February 10, 2005

One More Easongate Eye-Witness Weighs In

Wall Street Journal editor Brett Stephens was in the audience at the infamous Davos meeting. Here's what he saw and heard:

By chance, I was in the audience of the World Economic Forum's panel discussion where Mr. Jordan spoke. What happened was this: Mr. Jordan observed that of the 60-odd journalists killed in Iraq, 12 had been targeted and killed by coalition forces. He then offered a story of an unnamed Al-Jazeera journalist who had been "tortured for weeks" at Abu Ghraib, made to eat his shoes, and called "Al-Jazeera boy" by his American captors.

Here Rep. Barney Frank, also a member of the panel, interjected: Had American troops actually targeted journalists? And had CNN done a story about it? Well no, Mr. Jordan replied, CNN hadn't done a story on this, specifically. And no, he didn't believe the Bush administration had a policy of targeting journalists. Besides, he said, "the [American] generals and colonels have their heart in the right place."

By this point, one could almost see the wheels of Mr. Jordan's mind spinning, slowly: "How am I going to get out of this one?" But Mr. Frank and others kept demanding specifics. Mr. Jordan replied that "there are people who believe there are people in the military" who have it out for journalists. He also recounted a story of a reporter who'd been sent to the back of the line at a checkpoint outside of Baghdad's Green Zone, apparently because the soldier had been unhappy with the reporter's dispatches.

And that was it--the discussion moved on. I'll leave it others to draw their own verdicts, but here's mine: Whether with malice aforethought or not, Mr. Jordan made a defamatory innuendo. Defamatory innuendo--rather than outright allegation--is the vehicle of mainstream media bias. Had Mr. Jordan's innuendo gone unchallenged, it would have served as further proof to the Davos elite of the depths of American perfidy. Mr. Jordan deserves some credit for retracting the substance of his remark, and some forgiveness for trying to weasel his way out of a bad situation of his own making. 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.

Sad times when a ranking member of the media elite can't trust a room full of the global elite to keep their mouths shut.

Meanwhile, back in Iraq, via soxblog

INSURGENTS "TARGET" AND KILL JOURNALIST AND THREE YEAR OLD SON
1) Although it hasn’t been the biggest story on the blogosphere today, perhaps it should be. A few months back the United States created an Iraqi television station of its own, the better to counteract the dubious reporting that sometimes emanates from Al Jazeera and Al –Aribaya. This morning, one of the U.S. station’s on-air Iraqi correspondents was gunned down along with his three year son as they left their home. No one denies that they were “targeted” by the “insurgents.”
Seems to me that videotape of Mr. Jordan at Davos would have a lot of impact if run back to back with the report of this "incident."

[HT: Roger Simon]

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Posted by Vanderleun at February 10, 2005 12:29 AM | TrackBack
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