EASON JORDAN JUST RESIGNED (Updated Info)

http://www.nationalreview.com ^ | 2/11/05 | Ramesh Ponnuru

[GeronL]

The Old Media is really going to hate us now =o)

[LynnHam]

Strangely enough, Fox News hasn't covered it yet either The media herd is stunned. They don't know what to do next.

come on only happened late tonight why do you think he waited late Friday

[JCRoberts]

So, this is another victory for the FReep Machine. I have not been in this forum long, nor did I have anything to do with the downfall of this bum, but I am proud to be associated with those of you with balls enough to call a spade a spade. You are fearless and you are "looking out" for everyone.

By the way, I just checked out DU. Of course, they blame the White House and the Rabid Right. As an interesting sidenote, the Gannon story is a big hit there. I said it yesterday, I'll say it again with a new twist:

FR brought down CBS and now CNN. Liberal Bloggers brought down another blogger. Wow. What talent.

[TexKat]

Eason Jordan

CNN executive resigns after controversial remarks

Jordan conceded that his remarks at the January 27 World Economic Forum were "not as clear as they should have been." Several participants at the event said Jordan told the audience U.S. forces had deliberately targeted journalists -- a charge he denied.

"After 23 years at CNN, I have decided to resign in an effort to prevent CNN from being unfairly tarnished by the controversy over conflicting accounts of my recent remarks regarding the alarming number of journalists killed in Iraq," Jordan said in a letter to colleagues.

More

[MOgirl]

Hello,

Roller coaster is right. Today, I (as others here) had the joy of trying to figure out if I have posted enough personal info to identify me sometime in the future. Not that I am anyone important, I am not. Googling my FR screen name was interesting to say the least. (Lots of other "MOgirls" out there, something I have never even considered.)

Anyway, this is a moment to celebrate the power of the individual. Al Gore has done himself proud with his little invention, and we thank him for his efforts :)

Glad to be here, MOgirl

[SIDENET]

A great day to FReep!

[Interesting Times]

Nice. Thanks...

[Txsleuth]

For those of us that have no social life outside of our house, ANY night is a good FReeper night---

BTW, is anyone watching CNN---I turned to Aaron Brown's show and so far haven't heard anything, BUT---

he just reported that two SENIOR White House staff (no names of course) want an "investigation" into how J. Gukhert (Jeff Gannon) was able to get a pass into the daily White HOuse briefings!

Lets, see, CNN et al., think it is "investigation worthy" to find out how a (dare I say it) conservative reporter managed to make it into the liberal den of White House reporters, but it isn't even worthy of a mention that a news producer was practically accusing our military of targeting journalists in Iraq!

Yeh, all's right in this weird back-asward world right now!

[snarkytart]

>>>Friday nights are ususally pretty slow FReeper nights, but between this thread and the thread of the attack on JR, it is hoppin'!<<<

Who is JR??

[snarkytart]

>>Good grief, they're still telling themselves that Gannon was "paid off" and are nursing hopes (well, they state it as fact) that he's going to lead to "bigger fish".

Oh my! My aching sides.

LOL<<<


They are such idiots.
As if a conservative is not allowed to be in the white house press corps.*rolling eyes*

puhlease..so the guy leans to the right and asked easy questions
BigFlippin'Deal

It is not as if there were no other reporters there to ask harder questions .

[Txsleuth]

Jim Robinson

[snarkytart]

Thank you.

:^D

[Enlightiator]

Thanks for the link to your great blog site La Shawn! You and the other writers, reporters, and bloggers at "Easongate" who finally got the "old media" to report this very newsworthy story (I know, it took a crowbar to make it happen!) have done a great justice for honesty and fairness in news reporting. I have bookmarked your blog site, it has earned a place among the best at reporting.

Freepers, don't miss her site:

http://lashawnbarber.com/index.php

[hoosiermama]

BUMP

[fight_truth_decay]

For the AP item in full, with a picture of Jordan, go to:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050211/ap_en_tv/tv_cnn_jordan_2


> National Review Online blogger Jim Geraghty has been
chronicling developments in this story day by day, providing a
sort of "best of the bloggers" on this topic. For his blog:
http://www.nationalreview.com/tks/tks.asp


> In Tuesday's Washington Post, Howard Kurtz delivered an
account fairly favorable to Jordan. For Kurtz's story, "Eason
Jordan, Quote, Unquote: CNN News Chief Clarifies His Comments on
Iraq," see:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6490-2005Feb7.html


> On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal published a first-hand
account, by Journal editorial writer Bret Stephens, of what he
recalled Jordan said at the January 27 event in Davos,
Switzerland, "'Easongate': What did CNN's chief really say at
Davos? I was there." (Conference organizers refused to release a
transcript or video of the session which featured Jordan.) An
excerpt of the February 10 WSJ piece:

Did Eason Jordan, chief news executive of CNN, actually say the
American military has deliberately killed journalists covering the
conflict in Iraq?

It's a serious question, at least to judge by the heat it's
generated....

By chance, I was in the audience of the World Economic Forum's
panel discussion where Mr. Jordan spoke. What happened was this:
Mr. Jordan observed that of the 60-odd journalists killed in Iraq,
12 had been targeted and killed by coalition forces. He then
offered a story of an unnamed Al-Jazeera journalist who had been
"tortured for weeks" at Abu Ghraib, made to eat his shoes, and
called "Al-Jazeera boy" by his American captors.

Here Rep. Barney Frank, also a member of the panel, interjected:
Had American troops actually targeted journalists? And had CNN
done a story about it? Well no, Mr. Jordan replied, CNN hadn't
done a story on this, specifically. And no, he didn't believe the
Bush administration had a policy of targeting journalists.
Besides, he said, "the [American] generals and colonels have their
heart in the right place."

By this point, one could almost see the wheels of Mr. Jordan's
mind spinning, slowly: "How am I going to get out of this one?"
But Mr. Frank and others kept demanding specifics. Mr. Jordan
replied that "there are people who believe there are people in the
military" who have it out for journalists. He also recounted a
story of a reporter who'd been sent to the back of the line at a
checkpoint outside of Baghdad's Green Zone, apparently because the
soldier had been unhappy with the reporter's dispatches.

And that was it -- the discussion moved on. I'll leave it to
others to draw their own verdicts, but here's mine: Whether with
malice aforethought or not, Mr. Jordan made a defamatory innuendo.
Defamatory innuendo -- rather than outright allegation -- is the
vehicle of mainstream media bias....

END of Excerpt

For the op-ed by Stephens in its entirety:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006273


> For CNN's bio of Jordan, with a photo of him:
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/anchors_reporters/jordan.eason.html


> This wasn't the first time Jordan has caused controversy.
Shortly after the Iraq War began in 2003, he penned a New York
Times op-ed in which he conceded that in order to maintain access
inside Saddam Hussein's Iraq, CNN covered-up atrocities committed
by the Hussein regime.

CyberAlert coverage of that matter:

-- Brit Hume's FNC panel denounced CNN chief news executive
Eason Jordan for withholding knowledge he had of Saddam Hussein's
brutality. Morton Kondracke recalled that last year Jordan had
insisted "that CNN never made journalistic compromises to gain
access," but that "is a flat lie." Columnist Charles Krauthammer
observed: "It's a classic example of selling your soul for the
story. He clearly gave up truth for access."
Plus, an excerpt from Jordan's op-ed, what he told a radio
interviewer last year in maintaining CNN was not at all
compromised, a link to Franklin Foer's New Republic story on media
outlets trading truth for access and an example from the MRC
archive of how CNN's Nic Robertson insisted that Iraqis have
"reverence" for Saddam Hussein. See the April 12, 2003 CyberAlert:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2003/cyb20030412.asp#5

-- The Fox News Sunday panel, from left to right, castigated
CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan for his confession on Friday
that he had covered up knowledge he had about Saddam Hussein's
brutality. NPR's Juan Williams called Jordan's decision an
"outrage," Weekly Standard Publisher Bill Kristal described
Jordan's behavior as "just craven" and even NPR correspondent Mara
Liasson was troubled: "I think that raises some crucial questions
about how media organizations behave in totalitarian governments."
See the April 14, 2003 CyberAlert item:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2003/cyb20030414.asp#4

-- More Eason Jordan material: In a memo to CNN's staff,
Jordan defended his withholding of knowledge he had about Saddam
Hussein's brutality, Franklin Foer penned an op-ed updating his
story on how media outlets traded truth for access in Baghdad, on
FNC Fred Barnes, Brit Hume and Jeffrey Birnbaum all chided Jordan,
and OpinionJournal.com revealed that four years ago Jordan
complained about how the U.S. government was an impediment to CNN
establishing a permanent Baghdad bureau. Plus, on the very day of
Jordan's confession, a newspaper story noted that CNN, claiming
it's "independent," refused to mar itself by letting its news be
part of a new U.S. government TV channel in Iraq. See the April
15, 2003 CyberAlert:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2003/cyb20030415.asp#3

-- CNN's Eason Jordan on Tuesday earned the condemnation of
another major mainstream journalistic guidepost, a Washington Post
editorial, which held CNN culpable for not informing its viewers
of Saddam Hussein's true nature. The paper's editorial writers
worried that "if CNN did not fully disclose what it knew about the
Baathist regime, and if CNN deliberately kept its coverage bland
and inoffensive, that would help explain why the regime was not
perceived to be as ruthless as it in fact was." Read the April 16,
2003 CyberAlert item:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2003/cyb20030416.asp#2

-- The interest in access over truth goes beyond Eason Jordan
at CNN. Former CNN Baghdad reporter Peter Collins disclosed in a
Tuesday op-ed for the Washington Times that in 1993 he observed
then-CNN President Tom Johnson "groveling" for an interview with
Saddam Hussein. Collins recalled how Johnson demanded that he read
on the air some talking points provided by the Ministry of
Information, but then Johnson complained about his "flat"
delivery. Collins recalled: "I was astonished. The President of
CNN was telling me I seemed less-than-enthusiastic reading Saddam
Hussein's propaganda." See the April 16, 2003 CyberAlert item:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2003/cyb20030416.asp#3

-- Tom Brokaw scolded CNN's Eason Jordan, suggesting he should
have kept his knowledge secret since the revelation now casts
doubt on anything CNN reports. On Tuesday's Late Show, Brokaw told
David Letterman that CNN "should have worked harder at conveying"
what Jordan knew, but that if you "decide to keep that as a secret
for yourself to protect those people and to protect the interests
of your company, then you probably ought to keep it secret for a
long time because it opens them up now, wherever they go, wherever
they're stationed, 'well what are they not telling us now?'" Read
the April 16, 2003 CyberAlert item:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2003/cyb20030416.asp#1

-- On the PBS NewsHour on Tuesday night, C-SPAN on Wednesday
morning and in an op-ed in Wednesday's Atlanta
Journal-Constitution, CNN's chief news executive defended himself.
In the op-ed, Eason Jordan noted that "some critics complain that"
his New York Times "op-ed piece proves CNN withheld vital
information from the public and kowtowed to the Saddam Hussein
regime to maintain a reporting presence in Iraq." Jordan insisted:
"That is nonsense." Plus, Tom Brokaw did some groveling to get on
the good side of the Saddam Hussein regime. See the April 17, 2003
CyberAlert item:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2003/cyb20030417.asp#3


-- Brent Baker

[Doctor Raoul]

Those pesky conflicting accounts could be "de-conflicted" if CNN just released the tape.

[mewzilla]

Those pesky conflicting accounts could be "de-conflicted" if CNN just released the tape.

And the fact that Jordan was finally released instead of the tape speaks volumes...

[Doctor Raoul]

Was listening to Hugh Hewitt coming home from the Levin book signing. Davos wasn't Eason's only anti-America/anti-military outburst. AND...the CNN International guy is just as bad.

[BurbankKarl]

actually, the blogs also knocked Trent Lott from his spot leading the Senate...

[SevenofNine]

Alright Howlin thanks for the ping

Rack this resignation HA HA

So which one of Freepers busted this guy LOL!