Eason Jordan's flight, 24 hours later
Just spent that last hour or so skimming through a ton of blog entries poking through the wreckage of Eason Jordan's CNN career. Originally I was merely harvesting posts for my links pages, but all of this goosed me into adding a little bit more to my quasi- "report as it happens" account of yesterday.
I speculated that Jordan quit because the World Economic Forum was going to release the videotape, or perhaps another tape or transcript was about to come out, which would show Jordan's despicable sliming of the American military to the entire country and remove all fudging room about the "controversy." But it appears that such a release is not, in fact, imminent. So why did Jordan cut & run?
My guess is that this resignation was not all that voluntary. CNN, having learned at least a few things from CBS' Rathergate debacle, in essence heaved Jordan overboard (if belatedly) in order to bury the problem with him and get the blogosphere off its back (on which, rotsa ruck, fellas). A matter of cutting its losses, as it were, since CNN was as much in the crosshairs on Jordan's intemperate rhetoric both in Davos and going back several years (see Captain's Quarters for the low-down on the history end of this) as he was himself.
Get rid of the lightning rod, and the lightning - they hope - goes away.
Time will tell if the decision proves prescient, but it's hard to doubt it, IMO. As the aforementioned Captain Ed points out today, Big Media is being compelled to report on the resignation of a prominent news exec without every really having reported on what ultimately caused him to depart. Put another way, they fumbled the most basic journalistic function of providing context for a pretty major story, a function eagerly and resoundingly picked up by the blogosphere. Now that the perp has been symbolically frog-marched away in handcuffs, what more reason will the rest of Big Media have to pay attention to the greater underlying story of vicious left-wing press bias that is the raison d'etre of the entire episode?
Perhaps this uproar was about to finally break through into the establishment press. 'Tis doubtful that it will now.
Until the next such episode, that is. And we all know there'll be a next episode. Given the state of insane, incensed, radicalized denial the Left is in today, that's as much a guarantee as the next sunrise.
Speaking of which, the following couple of lefty reactions, taken at random, are very emblematic:
The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail. (Where is Jimmy Stewart when we need him ?) This convinces me more than ever that Eason Jordan is guilty of one thing, and one thing only -- caring for the reporters he sent into battle, and haunted by the fact that not all of them came back. Like Gulliver, he was consumed by Lilliputians.
...and...
"Eason Jordan has just been tire-necklaced by a bloodthirsty group of utopian, bible-thumping knuckledraggers that believe themselves to be bloggers but are really just a streetgang. Time Warner/CNN is spineless if not completely corrupted by its shareholders' thirst for petro-dollars. It is now clear that all pretenses to journalistic 'objectivity' benefit the torturing, gulag-building blood-cult known Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld's Republican Party."
Gee, "Wake4Democracy" couldn't have put it any more obnoxiously himself. I guess for the "Hard to Port" crowd, accountability will always be a bitch.
As for the awesome power of "all bloggers, great and small," I'm still inclined toward my "bear pooping in the woods" metaphor, but I'll certainly not begrudge any of my (far bigger) fellows their "Look upon my works, ye mighty, and tremble" gloating. LORD knows they've earned it.
Almost as much as Eason Jordan has earned his early retirement.
I speculated that Jordan quit because the World Economic Forum was going to release the videotape, or perhaps another tape or transcript was about to come out, which would show Jordan's despicable sliming of the American military to the entire country and remove all fudging room about the "controversy." But it appears that such a release is not, in fact, imminent. So why did Jordan cut & run?
My guess is that this resignation was not all that voluntary. CNN, having learned at least a few things from CBS' Rathergate debacle, in essence heaved Jordan overboard (if belatedly) in order to bury the problem with him and get the blogosphere off its back (on which, rotsa ruck, fellas). A matter of cutting its losses, as it were, since CNN was as much in the crosshairs on Jordan's intemperate rhetoric both in Davos and going back several years (see Captain's Quarters for the low-down on the history end of this) as he was himself.
Get rid of the lightning rod, and the lightning - they hope - goes away.
Time will tell if the decision proves prescient, but it's hard to doubt it, IMO. As the aforementioned Captain Ed points out today, Big Media is being compelled to report on the resignation of a prominent news exec without every really having reported on what ultimately caused him to depart. Put another way, they fumbled the most basic journalistic function of providing context for a pretty major story, a function eagerly and resoundingly picked up by the blogosphere. Now that the perp has been symbolically frog-marched away in handcuffs, what more reason will the rest of Big Media have to pay attention to the greater underlying story of vicious left-wing press bias that is the raison d'etre of the entire episode?
Perhaps this uproar was about to finally break through into the establishment press. 'Tis doubtful that it will now.
Until the next such episode, that is. And we all know there'll be a next episode. Given the state of insane, incensed, radicalized denial the Left is in today, that's as much a guarantee as the next sunrise.
Speaking of which, the following couple of lefty reactions, taken at random, are very emblematic:
The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail. (Where is Jimmy Stewart when we need him ?) This convinces me more than ever that Eason Jordan is guilty of one thing, and one thing only -- caring for the reporters he sent into battle, and haunted by the fact that not all of them came back. Like Gulliver, he was consumed by Lilliputians.
...and...
"Eason Jordan has just been tire-necklaced by a bloodthirsty group of utopian, bible-thumping knuckledraggers that believe themselves to be bloggers but are really just a streetgang. Time Warner/CNN is spineless if not completely corrupted by its shareholders' thirst for petro-dollars. It is now clear that all pretenses to journalistic 'objectivity' benefit the torturing, gulag-building blood-cult known Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld's Republican Party."
Gee, "Wake4Democracy" couldn't have put it any more obnoxiously himself. I guess for the "Hard to Port" crowd, accountability will always be a bitch.
As for the awesome power of "all bloggers, great and small," I'm still inclined toward my "bear pooping in the woods" metaphor, but I'll certainly not begrudge any of my (far bigger) fellows their "Look upon my works, ye mighty, and tremble" gloating. LORD knows they've earned it.
Almost as much as Eason Jordan has earned his early retirement.
posted by JASmius at 3:05 PM
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