Eason Jordan, Chief News Executive of CNN ...and yet, no story on it? Is CNN so gutless they're spiking the story, or is Mr. Jordan just all mouth and no trousers?
Posted on 02/01/2005 2:16:20 PM PST by Dales
At a discussion moderated by David R. Gergen, the Director for Public Leadership, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, the concept of truth, fairness, and balance in the news was weighed against corporate profit interest, the need for ratings, and how the media can affect democracy. The panel included Richard Sambrook, the worldwide director of BBC radio, U.S. Congressman Barney Frank, Abdullah Abdullah, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Afghanistan, and Eason Jordan, Chief News Executive of CNN. The audience was a mix of journalists, WEF attendees (many from Arab countries), and a US Senator from Connecticut, Chris Dodd.
During one of the discussions about the number of journalists killed in the Iraq War, Eason Jordan asserted that he knew of 12 journalists who had not only been killed by US troops in Iraq, but they had in fact been targeted. He repeated the assertion a few times, which seemed to win favor in parts of the audience (the anti-US crowd) and cause great strain on others.
Due to the nature of the forum, I was able to directly challenge Eason, asking if he had any objective and clear evidence to backup these claims, because if what he said was true, it would make Abu Ghraib look like a walk in the park. David Gergen was also clearly disturbed and shocked by the allegation that the U.S. would target journalists, foreign or U.S. He had always seen the U.S. military as the providers of safety and rescue for all reporters.
Eason seemed to backpedal quickly, but his initial statements were backed by other members of the audience (one in particular who represented a worldwide journalist group). The ensuing debate was (for lack of better words) a real "sh--storm". ...
(Excerpt) Read more at forumblog.org ...
To be fair (and balanced), Eason did backpedal and make a number of statements claiming that he really did not know if what he said was true, and that he did not himself believe it. But when pressed by others, he seemed to waver back and forth between what might have been his beliefs and the realization that he had created a kind of public mess. His statements, his reaction, and the reaction of all in attendance left me perplexed and confused. Many in the crowd, especially those from Arab nations, applauded what he said and called him a "very brave man" for speaking up against the U.S. in a public way amongst a crowd ready to hear anti-US sentiments. I am quite sure that somewhere in the Middle East, right now, his remarks are being printed up in Arab language newspapers as proof that the U.S. is an evil and corrupt nation. That is a real nightmare, because the Arab world is taking something said by a credible leader of the media (CNN!) as the gospel, or koranic truth. What is worse is that I am not really sure what Eason really meant to communicate to us, but I do know that he was quite passionate about it. Members of the audience took away what they wanted to hear, and now they will use it in every vile and twisted way imaginable.A further excerpt.
Fabrication bump
That is an outrageous claim
Excuse me, Mr. Jordan, a question: Remember John Adam?
How many barrels of oil did Eason Jordan get for conducting his cover up of routine Hussein regime atrocities?
"credible leader of the media...CNN..." NOT!!!!
vaudine
This guy knows that there is an audience for his claims. It doesn't matter if his claims are true or false. Only that someone listens and that there is money to be made.
Eason Jordan, Chief News Executive of CNN ...and yet, no story on it? Is CNN so gutless they're spiking the story, or is Mr. Jordan just all mouth and no trousers?
Breaking. US soldiers in Iraq caught targeting journalists
As I blogged,
One of two things is true– 1) the Chief News Executive at CNN has been slandering our troops in a manor that is treasonous, or 2) our troops have been murdering journalists and the media has been ignoring the subject. And I agree with him that it is extremely important that we, the people, find out which it is.
Either way, justice would only be served by jailtime, for Jordan if the former is the case, or for those involved in the military (including those who gave the orders, if applicable) if it is the latter.
But either way, Jordan should immediately be removed from his position. If he was talking out of his rear, as I both suspect and hope, he should be fired for his treasonous statements. And if he was being truthful, he should be fired for being complicit in not covering the story– especially since, as Jim Geraghty points out, Jordan’s news organization has kept its mouth shut about atrocities before:
Yes, this is the same Eason Jordan who wrote in the New York Times that CNN reporters in Baghdad witnessed abuses, including torture of Iraqis by Saddam’s secret police, and did not report this to viewers in order to to keep CNN’s Baghdad bureau open.
Sorry to state the obvious, but this seems clearly as the news driving and making the news, as opposed to reporting it.
Again.
There seems to be additional spiking of the deadly mix by aiding and abetting the enemy just for good measure.
On American soil.
Does "disgusting" cover it?
It's an experiment. William T. Sherman said if you killed them all there would be news from hell before breakfast. Someone at the Pentagon just wants to see if that's true.
Fired, tried, convicted and executed using post-Revolutionary punishment (hung, but not until dead, then gutted, drawn and quartered).
4/11/03
Source: http://essaysfromexodus.scripting.com/stories/storyReader$1991
Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard — awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff.
For example, in the mid-1990's one of our Iraqi cameramen was abducted. For weeks he was beaten and subjected to electroshock torture in the basement of a secret police headquarters because he refused to confirm the government's ludicrous suspicion that I was the Central Intelligence Agency's Iraq station chief. CNN had been in Baghdad long enough to know that telling the world about the torture of one of its employees would almost certainly have gotten him killed and put his family and co-workers at grave risk.
Working for a foreign news organization provided Iraqi citizens no protection. The secret police terrorized Iraqis working for international press services who were courageous enough to try to provide accurate reporting. Some vanished, never to be heard from again. Others disappeared and then surfaced later with whispered tales of being hauled off and tortured in unimaginable ways. Obviously, other news organizations were in the same bind we were when it came to reporting on their own workers.
We also had to worry that our reporting might endanger Iraqis not on our payroll. I knew that CNN could not report that Saddam Hussein's eldest son, Uday, told me in 1995 that he intended to assassinate two of his brothers-in-law who had defected and also the man giving them asylum, King Hussein of Jordan. If we had gone with the story, I was sure he would have responded by killing the Iraqi translator who was the only other participant in the meeting. After all, secret police thugs brutalized even senior officials of the Information Ministry, just to keep them in line (one such official has long been missing all his fingernails).
Still, I felt I had a moral obligation to warn Jordan's monarch, and I did so the next day. King Hussein dismissed the threat as a madman's rant. A few months later Uday lured the brothers-in-law back to Baghdad; they were soon killed.
I came to know several Iraqi officials well enough that they confided in me that Saddam Hussein was a maniac who had to be removed. One Foreign Ministry officer told me of a colleague who, finding out his brother had been executed by the regime, was forced, as a test of loyalty, to write a letter of congratulations on the act to Saddam Hussein. An aide to Uday once told me why he had no front teeth: henchmen had ripped them out with pliers and told him never to wear dentures, so he would always remember the price to be paid for upsetting his boss. Again, we could not broadcast anything these men said to us.
Last December, when I told Information Minister Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf that we intended to send reporters to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, he warned me they would "suffer the severest possible consequences." CNN went ahead, and in March, Kurdish officials presented us with evidence that they had thwarted an armed attack on our quarters in Erbil. This included videotaped confessions of two men identifying themselves as Iraqi intelligence agents who said their bosses in Baghdad told them the hotel actually housed C.I.A. and Israeli agents. The Kurds offered to let us interview the suspects on camera, but we refused, for fear of endangering our staff in Baghdad.
Then there were the events that were not unreported but that nonetheless still haunt me. A 31-year-old Kuwaiti woman, Asrar Qabandi, was captured by Iraqi secret police occupying her country in 1990 for "crimes," one of which included speaking with CNN on the phone. They beat her daily for two months, forcing her father to watch. In January 1991, on the eve of the American-led offensive, they smashed her skull and tore her body apart limb by limb. A plastic bag containing her body parts was left on the doorstep of her family's home.
I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me. Now that Saddam Hussein's regime is gone, I suspect we will hear many, many more gut-wrenching tales from Iraqis about the decades of torment. At last, these stories can be told freely.
Eason Jordan is chief news executive at CNN.
The Confessions Of Eason Jordan By Vincent Fiore (04/24/03)
http://www.americandaily.com/article/2145
If they did, would Eason Jordan or Dan Rather still be alive?
OH MY GOD!!!!!
Is this story real?
Get the guns out, boys. And brew up another pot of coffee, it's gonna be a long war.
Well, yes. I said earlier in that post that I considered it to be treason if he was talking out his rear. In that one paragraph, I was just making the point that either way he should be out of a job, yesterday if not sooner.
Yes, that Eason Jordan.
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