February 18, 2005
Jack Kelly: Bloggers Aren't The McCarthyites In Eason's Fables
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Jack Kelly wrote an impressive column three days ago for the Jewish World Review that I missed. He addressed the mass-media spin on Eason's Fables as a McCarthyite witch hunt perpetrated by a bunch of overzealous wannabes. Kelly points out that the real McCarthyite lost his job as a result of the journalism he once represented:
Web loggers who criticized Jordan are "sons of Sen. McCarthy," said Bertrand Pecquerie, director of the World Editors Forum. "It is very worrying to see this marriage between self-proclaimed citizens' media and mainstream journalists' scalp hunters," he said. ...Pecquerie and Lovelady have their allegations of "McCarthyism" backward. Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis) became famous in the 1950s for making hysterical and (mostly) unfounded accusations that individuals in the State department and the Army were secret communists. It was Jordan who made hysterical and unfounded accusations against the U.S. military, and it is "mainstream" journalists who are now making hysterical and unfounded accusations against web loggers. ...
But the key fact is not that Eason Jordan is now looking for work, but that bloggers were trying to uncover the truth about what he said, while "professional journalists" were trying to suppress it. For us, the "people's right to know"— which we invoke in self-righteous tones when we're prying into the private lives of people who are not journalists — takes a back seat to protecting the reputations of members of our club.
I've read some good columns on our efforts to just get the truth out about Eason Jordan, but Jack Kelly may have the best retort against the McCarthyism charges I've yet read. In fact, we have been somewhat remiss in not specifically pointing out what Kelly reminds us -- that Eason Jordan, with his vague but grandiose allegations about military atrocities and utter lack of substantiation, represents real McCarthyism.
That particular charge, coming with mind-numbing frequency from the Left, has lost most of its meaning, and so hardly registers any more when heard. But in thinking about it seriously, what enraged the blogging community most about Jordan was that McCarthyite quality of his repeated charges. Both had no evidence, although both were in uniquely powerful positions to make that evidence known had it truly existed. Both used their allegations for political gain; in Jordan's case, promoting anti-American views allowed him the political capital to extend CNN's commercial interests. Both men used the US military as their target. Both men tried to vaguely dissemble when challenged on the merits of their case, and in the end both men crumbled when the spotlight of public exposure trained fully on the facts. In fact, video undid both men, although in McCarthy's case it was the video that was seen by Americans, while in Jordan's case it was the video that remains hidden from their view, at least in part with the silent consent of a news organization supposedly dedicated to ensuring access to information.
One key difference: for Joe McCarthy, the mainstream media finally had the nerve to say, "Enough!" In Eason's Fables, the mainstream media remained an enabler and provided cover for Jordan, literally to the very end. The bloggers, myself included but hardly alone or even first, stepped up and exposed Jordan for what both he and McCarthy were: fools who tried to aggrandize themselves by using slanderous accusations against the US military. That the Left cannot tell the difference between that and the people who ultimately exposed the lies shows exactly how far they have slid into irrelevance and unreality.
RELEASE THE TAPE!
Good one- thanks for the ping.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1345962/posts
Journalist group calls US to account over Iraq
Guardian ^ | 02/18/05 | Dominic Timms
Posted on 02/18/2005 8:25:08 AM CST by Pikamax
Journalist group calls US to account over Iraq
Dominic Timms Friday February 18, 2005
The US government was today accused of hiding behind a "culture of denial" over the deaths of at least 12 journalists who are alleged to have perished at the hands of the US military in Iraq.
Re-igniting the debate that US soldiers deliberately "targeted" journalists during the Iraqi occupation, a press freedom body called on the US to take "responsibility" for its actions in the country.
Responding to what it said was the "hounding out" of the CNN news chief, Eason Jordan, the International Federation of Journalists called on the US administration to come clean over its "mistakes" in the region.
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His words linger on...