Bloggers bag Eason Jordan

DAVID BAUDER, in an AP article:

NEW YORK (AP) - CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan quit Friday amid a furor over remarks he made in Switzerland last month about journalists killed by the U.S. military in Iraq. Jordan said he was quitting to avoid CNN being "unfairly tarnished" by the controversy.

During a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum last month, Jordan said he believed that several journalists who were killed by coalition forces in Iraq had been targeted.

He quickly backed off the remarks, explaining that he meant to distinguish between journalists killed because they were in the wrong place when a bomb fell, for example, and those killed because they were shot at by American forces who mistook them for the enemy.

"I never meant to imply U.S. forces acted with ill intent when U.S. forces accidentally killed journalists, and I apologize to anyone who thought I said or believed otherwise," Jordan said

His explaination in para three is nonsensical: Was he trying to distinguish between accidents and accidents? Try parsing the first part of the sentence in para 4 the way President Bill would, and that is meaningless as well: of course accidental killings are without ill intent: that's what makes them accidents.

US Rep. Barney Frank, another panelist when Jordan spoke:

Rep. Frank said Eason Jordan did assert that there was deliberate targeting of journalists by the U.S. military.

Frank was outraged.

According to Michelle Malkin:

Sen. Chris Dodd's press spokesman, Marvin Fast, sent me the following brief statement:

"Senator Dodd was not on the panel but was in the audience when Mr. Jordan spoke. He – like panelists Mr. Gergen and Mr. Frank – was outraged by the comments.

Find that at:
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/001450.htm
or better yet go here for a link rich column by Malkin: http://michellemalkin.com/archives/001447.htm

Now Jordan is a career newsman, speaking in an international forum which by the way was videoed. According to a US Senator and a US Rep, he claimed that US soldiers targetted- that is, murdered- journalists. He has presented no evidence whatsover other than some soldiers made a line-jumping journalist go to the back of a line with everyone else (yes, really). All he had to do to put this to rest if he said what he claims, was to join his fellow panelists in requesting the video be made public. As at least one blogger pointed out, that would have had the downside of making excellent TV footage if he is lying. So, why didn't he call for release if he is innocent?

Mass news media sat on this one for quite awhile. Only the Internet writers were covering it until the big guys couldn't ignore it. Score one for the pajamahadeen.

Clik on the title for Bauder's AP article.

UPDATE: You may recall that it was Eason Jordan who wrote a mea culpa for the NY Times on 11 April 2003 to tell the world that his company, CNN, had essentially acted in complicity with Saddam Hussein by not reporting the real news from Baghdad. They reported the alleged terrible results of the embargo, but refused to tell about atrocities commited by Hussein, atrocities they were quite aware of, because to report them would have meant losing access to the news...about the terrible "results" of the embargo. In his defense, CNN's reporters really would have been endangered, so one can sympathise with the call, but they could have told viewrs every time they did a story from Iraq that it was approved by the Iraqi government. Here is a link to the abstract, if you want the column you'll have to pay the Times for it.

EDITORIAL DESK April 11, 2003, Friday

The News We Kept To Ourselves

By EASON JORDAN (NYT) Op-Ed 808 words
Late Edition - Final , Section A , Page 25 , Column 2

ABSTRACT - Op-Ed article by Eason Jordan, chief news executive of CNN, says now that Saddam Hussein's regime is gone, world can expect to hear many gut-wrenching tales from Iraqis about decades of torment; says he has tales as well, learned during 13 trips he made to Baghdad over last 12 years to lobby government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders; says he saw and heard awful things that he could not report because doing so would have jeopardized lives of Iraqis, particularly those on CNN's Baghdad staff; says secret police terrorized all Iraqis working for international press services; says some vanished forever, others disppeared and then surfaced later with tales of being tortured; says one of CNN's Iraqi cameramen was abducted, beaten and horribly tortured; says he is still haunted by story of woman captured by secret police after speaking with CNN on phone; says plastic bag containing her body parts was left on doorstep of her family's home; drawing (M)

So, all you TV-ophiles out there, you know better than I: Has CNN been relentlessly telling you of all the atrocities committed by Saddam before he was overthrown? The stories CNN knew but couldn't tell? Do they rise to the level of depravity demonstrated by the Americans in the depths of Abu Graib?

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0C16FD3C5F0C728DDDAD0894DB404482

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has a good time line of the story along with some comments: Click here: Michelle Malkin: EASONGATE: A RETROSPECTIVE