Segment was done by Howard Kurtz, CNN Washington. Entire segment lasted about 3 minutes. This is the middle portion:
...He [Jordan] backed off that statement when challenged, to what degree is not clear, and later said he never meant to suggest, and doesn’t believe, that soldiers were intentionally killing people they knew to be journalists.Wow. Who wrote this script? It is awesome. And the intonation -- well, the italics are an attempt to recreate that.But bloggers, led by such conservatives as radio host Hugh Hewitt and National Review Online, began pounding Jordan.
But the mainstream press, with the exception of a few newspaper articles and talk shows, ignored the story, and yet it didn’t matter.
The businessman who posted the first account of what he heard Jordan say at Davos had started a brushfire.
[Jeff Jarvis, Buzzmachine.com, speaking:]
“Anyone who is a witness to news can be a reporter because anyone and everyone has access to the press through the internet. Every one is a Wolf Blitzer in sheep’s clothing.”
Jordan was already controversial for writing in the New York Times two years ago that CNN had not reported some of Saddam Hussein’s abuses to protect its Iraqi employees.
Why does CNN or CBS, which came under cyberspace fire for Dan Rather’s discredited story on President Bush, care what bloggers say?
These online commentators can generate enough noise that they push a story into the press [sorry, but I’ve gotta interject here: Hellooooo, OM, what we’ve been asking is why isn’t the story already there?] or circumvent the main stream media entirely by communicating directly with computer users.
The people who own the printing presses and television towers are no longer the gatekeepers of what is news.