to read the discussion which prompted my response (posted and linked by Jesurgislac) and point out the numerous places where journalists being murdered by Islamists are reported.
I eagerly await your response.
Sebastian: The only power we had was the ability to shine some light on his statements and ask for more information to clarify. That is what we did.
No, you didn’t. Because there was no point in your doing that, I hasten to add: Eason Jordan had already shone light on his off-the-cuff comment [calling it a “statement” is meiosis*] and given more information to clarify what he said. He did so very promptly after saying it, and he’s done so since.
That the stonewalling has been coupled with a resignation rather than revelation of what was actually said is not our fault.
What was actually said was reported on in reasonable detail. Eason Jordan said something capable of two interpretations: he clarified what he meant, both at the time and later, and what he said he meant was (pretty much) what John Simpson said, in the article I linked to – updated with 18 months more killings.
That the right-wing blogosphere responded to this off-the-cuff comment like a frenzied mob, determined to believe that he must have meant the opposite of what he said he meant, and that all clarifications can be ignored, is not – you individually, Sebastian – your fault. Except insofar as you took part in it.
*No, it’s not meiosis, is it? because meiosis is rhetorical understatement. What Sebastian is doing in calling Eason Jordan’s off-the-cuff comment at Davos “statements” is rhetorical overstatement. Is there a word for that?
OK, fine. That shifts your claim to the idea that the BBC has reported more on journalists being killed than on terrorists kidnapping and murdering people. So, again, prove it or retract it. It’s your claim.
Am I somehow shocked that an article about reporters being killed is about reporters being killed and not about something else? No. Should I be?
Do you think that the existence of this single article that Jes cited implies, proves, insinuates or otherwise implicates the BBC in having failed to adequately report on terrorists kidnapping and killing people? Should every article about any topic regarding the war have to include a sentence saying, “But the terrorists are worse,” or, “But Saddam Hussein was worse?”
Seriously. Come on. You’re on really untenable ground with this claim.
Ridiculous. You want the blogosphere to have not mentioned it, when if we had not he would never have disavowed his comments.
My point, at least partially, is that the disavowal did nothing to end the controversy. We can agree on that — no? On your second point, all eyewitness accounts agree that at the time of the original statement he disavowed the strongest interpretation of his words: most accounts agree that he, at that time, restated to the non-controversial statement I gave above, so saying that he would never have disavowed it in the absence of the feeding frenzy is not well supported by the facts.
My larger point is that the making of the strongest version of the statement at all, despite the fact that it was retracted (immediately, either totally or at least in part; in any case totally shortly thereafter), is apparently perceived as an unforgiveable offense. (The noise about the tape is irrelevant — assume that he said the worst thing it could possibly have revealed, and the situation remains unchanged.) This is bizarre — the worst thing he could possibly have said was inflammatory, but not irrational in light of the unusual number of journalists killed by US fire. As soon as his factual support for it was challenged, he retracted the allegation, saying that he had spoken hastily and in error. How that makes him unfit for his job, I can’t imagine.
“Am I somehow shocked that an article about reporters being killed is about reporters being killed and not about something else?”
Excuse me? The article ‘about reporters being killed’ is not an article about reporters being killed. It is only about reporters being killed by Americans, which I believe is my whole point.
“On your second point, all eyewitness accounts agree that at the time of the original statement he disavowed the strongest interpretation of his words: most accounts agree that he, at that time, restated to the non-controversial statement I gave above, so saying that he would never have disavowed it in the absence of the feeding frenzy is not well supported by the facts.”
That isn’t true. Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd BOTH left that meeting believing that Jordan said the US was targetting journalists in a singling them out to kill them kind of way. They said that he backed down only as far as ‘official policy’ which is hardly backing down at all. Even totalitarian regimes rarely kill journalists as ‘official policy’, they do so through lots of unofficial channels.
The reason the tape was requested after the Feb. 8th retraction was to see if he was speaking one way to one audience and another way to other audiences and to see if the retraction was a change in view or merely a change in position. All of those are completely legitmiate inquiries.
Sebastian Holsclaw: Exactly. And if you would like to say that Congressman Barney Frank and Senator Christopher Dodd do not have integrity on this point please do so forthrightly in your next post on this topic.
If that were the only account from a person of integrity, you might have a point. But you keep conveniently omitting the fact that there is another account from an equally disinterested party that backs up Jordan’s take on the exchange.
Nope. On a case in controversy, the media will demand such a tape EVEN IF THEY KNOW IT DAMNS THE SPEAKER.
The question isn’t whether they will demand the tape. That should be determined by the significance of the story. The question is if they should make statements along the lines of “Inferences that the resignation suggests something bad for Eason–you typically don’t resign over a scandal where you believe you are innocent even before it really breaks.” This would be irresponsible journalism, in my book. You can say that some eyewitness accounts suggest that, though you should also point out that those accounts are contradicted by similarly reliable witnesses. You instead choose to talk as if the status of the tape means something, and as if the damning eyewitness accounts are somehow more credible than the exculpatory ones, by virtue of the fact that Democrats like Barney Frank would presumably be inclined to be in bed with the anti-American media. This is a highly selective take on the available evidence.
You claim that we can’t be sure whether or not the tape hurts Jordan. You are entirely correct. Unfortunately for your argument, that is entirely irrelevant.
It is completely relevant to the fact that you have repeatedly stated that Jordan not publicly calling for the release of the tape speaks in some way to its content. You are still discounting the possibility that the tape clears him but there is still a motive for not calling for its release, not to mention the fact that a scenario in which the release of the tape actually helps him has yet to even be described. Why? Because you assume the tape doesn’t clear him. Why? Because he hasn’t called for its release. This is circular reasoning.
It is only about reporters being killed by Americans, which I believe is my whole point.
Huh? Did you read the article by John Simpson? At that time (June 2004) sixteen reporters had been killed in Iraq. He listed them all, by name, and wrote:
He then goes into how his colleagues died: “five deaths out of sixteen are depressingly explainable” (car accident, thrombosis, landmine), one by suicide bomber, ten killed by “some kind of military action”. (He excludes the “death by suicide bomber” as something that no one can guard against.)
Of those ten, he points out, three were killed by Iraqis, seven by Americans.
John Simpson isn’t writing only about reporters killed by Americans. But he is saying that, in his lengthy experience of reporting (thirty years, and more war zones than most of us have heard of) the casualty rate among reporters was very high, and that American forces appear to have been, at least, careless of journalist’s lives.
And he’s asking, which seems only reasonable, for the U.S. military “to be a great deal more careful”.
Yet it’s been 18 months since John Simpson wrote that column, and nothing appears to have changed.
Your reaction, when the topic is raised again by another man with many years of experience, isn’t “Well, perhaps it should be looked into” but “ShutupshutupSHUTUP”.
Why’s that?
“You instead choose to talk as if the status of the tape means something, and as if the damning eyewitness accounts are somehow more credible than the exculpatory ones, by virtue of the fact that Democrats like Barney Frank would presumably be inclined to be in bed with the anti-American media. This is a highly selective take on the available evidence.”
If there is a conflict of eyewitness accounts and there is also a tape of the event, do you trust one or the other of the eyewitness accounts? OR DO YOU ASK FOR THE TAPE?
“Inferences that the resignation suggests something bad for Eason–you typically don’t resign over a scandal where you believe you are innocent even before it really breaks.”
You call this irresponsible journalism. I am not a journalist. I do not work in journalism. That is a perfectly reponsible inference for someone offering commentary. It is not conclusive. But it is a perfectly reasonable inference. Especially when coupled with the testimony of Frank and Dodd. Especially when coupled with the hidden tape. Especially when coupled with a different set of ‘retractions’ at different times.
Unlike, for example, an inference that the US targets journalists merely based on the fact that journalists get killed in a war zone. The Lancet is claiming more than 100,000 civilians killed. If you accept that number why would it be so shocking that 12 journalists die? Especially since journalists seek out the danger zones rather than avoid them like normal civilians.
Sebastian: Unlike, for example, an inference that the US targets journalists merely based on the fact that journalists get killed in a war zone.
Not merely based on that fact. But on the fact that journalists have been killed by US forces in this particular war zone in unusual numbers. That according to an eyewitness account (if you read to the end of John Simpson’s article) US soldiers were twitchy and undertrained and underslept and making stupid mistakes, shooting noncombatants.
Arguing that the problem doesn’t exist doesn’t do anything to solve it.
Well, if it doesn’t in fact exist, addressing a solution would be bizarre in the extreme.
Arguing that US soldiers are undertrained shows very little knowledge about military training as found in the world.
Sebastian: Arguing that US soldiers are undertrained shows very little knowledge about military training as found in the world.
Are you arguing, then, that US soldiers are trained to react like this?
Slarti: Well, if it doesn’t in fact exist, addressing a solution would be bizarre in the extreme.
Indeed. And Sebastian seems to be jumping directly to the conclusion that as the problem doesn’t exist, the solution is to harass Jordan Eason for bringing the situation up.
Yet it would appear that two men with much more experience with journalism in war zones than I believe Sebastian has both think there is a problem… and that being so, it’s interesting that the right-wing blogosphere’s reaction was to condemn Jordan Eason for mentioning the issue – and to completely ignore the issue itself: that the US military appears to be killing journalists in Iraq at far above what one might sadly call “the usual levels”.
It’s always easy to help oneself to credit for doing things that might have happened anyway. Me, I like to tell rocks to “stay”.
Ah, appears. Are they, or aren’t they? And what are “the usual levels”?
If there is a conflict of eyewitness accounts and there is also a tape of the event, do you trust one or the other of the eyewitness accounts? OR DO YOU ASK FOR THE TAPE?
I preemptively answered this question in the comment to which you are responding. Was I unclear?
You call this irresponsible journalism. I am not a journalist. I do not work in journalism. That is a perfectly reponsible inference for someone offering commentary. It is not conclusive. But it is a perfectly reasonable inference. Especially when coupled with the testimony of Frank and Dodd. Especially when coupled with the hidden tape. Especially when coupled with a different set of ‘retractions’ at different times.
You compared your standards for determining guilt to those of the media. The fact that you are not a journalist is neither here nor there when your question is about journalistic standards. And you keep reasonably bringing up Frank and Dodd, but you fail to address how you weigh their credibility against Gergen’s (indeed, you cite Gergen as backing up their story in the initial post, yet his take actually supports Jordan’s account the way I read it).
Unlike, for example, an inference that the US targets journalists merely based on the fact that journalists get killed in a war zone. The Lancet is claiming more than 100,000 civilians killed. If you accept that number why would it be so shocking that 12 journalists die? Especially since journalists seek out the danger zones rather than avoid them like normal civilians.
I’m not here to defend your extreme interpretation of Jordan’s remarks. If he made this claim in a public forum, I would expect him to back it up. However, given that this was a closed-door, off-the-record gathering, given that yours is only the most extreme interpretation, given that the only evidence is from eyewitnesses and is contradictory, and given that the negative consequences of the exchange stem almost exclusively from the publicity drummed up by folks who have wanted Jordan’s head on a pike for some time now, I don’t much care what he said. But when someone says “if he’s not putting up much of a fight, he’s probably guilty” I call BS.
Slarti: It’s always easy to help oneself to credit for doing things that might have happened anyway.
Right, because I assume that after the Marine had stopped “screaming across the road” “shouting ‘Sniper! Sniper!'” and taking aim at the “old man, in his sixties at least, was folding up a blanket which had been left out all day to air” – the Marine would just have dropped his gun and gone “Ha ha only kidding!”
Are you always this insoucient when people wave guns around and threaten to shoot unarmed civilians, or is it only when the unarmed civilian is a nameless Iraqi?
Slarti: Are they, or aren’t they?
Who knows? As Jordan Eason’s career has just been truncated for the crime of mentioning it, I assume that no one in the US media is going to risk their own career by trying to find out. And certainly the Pentagon doesn’t appear to want you to know.
And what are “the usual levels”?
John Simpson seems to think that sixteen killed inside three months is unusual. As Simpson has considerably more experience of journalism in war zones than I do, I’ll take his word for it. If you can cite a source that says otherwise, please do.
Jes,
I’m sure he is only talking about unarmed Iraqi’s…
I know you know this already, but Americans don’t really give a crap about people other than themselves. We don’t care about Tsunami victims, Bosnians, Kosovars, Kuwaiti’s, African’s, Iraqi’s and so on. We would never actually try to help them.
We can only aspire to be as enlightened as you seem to think you are…
“Right, because I assume that after the Marine had stopped “screaming across the road” “shouting ‘Sniper! Sniper!'” and taking aim at the “old man, in his sixties at least, was folding up a blanket which had been left out all day to air” – the Marine would just have dropped his gun and gone “Ha ha only kidding!””
You really know absolutely nothing about the military don’t you. You would aim at the man you thought was a sniper and then decide if he was really a sniper. You don’t wait to aim, you aim first. That is not only good military training, that is EXCELLENT military training because if it is a sniper you don’t want him to kill 2 or 3 of your men before you get a chance to aim.
“and given that the negative consequences of the exchange stem almost exclusively from the publicity drummed up by folks who have wanted Jordan’s head on a pike for some time now, I don’t much care what he said.”
The negative consequences for Jordan you mean. If we had let this go, the negative consequece for America would have been that a large number of world leaders go away from the Davos conference thinking that the head of CNN International asserted that the US was targeting journalists.
“The fact that you are not a journalist is neither here nor there when your question is about journalistic standards.”
I don’t understand your invocation of journalistic standards. Is it response to my thought that if a nonjournalist had said something shocking that the media would demand he release the tape? Do you doubt they would demand it? If Chirac had said the same thing, and backtracked in the same lame way, I would have wanted to see the tape for just the same reasons. The fact that Jordan ran CNN International only heightened the problem, but it isn’t essentially a problem of journalistic standards.
Not to mention the fact that the marine didn’t shoot the guy. Testimony to good fire discipline, good training.
Sebastian: That is not only good military training, that is EXCELLENT military training because if it is a sniper you don’t want him to kill 2 or 3 of your men before you get a chance to aim.
Um, did you miss the bit about him running across the road screaming “Sniper! Sniper!” Sounds like he’d already made up his mind….
You didn’t answer my question. Is it your argument that US soldiers are trained to act like this:
That this kind of overreaction happened, not because the soldiers weren’t trained to stay calm in dangerous situation, but because American soldiers are trained to panic and lash out when they’re scared?
Excuse me? The article ‘about reporters being killed’ is not an article about reporters being killed. It is only about reporters being killed by Americans, which I believe is my whole point.
Well, first of all, no it isn’t, as Jes has amply pointed out. Second of all, do you think this is the only article ever written by someone affiliated with the BBC concerning journalist deaths in Iraq?
Rubber to road here, Sebastian: Can you support your claim that the BBC has reported more on reporters being killed by American soldiers than they have on reporters being killed by terrorists, or are you finally prepared to retract it?
Rubber to road, Phil. I made a claim about a particular story and the claim was correct.
It also had very little to do with Jordan.
Jesurgislac did you really write this or is someone impersonating you to make you look bad? I’ll be happy to ban the person if they are:
“Um, did you miss the bit about him running across the road screaming “Sniper! Sniper!” Sounds like he’d already made up his mind….”
You alert the entire squad that you suspect there is a sniper. Obviously.
Sebastian, you really don’t want to answer my question, do you?
Sebastian: I made a claim about a particular story and the claim was correct.
You made a claim about a column written in June 2003, about 16 journalists who had died in Iraq in the preceding three months. Your claim was that it wasn’t about journalists killed by Islamists. No, it wasn’t, and it never said it was: how many journalists had been killed in Iraq by Islamists by June 2003? (Four, if you include the three journalists killed by Iraqi military action with the one who was killed by a suicide bomber.)
What it had to do with Eason Jordan was that this article, by John Simpson, outlined in thoughtful detail the same thing Eason Jordan said: journalists are being killed in Iraq by US soldiers, and it merits investigation. John Simpson said it 18 months before Eason Jordan said it, and the other difference is that Simpson wasn’t hounded out of his job for saying it.
Simpson doesn’t say that the US targets journalists. He may avoid doing that purely because he doesn’t want to be forced to support the charge, but he doesn’t say that. He does in fact insinuate the charge (unfairly I believe), but he doesn’t say it. Jordan said it.
“Sebastian, you really don’t want to answer my question, do you?”
What question? Did the men get shot? No. Excellent training. Dragging a bunch of guys with weapons and uniforms out of the car at a checkpoint WHILE THE WAR WAS GOING ON is not a horrible thing. The fact that both you and the journalist in question believe that it was is a sad commentary on your understanding of the issue, not a sad commentary on US training.
Sebastian: Jordan said it.
Oh, you’ve found a source for this? Cite it.
Dragging a bunch of guys with weapons and uniforms out of the car at a checkpoint WHILE THE WAR WAS GOING ON is not a horrible thing.
Did I say horrible? Nope. I offered it as one item of evidence (as anyone who’s been following the news knows, there is plenty more) that US soldiers seem not to be trained to react calmly in this kind of situation. They panic, don’t listen to what they’re being told, and overreact. Similarly, British soldiers in the early years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland weren’t trained to react calmly – but they got the training when the British military realized that tehy needed it.
It’s a very difficult situation to be in: patrolling in a hostile environment where most of the people around are civilians – and you don’t want to shoot them because it will only stir up more trouble – but a small proportion are active enemies. Inexperienced, undertrained troops will fire on civilians because they panic: experienced, trained troops won’t. From everything we’ve heard out of Iraq, US troops are inexperienced and undertrained in this kind of environment.
And that may well be why they’ve killed so many journalists.
“Inexperienced, undertrained troops will fire on civilians because they panic: experienced, trained troops won’t. From everything we’ve heard out of Iraq, US troops are inexperienced and undertrained in this kind of environment.”
And none of this suggests that the US is targetting journalists now does it?
I don’t understand your invocation of journalistic standards. Is it response to my thought that if a nonjournalist had said something shocking that the media would demand he release the tape?
Yes, precisely. If a member of the media asked the subject of a similar story for evidence of his innocence, that would be reasonable journalism. If he then reported that the failure to release said evidence implied guilt, it would indeed be bad journalism. None of this, of course, addresses whether the story is worthwhile to begin with.
Do you doubt they would demand it? If Chirac had said the same thing, and backtracked in the same lame way, I would have wanted to see the tape for just the same reasons. The fact that Jordan ran CNN International only heightened the problem, but it isn’t essentially a problem of journalistic standards.
Apparently I WAS unclear when I wrote “The question isn’t whether they will demand the tape. That should be determined by the significance of the story.”
And the significance of this story was not what Jordan said. It was that right-wingers could and did gather a mob and drum a media figure out of his job based on the slightest of missteps.
“And the significance of this story was not what Jordan said.”
Yes I understand that you think that. You also don’t seem to think that saying it at Davos is much different from saying it in his drawing room. I get it.
You really don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. And you really have no idea at all whether the soldier was going to shoot, or was just checking out a possible threat. Yet you continue to spout of confidently that a disaster has been averted. Typical, yet still disappointing.
I see. So it’s not an unsubstantiated claim you’re making, just one that someone else is making.
Sebastian: And none of this suggests that the US is targetting journalists now does it?
What it suggests that the US military is sending undertrained and inexperienced soldiers into perilous situations, and as a result civilians, including journalists, are getting killed in larger numbers than would happen with properly-trained, experienced troops. But we won’t know this for sure unless an independent investigation is run, and given that Jordan Eason was silenced for mentioning this issue, there’s not going to be much pressure for an investigation from anyone else in the US media, is there?
Gromit: And the significance of this story was not what Jordan said. It was that right-wingers could and did gather a mob and drum a media figure out of his job based on the slightest of missteps.
And the wider significance of this, is that it looks as if the US military can continue to kill civilians in Iraq, and no one in the US media will press for an inquiry as to why this is happening – since Eason Jordan has been drummed out of his job for even mentioning that it’s happening.
That’s the real story.
Where’s that possible-therefore-true operator when you need it?
“US military can continue to kill civilians in Iraq, and no one in the US media will press for an inquiry as to why this is happening – since Eason Jordan has been drummed out of his job for even mentioning that it’s happening.”
Nope, Jordan got into trouble for apparently asserting a conclusion about it–that being that the US is targeting journalists.
Sebastian: Nope, Jordan got into trouble for apparently asserting a conclusion about it–that being that the US is targeting journalists.
But since that conclusion was drawn by the mob that targetted him – not from what Jordan actually said – I think we can safely conclude that Jordan got into trouble for mentioning that US soldiers were killing journalists – and not immediately drawing a false conclusion that all such killings had been shown to be accidental.
It’s the US military that’s in trouble here, Sebastian, and the trouble won’t go away by mobbing the US media into silence. I know you understand this, because it’s the principle you’re arguing from when you argue that because Eason Jordan didn’t call for the record of the session to be released, he must be guilty.
Over sixty journalists have died in Iraq since March 2003. Of those, it appears that at least a dozen killings look as if they were carried out deliberately by US soldiers, intentionally killing noncombatants – whether or not they realised those noncombatants were journalists. Journalists have been harassed and bullied by US soldiers, and Al-Jazeera has been bombed twice by the US military. Throughout, no justification given beyond “it was a mistake”. In short, with much more at stake, the US military has behaved in exactly the way as you’ve eloquently said proves guilt. If the Pentagon really were targetting journalists to be killed, wouldn’t they behave just like this?
No, I’m not arguing either for or against this conclusion. (I’m prepared to wait for evidence, rather than assume absence of evidence proving innocence, and stonewalling/refusing to explain proves guilt.) But you were arguing, passionately, further up the thread, that if someone who is accused of doing something refuses to call for the publication of evidence, then it looks as if they’re guilty.
Do you feel that the US military ought to let it be publicly assumed that they kill journalists?
Slartibartfast: Where’s that possible-therefore-true operator when you need it?
Dunno. Pass it to Sebastian, will you? He seems to have decided that it’s possible therefore true that Eason Jordan is guilty.
If he truly had a point that he can support, Jesurgislac, I’d expect we’ll be hearing more from him. Wouldn’t you?
I see. So it’s not an unsubstantiated claim you’re making, just one that someone else is making.
It’s unlike you to dismiss the offerings of experts, Slarti.
Slarti: If he truly had a point that he can support, Jesurgislac, I’d expect we’ll be hearing more from him. Wouldn’t you?
We have been hearing quite a lot from Sebastian, Slarti: I’m not sure what your point is here.
I’m simply waiting for Jesurgislac to realize that her links don’t support her point. Quoth Simpson:
Oh, and this:
Don’t bother to quote me back, Jesurgislac, because I’ve read it all; something that you evidently did not do. Simpson says explicitly that the only thing he suspects might be targeting is the Al Jazeera journalists, which is certainly fair game for investigation. Hell, investigate the whole thing. Any collection of evidence would far surpass the possible-therefore-true effort you’ve presented here.
Well, Slarti, thank you for reading the whole article by John Simpson.
If you add to that by reading my comments on this thread and figuring out what I was saying, that’ll be nice too. But until then, there’s obviously no point in continuing.
Yes, let’s do revisit some of your comments here:
Yes, we’re clearly and deliberately targeting noncombatants, knowing that they’re noncombatants. Oops, they were journalists. And the one or two instances where it actually appeared that something untoward had occurred has now grown to include the full dozen.
Slarti, honestly, if you don’t want to read the whole read and take part in the discussion seriously, that’s up to you. But I’ve had a pretty good time arguing this around with the people who have been taking this discussion seriously, and while I’d be glad to take it up again with someone (including you) who does take this discussion seriously, I don’t want to mess up this good feeling by letting you game around with it in your pick-out-stuff-at-random-and-kick-it-way. Sometimes I find this amusing: on this issue I don’t.
The deaths of noncombatants in Iraq, including journalists, is a serious matter. Let’s take it seriously. Good night.
Jesurgislac, I request that you do this: write yourself a Livejournal entry. Put all of your points in one place, rather than have them interspersed (and somewhat subject to variation and/or change in appearance, I might add) over the course of what’s become an extraordinarily long thread (332nd comment!). Let me know when you’re done, and I’ll either link it, or publish it in its entirety (taking full credit for it, of course) here, provided it meets the guidelines. If you have difficulty organizing, we’ve got some fairly decent writers here that might be willing to lend a hand.
Given your expressed passion for the issue, I’m pretty confident we’ll see something from you in short order. And just kidding about that credit-grabbing part; your pseudonym will go right at the bottom. And you’re right, there’s no sense in discussing your POV until it’s entirely clear what your POV is. My interpretation of what you’ve written here is that your point has shifted somewhat over the course of the thread. Show it to us whole and entire, so that we can discuss it.
Slarti: Jesurgislac, I request that you do this: write yourself a Livejournal entry
Slarti, I do intend to do that. Not because you asked me to, but because I realised I’ve written enough on this topic (and found enough good links) to make one.
Once I’ve done that, I’ll let you know.
Thank you. Please do feel free to let us know when you’ve posted something on your livejournal that you’d like to have brought to the attention of the larger group. I’m sort of a peon-level member, but I think that you’ve had a great deal to say on this blog without the benefit of a single post to say it all in one place, and I’d like to offer you that place on at least an intermittent basis.
To some extent, because I’m not all that hot on writing source material myself. It’s one of my many flaws.
Slarti, I did write a lengthy post on Eason Jordan, etc, here.
I think that you’ve had a great deal to say on this blog without the benefit of a single post to say it all in one place, and I’d like to offer you that place on at least an intermittent basis.
I appreciate that, very much. Thank you.