Targeting the News media
The Conservative Media's Attack on CNN's Eason Jordan
CNN's News Chief Eason Jordan was targeted for attack. Is this a clue to the way some journalists in Iraq are targeted for attack?
The US media has reported that Eason Jordan, who recently resigned as News Director of CNN, lost his job because of the new found power of blogs and other amateur news media. But is that the real story? Left out of the reports is the role played by well funded and supported conservative and neo-conservative media organizations, especially the Wall Street Journal.
On January 28, 2005, Bret Stephens, former editor of the Jerusalem Post and now on the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, sent out a message concerning Eason Jordan on the Wall Street Journal's by-subscription-only "Political Diary" mailing list. Stephens titled his message Pandering, CNN-Style and spread the story that Jordan had slandered America by comments he made during a panel discussion (Easongate). The discussion was held at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland on January 27, 2005.
An account of the panel also appeared in the official WEF blog, despite the fact that the official rules of the Davos meeting required that anything said at the panel could be discussed in print, only if it wasn't attributed to any particular speaker. This account was written by a Florida business executive invited to Davos to write the blog for the WEF (Do US Troops Target Journalists in Iraq?).
What did he say?
The US mainstream media in general did not cover the panel and the discussion that occurred. However, the Wall Street Journal editor and other conservative or neo conservative professional journalists like those working for the National Review or the Weekly Standard reported the events of the panel through their own characterization condemning Jordan.
The BBC's World Services Director Richard Sambrook was on the panel with Jordan. Sambrook reports the event differently. He reports that Jordan's remarks came after another panelist characterized the deaths of journalists in Iraq as merely collateral damage. Explaining the distinction Jordan was seeking to make, Sambrook writes that "this is the difference between a journalist being shot by a sniper or fired at directly as opposed to, for example,accidentally being killed by an explosion."
A second point Jordan made, according to Sambrook, is that when journalists have been killed by the military in conflict, the public ends up learning very little about how that killing happened. Even if there is an 'open inquiry' or effort to determine 'accountability'. Even if an investigation sometimes takes place, the findings are not made public.
Sambrook also reports that a number of journalists are concerned with these issues, and that the suspicious deaths of journalists in Iraq are being considered by organizations like the Committee to Protect Journalists and the International Federation of Journalists.
According to Sambrook, US Democratic Congressman Barney Frank who was also on the panel, responded to Jordan's remarks by interpreting them to mean that "US troops had deliberately set out to kill journalists". Jordan repeatedly explained that this was not what he said or meant.
An account of Jordan's remarks similar to what Frank accused Jordan of saying, was what Stephens circulated to subscribers in "Pandering, CNN-Style". In an editorial page article on February 10, 2005, Stephens went on to publicly call for CNN to terminate Jordan's employment. He writes
:
By chance, I was in the audience of the World Economic Forum's panel discussion here Mr. Jordan spoke....whether with malice or not, Mr. Jordan made a defamatory innuendo....Had Mr. Jordan's innuendo gone unchallenged, it would have served as further proof to the Davos elite of the depth of American perfidy.... Whether CNN wants its news division led by a man who can't be trusted to sit on a panel and field softball questions, is another matter.
The campaign
Other media personalities contributed to the campaign against Jordan raised in the media, online and off, between January 28 and Feb 11. These included media people from conservative publications like the Daily Standard, the National Review, the New York Post, the New York Daily News, and the New York Sun.
Jordan's personal life was the subject of attack and rumor, as in articles in the New York Daily News and the New York Post. A petition was created and CNN advertisers targeted for a campaign by an online group. Emails were sent to CNN asking that Jordan be fired. The issue raised during the panel discussion, the issue of whether there is some form of deliberate targeting of news media in Iraq, was dismissed as irrelevant by those attacking Jordan.
Also an op-ed that Jordan wrote for the New York Times on April 11, 2003 was referred to. In the op-ed ( The News We Kept To Ourselves, Jordan explains how the lives of certain reporters or their families will be in danger if CNN were to report certain things that happen to these journalists.
The op-ed is a helpful statement of the caution that the media needs to use in reporting certain events about their own journalists. However, this article by Jordan is also caricatured and misrepresented and turned into an offense by Jordan's accusers. For example, Hugh Hewitt who is a weekly columnist for The Daily Standard, the online edition of The Weekly Standard and the host of a nationally syndicated radio program, invited Wall Street Journal editor Stephens onto his radio show. There Stephens mischaracterized Jordan's concern for the journalists CNN sends out by saying, "Mr. Jordan's New York Times' op-ed explained why access is a more important news value than truth."
An orchestrated alliance of mainstream and amateur media who are determined to shield the US government from criticism
While conservative news media punish the messenger who dares to complain about US government policy and activities toward journalists, main stream media like the New York Times and the British Guardian, help to spread the illusion that this is just the new fashion of Internet citizen activity.
For example, an article published in the Guardian (London) covered the attack on Jordan on January 28. The Guardian reporter characterized the WEF blog where some of the attack on Jordan appeared on January 28 as similar "to a site called Ohmynews, 'where every citizen is a reporter'." The Guardian writer refers to the businessman invited by the WEF to write the article that attacked Jordan as "one of those citizens."
The citizen journalists of OhmyNews are those who take up to challenge the conservative news media in Korea. The Guardian writer has converted the meaning of the word 'citizen', from one who acts to take responsibility for what his or her country does, into one who acts to protect his or her country from criticism, regardless the harm being done by that country or what the facts might be. Here the Guardian is hijacking the term to praise those who are promoting the activities of the conservative media in the US.
In an article in the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune, Kathrine Seelyes attributes the attack on Jordan to bloggers on the Internet. While she also points to connections between mainstream conservative media and the online professional and amateur journalists, she attributes the success of the attack to bloggers, rather than identifying the nature of the conservative power base of the media online and off that participated in the attack on Jordan.
Those who take on to support the conservative news media by having a chorus of slander both online and offline, are only making it all the harder for there to be legitimate press activity, such as activity which would pressure for a public investigation into the incidents that led to the deaths of journalists killed by coalition forces in Iraq.
In preparing for the war in Iraq, the neo-cons set up the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon to manufacture information to make the case for their war on Iraq. Similar to the role of this Office, there is now an orchestrated alliance of mainstream and amateur media who are determined to shield the US government from criticism of its activities by scapegoating those raising such criticism.
There are many newspapers, talk shows, and other forms of media in the US who trade in sensationalism and personal attacks. However, for the most part, this kind of media is recognized as promoting such sensationalism. It isn't applauded as the activity of brave citizens. Given the current conservative and neo-conservative media activities in the US to attack those who care for international law and human life, it is not surprising to find the kind of tactics which were just used against Jordan becoming more and more commonplace in mainstream news media like the Wall Street Journal. While Bret Stephens has moved from being editor of the Jerusalem Post to an editorial position at the Wall Street Journal, his regard for the neo-cons and their activities hasn't changed.
Not only has there been an attack on a journalist and media Executive who raised the issue of the safety of journalists in Iraq, but similarly, the mainstream press is aglow with tales of a new grassroots Internet media. The alliance of conservative media, both online and off, that attacked Jordan, however, is not a grassroots citizens media, nor is it an amateur media going up against the power structure. To the contrary, it is an alliance of powerful and well funded conservative and neo-conservative media entities who have powerful allies in the US government.
The misrepresentations of Jordan's remarks found a ready echo in both conservative media outlets like the Wall Street Journal and the National Review and Weekly Standard, and the online chorus of their cronies. This kind of activity is not part of any Internet revolution. To the contrary, it is a confirmation that the powerful conservative and neo-conservative forces in the US corporate and government world recognize the importance of the media, both the online media and the press and radio and TV. Will the progressive movement in the US and internationally find a way to respond (The Crisis in the US Media and the 2004 Election)?
The panel that Eason Jordan was speaking at was titled: Will Democracy Survive the Media?. Unless more of an alternative media emerges, with the funding and support necessary to be able to criticize US government activity, a media with online and professional components, the answer may well be that just as the Media, so too Democracy, is in very serious trouble in the US.