Columbia Journalism Review Still Doesn't Have Clue about the Outing of Eason Jordan

Special to FreeRepublic ^ | 15 February 2005 | John Armor (CongressmanBillybob)

[Congressman Billybob]

An article by Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post on the Eason Jordan resignation quoted Steve Lovelady "of Columbia Journalism Review" as saying of this event, "The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail." This struck me as a grossly unprofessional remark by anyone who claimed to be a journalist.

So, I wrote a detailed letter to the Editor of the Review, demanding an apology. Back came a letter this morning from Mr. Lovelady, which makes it clear that neither he nor the Review have a clue about the blogosphere. They do not understand our work, nor do they understand why Jordan had to go.

I wrote back to Mr. Lovelady. Those three letters follow in the order they were written. I think y'all will conclude from reading these letters that the Columbia Journalism Review, which is both the temple and contains the high priests of the MSM, is grossly out of touch with the real world in 2005. Read, and weep.

I have received no reply from the Editor of the CJR.

--------------------------------------

To: the Editors of the Columbia Journalism Review
From: John Armor, Esq.
re: The Lovelady quote in Kurtz's article
date: 14 February 2005

Ladies & Gentlemen,

You apparently have a journalistically incompetent person working for your magazine.

Here is a quote from Howard Kurtz' article in today's Washington Post about the resignation of Eason Jordan from CNN.

"Hours after Jordan stepped down, Steve Lovelady of Columbia Journalism Review e-mailed his verdict to New York University professor and blogger Jay Rosen: 'The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail.' "

If this is an accurate quote, then Steve Lovelady is an incompetent journalist. Here's why I reach that conclusion:

I am one of the "salivating morons" as part of the "lynch mob" which brought down Dan Rather, and hit CBS hard. We were at work seeking to get a transcript, preferably a copy of the video tape, from Davos, so we could hang Eason Jordan's precise words around his neck like a dead albatross. Like all good journalists, we prefer first-hand evidence rather than second-hand hearsay, even if there are multiple hearsay sources who basically agree and seem reliable.

As I told the attendees at a dinner in Asheville, N.C., Friday night, Jordan was our next "target of opportunity," as Slim Pickens said in his second-greatest movie, Dr. Strangelove. I predicted then that Jordan would resign, or be fired, within 30 days. I did not expect results as quickly as they came.

My concern here is about being called a "salivating moron" and a member of a "lynch mob." A little investigation of the facts should be in order before such labels are attached.

I am a graduate of Yale (two majors), Maryland Law (highest honors, Con Law), Ph.D. work at American University in Public Policy, author of seven books and more than 550 articles, briefed 18 cases in the US Supreme Court. Anyone who cares to, can use Google and Amazon to track down my particulars. On the Internet I am known as Congressman Billybob. Overall, I have published about three million words, give or take a few paragraphs. My next book is on Thomas Paine. (Yeah, right, I am a "salivating moron" and I hang out with a "lynch mob.")

The bottom line is this: I have a fairly typical background of the members of the "Pajama Patrol," as we have called ourselves ever since Joel Klein of CNN (then of CBS) dismissed us as "a bunch of guys in their pajamas, in front of their computers." My friend "Buckhead," for instance, has an able background but less achievement than I, because he is quite a bit younger through no fault of his own.

Steve Lovelady should not be dismissing any group of people as "morons" and a "lynch mob" when he knows nothing about us as human beings. That indicates a case of political bigotry, which is a fatal flaw in any would-be journalist. I render no judgment about whether Mr. Lovelady is "too dumb to swallow his own spit," a phrase we occasionally use here in the backwoods of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I know nothing about him other than this one quote as reported by Howard Kurtz.

But I would say he owes us a mite of an apology. What do y'all think?

If you take accurate journalism seriously, I expect to hear from you.

Sincerely,

[personal information deleted]

Post Script: Perhaps the CJR should publish an article about the leaders of the "new media." I don't count myself as a leader, but I know these folks well.

-----------------------------------------------------

Steve Lovelady wrote:

Brent Cunningham was kid enough to pass your note along to me.

The quote is accurate, but your interpretation is not. I did not say every poli-blogger, or even every blogger gunning for Jordan, is a slavering moron.

I did say, "The slavering morons who make up the lynch mob prevail." That is not the same as saying that every poli-blogger, or even every blogger gunning for Jordan, is a slavering moron. It is to say that those who do fit that description have prevailed in this instance. And believe me, for every one of you, there are 100 of them out there yammering away with mob-like glee.

If you doubt the accuracy of that characterization, I invite you to a long thread on Vodka Pundit on the topic yesterday. Please read each post -- there are 75 or so at last count, including a few from me -- and then come back and tell me these guys are playing with a full deck. Or that it is I, not they, who owe an apology.

I don't think you can. And that blog is just one of dozens frothing with blood and spittle over the same issue.

The hyenas are still gnawing the bones.

Perhaps that's why this morning, if you take the time to read,you will discover that even the high priests of the poliblog world -- Jeff Jarvis, Captain Ed, Jay Rosen -- are publically wringing their hands over what they have wrought. As well they should.

Steve Lovelady

-----------------------------------------------------

Dear Steve,

I was surprised to hear from you. It is to your credit that you did respond.

You suggest to me that I should read the posts on Vodka Pundit is misplaced. I read hundreds of posts every day from the "tin foil hats" on both the left and the right. I have never had the slightest doubt that such people exist, and file their screeds on the Internet.

But you make the mistake of confusing the players for the fans.

It may well be that the fans of the South Thwackingham Football Team are dangerous hooligans. But that leads to no valid conclusion about the Thwackingham footballers on the field who actually score the goals.

There are perhaps 200 people in the blogosphere who are at the cutting edge of all the issues that may arise. All of us operate the same way that I was trained to function as a lawyer. Assemble the evidence, reduce it to a cogent argument, and then argue it to the jury. In our cases, the "jury" is a few hundred editors in the MSM who make the decisions about what will be reported, and how. In our cases, we know that the jury is predisposed to bury the story we are promoting, so we always have an uphill fight.

Our work is "peer-reviewed" in that tens of thousands of people will read what we write, and some will seek to take it apart, brick by brick. So what we write has to be solidly based and defensible.

Now we turn to the issue of whether Eason Jordan should have been forced out. In my judgment, and that of many leaders in the blogosphere, he should have been fired years ago, when he admitted that CNN had coddled Saddam Hussein by suppressing negative stories about him, in order to keep its Baghdad Bureau open. Any news director who will suppress the truth for institutional gain, does not belong in the business. So, the Davos speech was the second major reason for dumping Jordan, not the first.

I was amazed that he resigned so swiftly. I conclude that he realized we would get our hands on the videotape of his remarks, and that that tape would have made his career sink like a brick in a well. We had reconstructed his comments from second-hand reports, but apparently the actual tape was even worse than we imagined.

The people who "prevailed" in l'affaire Jordan were not the followers, whose "spittle" offends you. It was the leaders of the effort, including me. We were right to push Jordan to resign. We are not "slavering morons." And you DO owe us an apology.

Lastly, the tenor of your note to me suggests that you still lack a working understanding of what the blogosphere does, and why it is important. It is important that the Columbia Journalism Review develop a real understanding of the "new media." Absent such an understanding of an influence that will more and more drive the MSM, the Review and its staff will become increasingly irrelevant to its subject, like a buggy whip factory in 1910, puzzled by the decline in its market.

Sincerely,

John Armor (Congressman Billybob}

[hinckley buzzard]

CJR, watching the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel...not recognizing the approaching headlight shining at them.

[SandRat]

Isn't it interesting that the derisive attitude and manner of describing, what the "self anointed professional journalists," use to describe the red state voters, bears a striking resemblance to how the unknown-faceless they are described as a slavering lynch mob.

Is there a play book in use here? Just asking.

[CyberAnt]

I get the sense they aren't just ignorant of what the bloggers are all about .. they appear to be ignoring us in the hopes we are just a fad and will disappear into the night. Calling us names is a psychological way of demeaning us as a competitor .. and helps them to pretend we are not important enough to deal with.

[TaxRelief]

I see now that my link refers to a different reporter exposed (?) by the Blogosphere.

Does anyone know about Gannon, who supposedly was taken down by a leftist "lynch mob"?

[TaxRelief]

At any given time, every "reporter" on Free Republic has a thousand-or-so of the toughest editors in the business checking his work, testing his theses, confirming his facts...and correcting his grammar and spelling.

And unlike the MSM, ours is an open boardroom, with all discussions taking place publicly and in real-time.

[dirtboy]

And THAT, as you and others have noted, IS a paradigm shift different from what has come before

It is on two levels. First of all, the story got legs without MSM involvement. And second, and even more telling, it got legs without video. It used to be that there had to be coverage on TV with visual images that the great unwashed could understand in order for a story to get noticed. There was no video of a smoking gun here. But it didn't matter. Eyewitness accounts of the gun being fired sufficed for enough people to notice.

Which means the blog audience is both larger than the MSM ever thought and they are also more analytical and more capable of connecting the dots without relying on visual imagry to form an opinion - and also don't require the guiding hands of the anchor and the correspondents to connect those dots. And THAT scares the MSM types as much as the fact that the blog world can now perform a 60 Minutes-style colonoscophy on those accustomed to performing such, not receiving such.

[Mike Fieschko]

There are perhaps 200 people in the blogosphere who are at the cutting edge of all the issues that may arise. All of us operate the same way that I was trained to function as a lawyer. Assemble the evidence, reduce it to a cogent argument, and then argue it to the jury. In our cases, the "jury" is a few hundred editors in the MSM who make the decisions about what will be reported, and how. In our cases, we know that the jury is predisposed to bury the story we are promoting, so we always have an uphill fight.

Our work is "peer-reviewed" in that tens of thousands of people will read what we write, and some will seek to take it apart, brick by brick. So what we write has to be solidly based and defensible.

At The Joy of Blogging & More on Startrek Enterprise, Randy Barnett mentions the fact-checking, and also points out rapid updates and corrections by the blogger as differences:

If I make the slightest factual error in a blog post, I can count on the readers to point it out PRONTO. This is why blogging can be more accurate than traditional journalism which relies on "editors" to catch the mistakes of reporters. And unlike traditional journalism, I have a ready means to correct errors almost instantaneously. How can an ordinary beat reporter correct even errors of which she or he later becomes aware? This is a real advantage of this media over that of traditional journalism that has nothing to do with the skill, good faith or biases of journalists. They do not have ready access to the knowledge of their readers and they cannot readily correct any errors they make.

[an amused spectator]

Great! initial post.

But I saw something in the faces of all the talking heads this weekend that I had never seen before. I literally saw fear in their faces.

Exactly. They now realize that their 6 figure salaries, their second and third daschas, and their Zils are in jeopardy from the likes of us. They went to the Academy to get their little journalism degrees and their Lefty professors told them they'd be on Easy Street, AND they'd get to feed the unwashed masses "the correct thoughts", with no challenge.

Oops!

We're a threat to their paychecks, and that means that they're going to get REAL nasty about it. ;-)

[longtermmemmory]

Nasty is not the word for it. It will get very personal and very ugly.

(look for MSM to push for REGULATION of the internet, perhaps even licensing reporters as a desperate effort to silence the criticism)

These reporters never heard anything bad about themselves or how piss poor their stories were, or how they were missing the stories.

[You Dirty Rats]

The whole war on the "blogosphere" by the MSM is hilarious!

I watched a couple of the cable news shows last night. It seems clear that the strategery of the MSM and its allies like Bob Beckel (one of the guests) is to smear ALL bloggers as reckless and irresponsible barbarians at the gates of the Holy Temple of Professional Journalism.

As Fred Friendly said many times, though, journalism is NOT a profession. You don't need a license; there aren't any professional standards; you can't be barred from practicing it. Hence, this demand for "credentials" and "standards" is preposterous -- journalism is about finding the TRUTH. Anyone who can write coherently and can find a truthful newsworthy story can enter at any time.

It galls the graduates of the Columbia School of Journalism that Freepers cried out that the Emperor (Dan Rather) was naked. Having lost any interest in the TRUTH and become a tool at the service of the legacy political culture, they are vulnerable to anyone who does tell the truth. Their only option is the current smear campaign, which, as I said, is hilarious.

I couldn't stop laughing last night hearing MSM defenders scream about how the barbarian bloggers are only interested in smearing people and getting folks fired from their jobs!! What have THEY been doing since 1973? The WATERGATE generation upset about attacks on public figures?? They are being hoisted on their own petard.

Somewhere, Dick Nixon is laughing his ass off.

[You Dirty Rats]

We're a threat to their paychecks, and that means that they're going to get REAL nasty about it. ;-)

As much as the threat to their paychecks bothers them, it's nothing compared to the loss of their monopoly power over information. And THAT is nothing in comparison to the threat to their own self-image, as more and more of their number are exposed as lying sacks of you-know-what!

[Taxman]

Taxman Bravo Zulu! my FRiend!

[SketchMD]

I was thinking about this this morning on my hour and a half commute (lots of time to think). In what way COULD regulation, not so much be placed upon, but be enforced against the internet media? How does one (anyone) regulate blogs? The gov't has already displayed a complete ineptitude for regulating ANYTHING internet related (anc anyone say CAN-SPAM?).

I guess I see the PUSH for regulations but in the end, it is completely unenforceable. Unless someone sees something I don't??

[GOP_1900AD]

The following would indicate that you are correct. Everything changed last week:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1343547/posts

[AFPhys]

Thank you for writing for us all, CBB.

I must point out that for CJR to come to grips with the internet methodology is going to take the a lot longer than they realize. Some of us have been active in the development of this Media for over ten years - I was involved in the "gopher" days long before FR about 1991 or so. This media has evolved under the radar for a very long time, and it is not new. Many of us are very experienced in separating the wheat from the chaff and that is why we so seldom are misled. The CJR reporters and the other Old Media simply don't have the background to comprehend what has been going on and why and how we are now effective.

It is going to be a long time before they do, I think, and by that time our numbers will have grown even greater and more formidable. This revolution is not going to be easily suppressed, despite the things they still are wont to believe.

[AFPhys]

I've been writing about this stuff for a long time now. What is coming will be a fight to the finish demanding an unconditional surrender. Six months ago, I wrote for not the first time:

---

To: Timeout

I stated (at length in discussions) on a thread a couple days ago that this is now not only a battle between the SwiftVets and the peaceniks of the 60s, but that this campaign has become a battle - a great battle - between the Old Media Fraudcasters and other mediots, and the New Media - with talk radio/ internet/ blogs.

This has become a battle to the death. Only one will be left standing. The 'Nam Vets (including me and many of my fellows in arms) are not going to be able to be silenced by the President or by the Demodogs or by the Fraudcasters. We know the truth. There is a great well of support we can draw on, and righteous anger about the way we have been treated. Many others are just as angry about how they have been misled by the Fraudcasters and the NYSlimes, et al, and they are now seeing a way to "get a bit of their own back."

The Old Media and the Fraudcasters have gotten away with lying for so long now, and the critical mass of people has been reached who understand it and now are fed up with that. Don't be surprised if some of those outlets are no longer "news" outlets four years from now.

It is a monumental struggle now. Many realize it, too. It will result in monumental changes in the way the bulk of people get their news.
/

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1204754/posts?page=3683#3683
3,683 posted on 09/02/2004 1:08:14 AM EDT by AFPhys ((.Praying for President Bush, our troops, their families, and all my American neighbors..))



Our enemy will use every weapon and trick they can in an attempt to lower our influence. The FRAUDcasters of the Old Media are out to get us --- don't ever forget that, and keep it in mind as we carry on our First Amendment assault against the Fourth Estate, which has become a "fifth column" against Traditional America and traditional values.


I am dead serious about this being a major war.

You and I and other FReepers are in the dead center of this battle - whether we realize that or not. The Leftists who "went into journalism" in the 60s and 70s to "change the world" are at war with traditional values of traditional America. Their major obstacle now, and for some years, has been the internet.

It is only since Drudge's "blue dress" report that they became even peripherally aware of that. The 'net carrying the SwiftVets to prominence, and the rapid destruction of CBS' FRAUDcast, to name only two recent battles, has brought the Old Media to realize that they are under attack, at long last. Their walls are crumbling, and their empire is failing. Bush's victory despite FOUR YEARS of bashing by the Old Media talking heads and transparent bias of the MSM news to those of us who have worked toward understanding the truth, was a severe blow to them. They will be reeling for two years from this and won't be able to believe it.

They don't like it, and they will fight this as hard as they can. They'll do all they can to deter more people from joining the ranks of those free from their influence. But - they will lose in the end.
/

[AFPhys]

I believe that the coming of age was about six months ago: when the SwiftVets were supported and vaulted into the public consciousness by their measly $200k, a few interviews on talk radio and Fox, and relentless and constant publicizing by FR and others on the internet.
.

[dirtboy]

I agree with you that the Swift Boat Vets was a major milestone in new media. But the MSM still eventually chimed in and was part of the story.

With Eason Jordan, the MSM made a couple of feeble attempts to downplay the story. But otherwise, all the action took place in the blogsphere and on limited talk radio. So it was another milestone. And a very profound one.

[JesseJane]

AFP,
I think you are absolutely right. I believe there are efforts far and above the entrenched media that will go to the ends of the earth, to shut free speech down, and control the message. For the moment, we have the free will to choose what we believe is true. The left has a highly organized plan to shut down conservative voices, and beyond that, any that question or support their agenda. The events during the Presidential campaign was the final proof for me that the left will do anything to silence perceived and real enemies.

[Political Junkie Too]

I agree with you that the Swift Boat Vets was a major milestone in new media. But the MSM still eventually chimed in and was part of the story.

I would say that the big Washington Post story on Kerry and the Rassman-Mekong Delta events that led to his Silver Star, with a big full-page map, was the media "blinking."

-PJ