EASON JORDAN

I haven't commented on the demise of Eason Jordan to this point. But I do now want to weigh-in on a couple of points. Eason Jordan was a "newsman". He was the head of CNN "news" international. Notice, he wasn't a "op-edsman" heading up CNN "op-ed" international. News can be defined as intelligence or information about specific and timely events. The function of news and news reporters is not to "shape policy" but to report news.

When access to "people and places" becomes your goal, the news agency, or reporter, become "appeasers", you lose objectivity, and ultimately, credibility. This is what Eason Jordan essentially admitted to during the the U.S. presidential elections when he publicly stated that they (CNN) turned a blind eye to Saddam's abuses; because they were afraid of him, and did not want to lose their press access to Iraq, particularly Baghdad. So, they made a choice to report only "half the news."

Propaganda can be defined as information that is spread for the purpose of promoting some cause. And, as a news agency, when you no longer present facts, or present only some facts, i.e. those that support your agenda, this is propaganda.

Misrepresentation of facts or accusations without factual support is not "news". You as a reporter have just made your own news by lying or through misrepresentation of facts. YOU have become the news, your story is not --- it's fiction.

Eason Jordan made unsubstantiated (to date, anyway) claims about the U.S. military knowingly targeting reporters and killing them. This is not a charge that should be taken lightly. If it happened, we have a big problem and needs to be addressed. (Immediately, I might add.) But at this point, it appears to be wild, unfounded charges, meant perhaps to cement his good standing with the audience to whom he was speaking.

If this is the case, and now that he has resigned, maybe he should go work for Al-Jazeera news or for the Communist China's governmental controlled news agency. I hear they're both looking for good experienced "newsmen".

The guys at Power Line also weigh in on this subject and blog about an article in Business Week and say that BW got it wrong. While they (BW) got it wrong, Power Line did say that " the BW story was noteworthy in its receptive attitude toward the blog's role in covering the controversy over Jordan's remarks and its frank observation concerning theMSM's non-cooperation of the story."

This is somewhat noteworthy. Bloggers don't generally get a thumbs-up from MSM.

This is where Business Week "got it wrong" and reinforces my point about MSM and their apparent difficulties in dealing with fact. Powerline says BW senior writer Stephen Baker writes: "[Jordan’s] allegation — that coalition soldiers in Iraq mistook journalists for enemies and killed them — brought down a storm of criticism on him and his network."

Power Line adds:

Baker to the contrary notwithstanding, the source of the controversy over Jordan’s remarks was Jordan’s statement that American soldiers (not "coalition forces") had "targeted" journalists in Iraq, not mistaken them for enemies and killed them. Many readers wrote to point out the basic factual error in Baker’s story.

And they write:

I thought for an organ like BW to get the basic facts at the heart of the story wrong — isn’t that a dog bites man story?

And they add:

The "mistaken identity" theory repeated by Business Week wasn't what Jordan said in Davos, it was CNN's spin: CNN's story was that Jordan had intended to advance the mistaken identity claim, but did so clumsily and was misunderstood by those present. So Business Week apparently bought CNN's after-the-fact rationalization hook, line and sinker, but extended it farther than CNN did in CNN's own email communications with bloggers and other news outlets.

Neal Boortz says:

"Media bias has less to do with conservative or liberal views than whether or not the media is doing its job." He refers us to an article addressing this issue written by one of my favorites,Thomas Sowell called "Tainted Media".