Eason Jordan Resigns
You're always supposed to release bad or damaging news on Friday, so that maximum time can elapse before the news cycle reawakens on Monday morning.Well, not these days. Eason Jordan resigned last night, and the blogosphere was all over it.
Except for me, enjoying a Friday night away from my computer. Sigh.
Jordan's resignation surprised some, especially since the story was losing steam; the WEF refused to release the tape and the media, by and large, had still not picked up on it.
So then why did Jordan resign? My earlier analysis, echoed by Jim Geraghty at TKS, that the pressure would have to come from the inside, still stands. Even if you don't believe that, there clearly wasn't enough outside heat to force CNN's hand.
That leaves three possible explanations:
1) Jordan's official explanation, that he wanted "to prevent CNN from being unfairly tarnished by the controversy over conflicting accounts of my recent remarks regarding the alarming number of journalists killed in Iraq," sounds reasonable. After all, as long as the story persists, the victim would really be CNN. Who cares about Eason Jordan?
I don't really buy this, though, because for the most part, there was no "controversy," just a lot of noise. And even then, the "controversy," such as it was, wasn't over the "conflicting accounts" of his remarks, but his remarks themselves. The "conflicting accounts" could be settled by permitting the release of the video. The WEF can say no to a blogger named Sisyphus, but they'd have a harder time rebuffing CNN.
2) Jordan's superiors were basically just itching for a reason to ax him. Howard Kurtz floated that idea in a WaPo piece.
3) Pre-emptive maneuvering. As Kurtz notes, major media had absolutely not touched this story. If they remark upon Jordan's resigning, he would be — as far as the MSM and all its exclusive viewers are concerned — quitting over a non-scandal. So while Jordan is, officially, resigning of his own volition, it still looks like he's got a dagger in his back with the center-right blogosphere's fingerprints all over it. As David Gergen, who factored into the story, said in Kurtz' piece:
This is too high a price to pay for someone who has given so much of himself over 20 years. And he's brought down over a single mistake because people beat up on him in the blogosphere? They went after him because he is a symbol of a network seen as too liberal by some. They saw blood in the water.Quoth Glenn Reynolds: "[A]lthough there are some people calling it 'another scalp for the blogosphere,' it was really a case of Jordan taking his own scalp." Well, that won't be the way it looks. Why would Jordan resign if he's in the right and could prove it?
Whatever impetus this story might have had is now all but dissipated, now that the potential target has fallen on his sword. Perhaps that's why he did it.
posted by Marsh @ 3:45 PM
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