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February 12, 2005

Eason Jordan Fallout

David Gergen thinks that Eason Jordan's resignation from CNN was too high a price to pay for his remarks at Davos:

Gergen said Jordan's resignation was "really sad" since he had quickly backed off his initial comments. "This is too high a price to pay for someone who has given so much of himself over 20 years. And he's brought down over a single mistake because people beat up on him in the blogosphere? They went after him because he is a symbol of a network seen as too liberal by some. They saw blood in the water."

Doesn't Gergen assume that when Jordan backed off, he did so because of a genuine regret at a poor choice of words, rather than a realization that he had just shot himself in the foot and needed to get out of potential hot water very quickly?

Howard Kurtz's piece also reveals that CNN executives had already become weary of Jordan for other reasons, and that this controversy pushed them to finally pressure him to leave.

The New York Times finally had a piece on the matter, although it reports nothing new.

CNN's (yep, they finally reported it) story here. It does not, of course, mention Jordan's previous allegation that the U.S.military was targeting journalists for torture.

I would still like to see the videotape. It still is important not only to hear what Jordan said, but how enthusiastically he may have accepted the congratulations of some of those present for his remarks. Accepting congratulations would not be consistent with sincere regret.

UPDATE: Note to the Los Angeles Times: It's time to familiarize yourself with the blogosphere.

If you had just read the LA Times all week you would have known nothing about the story up until Jordan resigned.

No Mr. Niceblog:

Well, Eason Jordan has quit his job at CNN, and after observing the near-monomania of the conservative commentariat on the subject of this man — day after day after day after day — I think it's clearer than ever that the same charge can be leveled against the right.

Right-wingers simply hate liberals, and people they believe are liberals (the entire mainstream media, for example), more than they hate bin Laden and Zawahiri and Zarqawi. We are the real enemy...Note: Yes, we on the left had some fun for a couple of days with the pseudonymous superpatriotic rent boy Jeff Gannon. But one or two lefty blogs went all Gannon, all the time. The rest of us cheered, but quickly moved on.

Jude Camwell:

The right-wing blogs seem to be the Supreme Court of the blogging community at large. Why should this be so? Why are no other rational voices important?

There was never a fair hearing anywhere in the blogworld or in the mainstream media over this case. There was only conjecture and a big agenda, which was to round up enough right-wing activists in the monkey-machine to petition CNN in the hopes they'd fire a man who was branded as a devil for daring to speak out for journalists' protection in a conference most believed was, for the most part, a private panel discussion....

CNN failed to realize, recognize, and appreciate the power of blogs who are in lock-step league with those in the "new media" who are trying to destroy the long-accepted scope and meaning of a journalist's freedom of speech. If that's "new media", count me out.
--Robin Burk:"Is this good news? Yes, insofar as a powerful man has been finally held to account for what the WSJ called 'defamatory innuendo'....But perhaps this isn't entirely good news. For one thing, Jordan hasn't really admitted his pattern of allegations and, without the Davos videotape, many will probably believe his claim that he was misunderstood. I worry that the result is an escalating cycle of partisan mobblogging and counterattacks."

Ron Hardin:

Maybe what Eason Jordan said was a firing offense and maybe it wasn't, but this, it seems to me, is now a test for the media. They barely covered the controversy and when they did for the most part they made sure their readers got no sense of why anyone would have been upset. Now they have no choice but to cover Jordan's resignation. Will they explain why he felt compelled to resign?

La Shawn Barber:

Readers speculate that there's more to this story, too. CNN decided to cut its losses for a reason. Another reader notes that Jordan announced his resignation after the news cycle, but there's no such thing in the blogosphere. Bloggers were the momentum behind this story, and don't ever let anybody convince you they (we) weren't.

(HT: The Moderate Voice)

Posted at 03:44 AM Pacific