Douchebag Of The Week: Eason Jordan
Error JordanMike Marchand
Douchebag Of The Week
February 3, 2005
Fish in a barrel time.
For showing no compunction about either slandering American servicemen or shredding journalistic ethics, CNN Chief News Executive Eason Jordan wins this week’s Douchie, hands down.
You may remember Mr. Jordan from an April 2003 New York Times column in which he admitted spiking stories that reflected badly on Iraq in order to maintain “access” with Saddam Hussein’s regime. But at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he went one better, claiming, according to Rony Abovitz, a blogger in attendance (and corroborated by another attendee, one of Mr. Jordan’s ex-employees) that “he knew of 12 journalists who had not only been killed by US troops in Iraq, but they had in fact been targeted.” When challenged by Abovitz and by U.S. Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) [yes, I can’t believe it, either; I do believe I’ll award Congressman Frank a Dodge-A-Douchie Distinction for it. Consider it a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free Card for Douchebag Of The Week Awards.], Jordan backpedalled furiously, but not before being “applauded” and “called a ‘very brave man’” by non-American WEF attendees, especially from Arab nations.
Several days after the ensuing blogstorm, Jordan issued this response:
To be clear, I do not believe the U.S. military is trying to kill journalists in Iraq. I said so during the forum panel discussion. But, nonetheless, the U.S. military has killed several journalists in Iraq in cases of mistaken identity. The reason the word “targeted” came up at all is because I was responding to a comment by Congressman Franks [sic], who said he believed the 63 journalists killed in Iraq were the victims of “collateral damage.” Since three of my CNN colleagues and many other journalists have been killed on purpose in Iraq, I disputed the “collateral damage” statement, saying, unfortunately, many journalists -- not all -- killed in Iraq were indeed targeted. When someone aims a gun at someone and pulls the trigger and then learns later the person fired at was actually a journalist, an apology is appropriate and is accepted, and I believe those apologies to be genuine. But such a killing is a tragic case of mistaken identity, not a case of “collateral damage.” That is the distinction I was trying to make even if I did not make it clearly at the time. Further, I have worked closely with the U.S. military for months in an effort to achieve a mutual goal: keeping journalists in Iraq safe and alive.In effect, he was taken out of context.
This might be a feasible explanation if 1) he could name or even relate the details of even one journalist killed by U.S. forces, mistaken identity or no, 2) he weren’t showered with praise for his “bravery” — what’s brave about making the above comment? and 3) he didn’t make virtually the same charge last November, even including that journalists were being tortured by the military. And that little nugget was so newsworthy that Jordan’s very network, CNN, devoted precisely zero minutes to it. Had it been verifiable, it would have been the second coming of Abu Ghraib.
In light of those, Jordan’s explanation comes off more like a parsing of the word “targeted.” To say “journalists are being targeted” implies intent — that American military personnel are finding journalists in Iraq and purposely executing them. But Jordan insists he’s being taken out of context by removing the context from his statement and jumbling the chronological order: “journalists are being targeted” means “people are being targeted who later turned out to be journalists in a tragic case of mistaken identity.”
Video of the WEF could hit the blogosphere as soon as Wednesday, so stay tuned. I fully intend to retract this Douchie if it isn’t fully deserved, and instead award it to, say, Janeane Garafolo, who compared the Congressional purple-finger salute to Iraqi voters with the Nazi “Seig Heil!” gesture, or Bill Moyers, the retired PBS hack who just won’t go away, libelling and lying his way through an environmental award speech.
posted by Marsh @ 2:53 AM
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