Posted on 02/21/2005 11:48:00 AM PST by Pikamax
The Public Editor: Wake up and smell coffee blogs brewing By Armando Acuña Published 2:15 am PST Sunday, February 20, 2005 It was mid-morning on Feb. 2, and the man on the telephone had an urgent question.
A friend had just told him about a CNN story that said the U.S. military had a policy of deliberately killing reporters in Iraq. What did I know about it?
Sell It Yourself Whoa. What was that again? I replied, thinking to myself the incendiary premise was preposterous.
I put the caller on hold. I called up CNN's Web site. Nothing there. I scanned The Bee's wire services. Again, nothing.
Sorry, I told the caller, maybe your friend heard it wrong or just got things mixed up.
If the story were true, I assured him, it would be splashed across the wires and on Web sites of all the big papers. I was patronizing.
When we hung up, he sounded as skeptical about me as I was of him.
Turns out, he was mostly right.
And therein lies a tale of how the mainstream media - especially the national press - failed to pursue a story that was in front of its face and how, again, it was only through the Internet and its army of bloggers that the story surfaced at all.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
Grass roots media warriors. Fear us, MSM.
What, no mention of Free Republic?! ;)
And this writer is surprized?
He doesn't get out much, does he?
(Or maybe he still trusts the MSM to actually investigate and report the news they find.....They haven't done THAT since '92. And precious little before then, but since '92 they've gotten blatant about covering up for any and all democrats.)
Ooh-Rah
The article states that the meeting at which Jordan spoke was supposed to be "off the record". I remember reading (here I think) that some of the meeting rooms at Davos were designated in advance for on the record meetings and others were provided for more private, off the record, discussions. The meeting where Eason spoke was one of the "on the record" rooms. That's why the proceedings were taped.
Thank you very much for your thoughtful and accurate article on l'affaire Jordan. From the hinterland of Sacramento, you got the story down better than the New York Times or any of the other "leaders" of the MSM, including Kurtz in the Washington Post. Kurtz got it almost right, but not quite.
I've been on the same subject from the bloggers' side. My first article on this same subject was back in September, "The Manifesto of Pukin Dog." I wrote the subject up again re: Jordan, "Confessions of a 'Salivating Moron'."
I am watching the articles in the MSM to see how the correct story (which means a correct understanding of the facts on the ground) percolates through. It looks like it will penetrate from the outside in. You have begun it in Sacramento; in two years it will reach New York. In another five years, it will penetrate through to the faculty of Columbia Journalism School. Methinks.
Cordially,
Congressman Billybob
Well, this is the first treatment of the from the MSM (excepting columnists, like Michele Malkin, et al) which hasn't been condescending at best, or insulting at worst. Not even defensive. Pretty amazing. I can only fault him for failing to mention Jordon's previous accusation of the US Military, which appeared in some Euro paper back in the fall of 2004; and his NY Times op ed piece where he bluntly admitted that CNN covered up Saddam's crimes to preserve their "access". Davos was, arguably, Jordon's third strike.
The Euro press comment is pretty obscure, but the Times, well, that's the "paper of record", no? And that piece was MUCH remarked upon, at the time and afterward. So even though this piece was very fair, it was also incomplete, it could give an unknowledgable person the impression that Eason Jordon was run out of town on a rail for sticking his foot in his mouth one time, which is manifestly not the case.
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