29 Comments

1. photoncourier.blogspot.com:

If there is a transcript or recording, it should be released.

Feb 2, 2005 - 4:02 pm 2. Dishman:

Captain Ed got the same note. As I said there, it sounds like they’re trying to use Technorati or some equivalent to stay on top of this.

Feb 2, 2005 - 4:06 pm 3. Robert Crawford:

CNN’s lying. The accounts of the remarks have Frank shooting down Jordan, not vice-versa.

Feb 2, 2005 - 4:10 pm 4. joe:

With the track record CNN has established over the last 12 years can anyone actually watch them and if someone does can you believe anything you are seeing or hearing. This is a very corrupt organization. I just hate it they are here in Atlanta.

Feb 2, 2005 - 4:17 pm 5. RogerA:

I dont like Barney Frank’s politics, but I admire his patriotism and courage. Must have been a tough thing to do for a MA congressman from a liberal district and it demonstrates to me his patriotic instincts–he didnt have to say anything. God bless him.

On the larger issue of CNN–I have to say for an organization that excoriated the President and the administration for lying, misleading etc, their “statement” is in a class by itself. The fact that CNN’s actions in Iraq led DIRECTLY to numerous deaths so they could maintain “access,” suggests to me that it is an organization without a any moral compass. They are rapidly becoming the epitome of the MSM–I do hope there is a blog swarm.

And MSM watch: still not seeing this on the MSM!

Feb 2, 2005 - 4:27 pm 6. Bostonian:

RogerA, I’m not sure you’re being fair when you note that it “must have been a tough thing to do.”

It might have been really easy. He might be one of those people who get mad when someone makes an obvious lie, at the expense of other people.

(I *should* know something about the guy, but my interest in politics is too recent. I will have to learn more and maybe not vote against him.)

Feb 2, 2005 - 4:32 pm 7. Bostonian:

Hey CNN:

Show us the context.

Feb 2, 2005 - 4:33 pm 8. Wallace:

an assertion by Cong. Frank

How did the Viet Cong get involved in this…??

Feb 2, 2005 - 4:39 pm 9. Curmudgeon:

>>especially given the rather different accounts from eyewitnesses.

Feb 2, 2005 - 4:41 pm 10. Occam's Beard:

Sounds like we’re going to need a standing body to investigate the news media, one that’ll do a better job than play pat-a-cake as in the CBS scandal, and that will get to the bottom of what looks like the obvious backwatering we’re seeing here.

I think Jordan ought to “Eason” on out the door.

Feb 2, 2005 - 4:42 pm 11. RogerA:

Bostonian: point taken–I made some untoward assumptions about congressional spines. My bad

Feb 2, 2005 - 4:46 pm 12. Terrye:

It seems the folks at CNN sent out a form letter.

Nice perosnal touch.

Jordan was just playing to the crowd and got caught, but you know there are people out there that really believe this stuff.

It seems that journalists have no problem falling back on their special status to protect a source, but when it comes to shooting their mouths off at international events, they don’t expect to be held to any kind of standard.

Feb 2, 2005 - 4:47 pm 13. Dishman:

OB, we’re already here.

Their response time is already much better than at CBS, even if it’s not an effective response.

Feb 2, 2005 - 4:49 pm 14. Bostonian:

Words have consequences.

You’d think that people working in the media would realize that.

Feb 2, 2005 - 4:52 pm 15. Rick Ballard:

Who will wager a $10 dollar contribution to PayPal here that this infant meme apparently successfully strangled in its crib will not come back to life in the pages of The Nation, The Grauniad or the Beeb within a month? It has the necessary fake but accurate anti-American attributes to assure that it will remain among the undead. I’m sure that it will be woven into the narrative rather quickly – perhaps as soon as Hersch or Fallows write their next piece. The “real truth” of the matter will be confirmed by Pentagon or State Department sources insisting on anonymity. Current journalistic standards will have been preserved and the Cause served.

Feb 2, 2005 - 4:57 pm 16. Roberts:

Roger, I got the same email from a different email address. Notice that the statement is unsigned. Notice as well, that the statement doesn’t make sense. Why would Jordan feel a need to correct a statemetn that journalists’ deaths were “collateral damage” if all he was going to assert was that the military had killed people that later turned out to be journalists? That makes absolutely no sense. That Jordan might contradict the claim by asserting that the military intentionally killed them is more credible in terms of how a response/challenge series would occur.

I continue to call for CNN’s boycott.

Feb 2, 2005 - 5:04 pm 17. W.J.A:

I’ll take Barney Frank’s word over Jordan’s, frankly. Why not ask him? If someone here lives in his district, you can even e-mail him directly:

http://www.house.gov/frank/contact.html

Feb 2, 2005 - 5:12 pm 18. Pat Curley:

Sorry, but I don’t buy it at all. If Jordan was saying that the 12 journalists had been killed by accident by the US military, that is by definition, collateral damage. Plus, of course, there is the word “targeted” to be explained away.

Feb 2, 2005 - 5:27 pm 19. Yehudit:

Charles Johnson and Glenn Reynolds got the same email.

Charles did some digging and Jordan has said this and more, previously. It’s not an accident.

Feb 2, 2005 - 5:57 pm 20. J. Roesler:

>>Many blogs have taken Mr. Jordan’s remarks out of context. Eason Jordan does not believe the U.S. military is trying to kill journalists.

Feb 2, 2005 - 5:57 pm 21. Dishman:

CNN has a lot of suffering and death on its own bloody hands in this respect.

… and specifically Eason Jordan.

Maybe this is part of a defense mechanism against his own fears of ‘karma’ catching up with him. Perhaps the same process can explain Ted Turner.

That is to say, he is lying himself. Occaisionally the lie is verbalized in public. Mostly it’s just to keep “the drumming monkey” from pounding his psyche into pulp.

Feb 2, 2005 - 6:09 pm 22. DB:

Isn’t there video tape of this incident? Roll the tape. Enough with the Rashomon already.

Feb 2, 2005 - 6:11 pm 23. Sandy P:

Charles also had this:

And please note: the problem goes much deeper than Eason Jordan. At the same News Xchange conference in Portugal, another CNN executive, Chris Cramer, told an audience that journalists were being ìdeliberately targeted for seeking out the truth.î

Feb 2, 2005 - 6:36 pm 24. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

We need a new name for CNN that match it’s initials.

I used to call it the COMMUNIST News Network

Today, I get CORRUPT News Network

and CYNICAL News Network

and CONSCIENCE-FREE News Hetwork

And once again, they are no doubt doing exactly the same thing in Palestinian territories. A number of news outfits have done that. Furthermore, they are still doing it with Cuba, which Ted Turner seems to imagine is a peoples’ paradise (it is for sex tourists from Europe and Canada).

So need new names. “News” doesn’t seem right either.

Feb 2, 2005 - 6:57 pm 25. Morgan:

I emailed Mr. Jordan last night asking for his explanation. No bounce, but so far, no response, either.

Feb 2, 2005 - 9:26 pm 26. Duke:

Un PC response to 63 journalists being killed? Who gives a shit? Goes with the territory. None of these elite pieces of crap cares when 63 janitors are murdered, or 63 cab drivers, or ten thousand shitty Kurds are gassed, so why should I give a rats ass about them? Besides, 63 of those assholes killed? I don’t believe the number for a second. And the army now has to be careful when going after terrorists so as not to hurt the undercover Muslim sympathizers? Give me a break.

Feb 2, 2005 - 10:24 pm 27. Oyster:

Ballard, I said the same thing at my place. Who’s to say this isn’t another Rather episode of, “Well, they didn’t “deliberately” target the journalists, nut we need to think about the fact that they may have WANTED to.” Personally, I would have been hard pressed not to at least beat the hell out of some of them.

Feb 3, 2005 - 4:29 am 28. Helveticus:

I have been to the Forum in Davos a couple of times, although it’s been a few years since I was last in attendance. However, I think I understand the dynamics of what happened in this case. It comes as no surpprise to me that an American would stand up and make some kind of exaggerated anti-American remark within a session, because it is exactly these kinds of comments that will ingratiate him with the rest of the participants, who (this point has been made on many blogs) are themselves virulently anti-US and more than willing to believe even outright lies if they will make the US look bad.

The atmosphere that is cultivated at Davos – maybe not in the big plenary sessions but certainly in the smaller discussions, like this one was – is one of “off-the-record intimacy”. Does anybody know if there was anyone from the press in the room when Jordan made his remarks? I don’t think so, otherwise this would have been reported somewhere besides through the blogs (and I don’t count Jordan himself as a member of the press, since – I am pretty sure – he was commenting in his role as a featured session speaker, and not as a journalist covering the discussion). So he may have been taken completely by surprise by the fact that a staff member of the World Economic Forum themselves was blogging the discussion. Hence the desperate backpedalling.

In that case, Jordan is like the Dixie Chicks – Americans who start spewing anti-US or at least anti-Bush venom once they’re abroad. They apparently haven’t figured out that what they say outside the US can still be picked up by bloggers, directly or indirectly, and zapped back to the good old US of A instantaneously. Then comes the whole “I was misunderstood” shtick. Pathetic. Jordan should apologize to the Armed Forces or be sacked. But we all know he won’t be.

Feb 3, 2005 - 5:45 am 29. charlotte:

CNN learned an important lesson from the CBS Rather debacle: blog control. Apparently, the network is mounting a rapid response of emails and even phone calls to involved bloggers. They are not offering documentation, and their explanation doesn’t even sound logical, but at least they are trying to stamp out the brushfire before it rages out of control. Their response is a tacit admission of the power of the ’sphere, even though it is insultingly inadequate. The best bloggers, like Roger!, won’t settle for their specious spin.

Still, CNN must believe they have a chance at plausible deniability and that video or a damaging transcript won’t surface. Could they be taking care of that end of business, as well? And, anybody hear further from Dems Barney Frank or Chris Dodd who were there that night? Probably not.

Helveticus’ take on what occurred sounds about right. But I hope there will be some hell to pay for what Jordan said at Davos and, apparently, not for the first time. May the Cred Nullified News not manage us as well as they “manage” the news.

Feb 3, 2005 - 7:51 am

Write a Comment

Name:	(required, displayed)
Email:	(required, not publicized)
URL:	(optional, displayed)
Comments: