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In the past, U.N. agencies have also sponsored "traveling seminars" for journalists so they write positive stories about U.N. projects. When conservative commentator Armstrong Williams was exposed for taking money from the Bush administration, his credibility was cast into doubt and news organizations expressed regrets for having had him on the air to comment on public policy issues. Williams was tainted by a conflict of interest that should have been revealed to the viewing audience. He was said to be a channel for Bush administration propaganda.

Rony Abovitz didn't intend to be a media star, a darling of the right, a villain to the left. He just wanted to take in one of the more interesting sessions at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, a panel called "Will Democracy Survive the Media?" He was drawn by the prestigious lineup of speakers: CNN Chief News Executive Eason Jordan; David R. Gergen, adviser to four presidents; U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.); Richard Sambrook, director of the BBC World Service; and Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, Afghanistan's minister of foreign affairs. But as Abovitz listened at the January...

When Dan Rather departed on March 9, at least he beat his competitors at ABC and NBC for the first time in five years. What seems to have been overlooked by media managers and journalists in their exhaustive discussion of Rathergate and Easongate is what news organizations are supposed to do for a living--- report and publish the news “without fear or favor,” as The New York Times' owner, Adolph Ochs, once put it. Whatever CBS and CNN may have done wrong originally, both organizations compounded it by going into a coverup mode worthy of the Nixon White House or...

Pseudo-journalistic Web sites are another way conservatives get around “the filter” of mainstream media. It’s a new medium, but, for the Republican Party, it’s an old story. During one especially hectic week in mid-February, the Internet took three scalps in what appeared to be unrelated events. Liberal bloggers forced Talon News White House correspondent James D. Guckert, a k a “Jeff Gannon,” to resign after it was revealed that he was writing under a false name for a Republican activist group (GOPUSA), that he was not really a journalist at all, and that he had posed nude on the Internet...

Over the weekend, I caught CNN removing a damning quote from a story about Italian Communist journalist Guiliana Sgrena, recently released from some form of captivity in Iraq for a reported $6 million ransom, about why she was in Iraq in the first place. She was there, in her own words, to agitate against America and the war-- Sgrena said she "risked everything" to challenge "the Italian government, who didn't want journalists to reach Iraq, and the Americans," who she said don't want the public to see "what really became of that country with the war, and notwithstanding that which...

Tonight on the Fox Show "Foxwatch," its weekly show on the media itself, a letter from a Freeper was read concerning Easongate. Kristinn from the D.C. Chapter was sharp enough to catch it, and call me. Here is the entire e-mail. They read all or part of the first paragraph as being from "John in Highlands, NC." That's me. I hope I spoke for most of you in what I said: Lordy, Lordy, folks, Of course the bloggers forced Eason Jordan out. We tried to force him out years ago when he published his mealymouthed justification for slanting the CNN...

Who is this award named for? Judge Elihu Smails, the character in the film Caddyshack who asks of the obnoxious but lovable Al Czervick (played by Rodney Dangerfield), “Good Lord, what has this buffoon done now?” As a special tribute to Judge Smails, every week we will issue this award to the biggest buffoon of the week … the person who, through his or her actions or public statements, has made a buffoon of themselves and everyone associated with them. Please note that since we slam Kerry on a daily basis, and he could win every week,he and his family...

Last year, the very smart political scientists Louis Bolce and Gerald De Maio completely unwrapped the orthodox newsroom view of religion and politics. Writing in First Things magazine, the authors conclude that secularists and religious people have been struggling against each other for many years, but in the newsroom accounts, one struggler (secularism) essentially disappears, leaving the religious side as oddly divisive people who want to take over the culture and "impose" (vote) their values. The authors believe newsrooms have been partisan in the debate for many years, partly because so many reporters are Democrats who do not go to...

Bloggers go big-game hunting As Internet `journalists' bag another prize, Tim Harper considers the consequences for mainstream media TIM HARPER Often witty, sometimes racy, certainly irreverent, frequently sanctimonious, the blogosphere has been bulking up for years. But the mainstream media have long taken a largely dismissive approach to this world of online political journals: Open. Peek. Chuckle. Close. No more. The growing army of American cyber-pundits hunched over their search engines has begun to wield strength that no one predicted. The bloggers have brought down the powerful. They have unmasked an impostor in the White House briefing room. Perhaps most...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - First CBS's Dan Rather, then CNN's Eason Jordan, Internet bloggers have come of age as media watchdogs with their part in the downfall of these influential, high-profile media heads. Jordan, a top CNN executive responsible for the network's coverage in Iraq, resigned Friday following remarks suggesting the US military was deliberately targeting journalists. The January 27 comments were initially ignored by mainstream reporters, but picked up and trumpeted across the Internet by an army of bloggers. Jordan's downfall follows that of veteran CBS television news anchor Dan Rather, who announced he will resign in March after bloggers...

FOR TWO WEEKS Eason Jordan has been engulfed in a blogswarm. During remarks at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, the now-former CNN executive accused the U.S. military of deliberately targeting journalists in Iraq for murder. The unleashed fury of the blogosphere eventually overcame a media blackout to force Jordan from his job, discredit the American media, and start a debate on the nature of blogging that derived directly from the mainstream media's attempt to cast the entire effort as a partisan witch hunt.But the media has no one but itself to blame--as it stubbornly refused to acknowledge the existence...

Real fear is mixing with snarky disdain in the "mainstream" media's attitude toward web loggers in the wake of the resignation last Friday of Eason Jordan as CNN's top news executive. "Bloggers as News Media Trophy Hunters," said the headline in the New York Times Monday, the first time many of the newspaper's readers were made aware of a controversy which had been roiling for nearly two weeks. "The New York Times media beat reporters got beaten badly on the Eason Jordan story — by (gasp!) web logs and cable news — and so how do they react? By catching...

Hey kids, check out my nifty new tagline above. (Thanks to my web guru, Mark Jaquith, for the design.) You like? I think it's a keeper. If you don't get the allusion, click on the asterisk for a refresher and then come on back here and read on. I've got a calm, cool, and collected bit to say about this. Wall Street Journal editorial writer Bret Stephens appeared on Hugh Hewitt's radio show last night to defend his paper's strange and snotty treatment of the Eason Jordan "kerfuffle." (Full transcript at Radioblogger.) I found the following remarks, in which the...

Their latest victim: Eason Jordan, CNN's chief news executive. He resigned on Feb. 13 after conservative bloggers feasted on a controversial statement he made in late January at the annual World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, about the U.S. military. His allegation -- that coalition soldiers in Iraq mistook journalists for enemies and killed them -- brought down a storm of criticism on him and his network.

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...

This page is dedicated to journalists who were assassinated in the exercise of their profession. It remembers their contribution to freedom of expression, democracy and peace. UNESCO encourages press freedom and campaigns for greater safety of media professionals. UNESCO is the only United Nations agency with a mandate to defend freedom of expression and press freedom. Article 1 of its Constitution requires the Organization to “further universal respect for justice, for the rule of law and for the human rights and fundamental freedoms which are affirmed for the peoples of the world, without distinction of race, sex, language or religion,...

EAGER TO DIVERT ATTENTION from the incredible incompetence displayed in the handling of Eason Jordan's remarks before the Davos audience (and Jordan's November 2004 accusation that the U.S. military was torturing journalists), a number of voices within the mainstream media have argued that the credentials of bloggers are suspect and that in their amateurism there lays a danger to the public discussion. The most surprising of these attacks came in an unsigned editorial in the Wall Street Journal. The Journal chose to ignore Jordan's November 2004 accusation about the American military torturing journalists, and pronounced the Davos pratfall as...

It was inevitable from the moment the World Economic Forum decided to change its mind about releasing the videotape of Eason Jordan's remarks at Davos. Consider these "statistics" from an op-ed today in the left-wing Seattle P-I (ht Greg Ransom via Lorie Byrd): Mainstream media reportage in the United States about the occupation in Iraq is being censured, distorted, threatened by the military and controlled by corporations that own the outlets. Recently at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Eason Jordan, a CNN executive, told a panel that the U.S. military deliberately targeted journalists in Iraq. He said he...

While the Staff of Easongate would have preferred the release of the tape to fully air all concerns, we believe Eason Jordan’s resignation is an admission of guilt and he has been properly disciplined by stepping down from his responsibilities at CNN. We will continue to follow various stories directly related to Easongate, however the pursuit of the tape will occur elsewhere. The issue of the tape remains a serious impediment to getting to the bottom of this story. Eason Jordan’s resignation did not clear up the serious allegations of United States military personnel intentionally targeting journalists. The media has...

Blog pundits claim CNN scalp Roy Eccleston FEBRUARY 17, 2005 "THEY'RE scared spitless," says Glenn Reynolds. "But they shouldn't be." The University of Tennessee law professor and author of the popular web log - blog - InstaPundit.com is talking about the reaction of the mainstream US media in the week after bloggers gleefully claimed the scalp of a top CNN executive. This scalp belonged to Eason Jordan, who was claimed to have accused the US military of deliberately targeting reporters in Iraq and killing a dozen of them. Exactly what Jordan said at the World Economic Forum in Davos isn't...