Eason Jordan Update

Here is an update on the Eason Jordan outrage. The links provide some interesting information on Jordan and his hatred of the US Military. - Sailor

By FrontPage Magazine
FrontPageMagazine.com February 4, 2005

CNN'S EASON JORDAN -- SERIAL SLANDERER OF THE MILITARY

On yesterday's program, Jeff Jarvis and Jim Geraghty both stated that big media had to act on the Eason Jordan scandal in relative short order to avoid the appearance of complicity in a cover-up of a friend's scandal.

Jay Nordlinger reports at NationalReview.com today on what he was told happened after the Eason Jordan accusation session: "Afterward — again, as it is reported to me — Jordan is surrounded by Arab attendees, who congratulate him on having the "courage" to speak the hard truth. Jordan accepts those congratulations." There's another account at NewsDissector of the reaction to Jordan's slander: "'The room went wild,' someone who as there told me, reporting that most people there didn't have a clue that that had even happened. Its another sign of the media not doing its job–even about its own losses."

Jordan and CNN have now provided at least four statements --the most recent of which is at Carol Platt Liebau's site-- on what he said at Davos, and they don't hang together at all. There is also the nugget uncovered by Peter Cook and publicized broadly by Ed Morrissey, that in late 2004, Jordan accused American troops of torturing journalists:

"'Actions speak louder than words. The reality is that at least 10 journalists have been killed by the US military, and according to reports I believe to be true journalists have been arrested and tortured by US forces,' Mr Jordan told an audience of news executives at the News Xchange conference in Portugal."
Eason Jordan is a serial slanderer of the American military, and he upped the charge from torture to murder this week. He's a senior exec at CNN, which is indifferent to his slanders. Perhaps because they play well where they are intended to? More Jordan, from a 2002 interview:

"The reality is that we are a US-based news channel, but that doesn't mean we're American in perspective with our international service. In fact the person who oversees all our international outlets is not an American at all, he's British, and we hired him from the BBC several years ago. There are more than fifty nationalities of journalists who work at CNN International producing that service. If we were to move CNN's base to Egypt maybe they'd say we're Egyptian—you have to be based somewhere. It's the people who produce the channel and the people who provide the reporting who are really responsible for it, and those are people from all over the world, the very best journalists and program makers we can find. No matter what CNN International does, as long as CNN's headquarters is in the United States people are going to say, well, it's an American service. But the reality is that it's an international service based in the United States, and we don't make any apologies about that." Thursday, February 3, 2005
http://www.hughhewitt.com/
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MSM'S SILENCE ON EASON JORDAN
The mainstream media has spent another news cycle ignoring the Eason Jordan scandal, where he has been discovered to have made repeated claims of atrocities deliberately committed by US troops against reporters. CNN felt that Eason's Fables could be so damaging that they took the unusual step of not only e-mailing a statement to those who e-mailed their complaints, but also to bloggers who posted on the story but never sent a complaint to CNN. (We believe they worked off of Hugh Hewitt's link list on the scandal.)

However, despite the obvious concern at CNN, they still have posted nothing on the story, not even their own statement. The Washington Post, where Howard Kurtz was rumored to have been working on this story, likewise has nothing on its pages or website this morning, more than 36 hours after it achieved national prominence from broadcast and bloggers. Likewise, the "Paper of Record" managed to avoid recording anything on this story. The Los Angeles Times provides nothing on its West Coast pages.

What about CNN's competitors? MS-NBC gives us a goose egg. Ditto for CBS News, although that may well be a case of professional courtesy. ABC News gives Eason a pass. Even Fox carries nothing on the controversy.

Here we have the man running a major news organization who has accused the US military, on at least two separate occasions in the last three months, of atrocities specifically aimed at journalists -- and the news media remains completely silent about it? Does that make any sense to you, other than a deliberate media blackout? Hell, even Eason Jordan responded, if completely inadequately -- doesn't that make the newspaper or the web sites?

The MSM has circled the wagons. Don't let them get away with it.