Howard Kurtz: Lapdog

Looks like ol' Howie's going to have to find another lefty lap to sit in:

CNN's Jordan Resigns Over Iraq Remarks
News Chief Apologized For Comment on Troops

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 12, 2005; Page A01

Note the subtitle the copy editor chose for this one---"News Chief Apologized for Comment On Troops". Is this the big story the blogosphere missed? Where was this apology? Or is WashPo once again engaging in a little revisionist history?

Eason Jordan resigned last night as CNN's chief news executive in an effort to quell a burgeoning controversy over his remarks about U.S. soldiers killing journalists in Iraq.

Even as he said he had misspoken at an international conference in suggesting that coalition troops had "targeted" a dozen journalists and insisted he never believed that, Jordan was being pounded hourly by bloggers, liberals as well as conservatives, who provided the rocket fuel for a story that otherwise might have fizzled.

So now his comments were about "killing journalists", not just "targeting" them? And why is this controversy only "burgeoning", Howard? You could as easily have said it was an effort to hold Jordan accountable for anti-American remarks. That would have been the lede had this been a comment from Pat Robertson.

Poor Jordan---getting "pounded hourly." And given your only previous utterance on the subject only referenced conservative bloggers, Howard, why reference liberals now? Trying to claim the Left a piece of the kill? The story would have fizzled because you and the other MSM toadies would have completely suppressed it if you could have, Howie. Or did your call for the release of the Davos tape get lost in the partisan din, much as Jordan's mythical "apology" did?

Jordan, 44, said in a statement yesterday that he was quitting after 23 years at the network "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. . . . I never meant to imply U.S. forces acted with ill intent when U.S. forces accidentally killed journalists, and I apologize to anyone who thought I said or believed otherwise."

Well, there's one way to resolve the "conflicting accounts"---release the tape! Easier and less painful than a resignation, unless the only conflict is between Jordan's "clarifications" and the truth. And if this is Howie's "apology", it hardly qualifies---"I'm sorry if you're all too stupid or partisan to see reality". "I'm sorry I said something stupid and anti-American on foreign soil in a time of war. I have no evidence whatsoever for the United States military intentionally torturing or killing any journalist, despite my alleging so twice." That's an apology, Howie. The other statement is something we call "weasel words".

No definitive account of what Jordan said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 27 has been made public, including the forum's videotape of the off-the-record session. Two Democrats who were there, Rep. Barney Frank (Mass.) and Sen. Christopher Dodd (Conn.), criticized Jordan's remarks. Others in attendance, including U.S. News & World Report editor at large David Gergen and BBC executive Richard Sambrook, said Jordan had clarified his remarks.

How can it be "off-the-record" if it was videotaped? What were the remarks you so obliquely allude to? What, at least, did Frank and Dodd object to? We know you've read the blogs, Howard. Why are you so circumspect on this?

New York University professor and blogger Jay Rosen said bloggers "made a lot of noise" about the Jordan flap. "But there was basic reporting going on -- finding the people who were there, getting them to make statements, comparing one account to another -- along with accusations and conspiracy thinking and the politics of paranoia and attacks on the MSM, or mainstream media."

Hmm, wonder why you chose this particular quote, Howard? Was it to diminish the bulk of what was said in the blogosphere as "accusations and conspiracy thinking and the politics of paranoia and attacks on the MSM, or mainstream media"? Transparent and bogus. The signal-to-noise ratio was quite high among the major bloggers on this issue, as you know from reading them.

Journalist and blogger Jeff Jarvis said Jordan, like CBS News's Dan Rather after his flawed story about President Bush's military service, failed to acknowledge his mistake. "He could have said, 'Oops, I did something stupid, I'm sorry.' Instead he came out with obfuscating statements and now he's quit in shame."

Absolutely. You could have noted that Jarvis founded Entertainment Weekly and is nobody's idea of a rabid right-winger.

Glenn Reynolds, who writes as InstaPundit, said "it was the stonewalling, the lame response" that sealed Jordan's fate. "And although there are some people calling it 'another scalp for the blogosphere,' it was really a case of Jordan taking his own scalp."

Another good quote buried within the story. I have a sneaking suspicion Glenn actually said more on the subject, and you picked the quote which most diminished the bloggers' impact. Are you "targeting" bloggers, Howard?

In a memo to the staff, CNN News Group President Jim Walton praised Jordan: "The regard in which he is held by people from every walk of life in virtually every corner of the world has added incalculably to our ability to cover such historic events as the Gulf War and the war in Iraq, the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, the crackdown in Tiananmen Square and the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon."

Yes, Saddam Hussein held him and the other CNN weasels in high esteem, indeed.

Several CNN staffers say Jordan was eased out by top executives who had lost patience with both the controversy and the continuing published gossip about Jordan's personal life after a marital breakup. Jordan's authority already had been greatly reduced after a management shakeup.

This is odd. Did you report on any of these water-cooler conversations before the king was dead, Howie?

See, on the blogs, we link to stories so people can see them for themselves. No obfuscation here.

At the forum, Frank has said, Jordan seemed to be suggesting "it was official military policy to take out journalists." Jordan later "modified" his remarks to say some U.S. soldiers did this "maybe knowing they were killing journalists, out of anger," Frank said.

Hmm, that seems to contradict Jordan's account, doesn't it? But we know who gets the benefit of the doubt and who doesn't, don't we, Howie?

In an interview this week, Jordan said he had been responding to Frank's comment that the 63 journalists killed in Iraq were "collateral damage." "I was trying to make a distinction between 'collateral damage' and people who got killed in other ways," he said. Jordan cited such 2003 incidents as the U.S. shelling of Baghdad's Palestine Hotel, a haven for foreign journalists, in which two cameramen were killed, and the fatal shooting of a cameraman outside Abu Ghraib prison.

So where there is no definitive account, Jordan's word is gold, right? A reporter might have looked into Jordan's previous utterances on the matter, which were unprompted by someone allegedly introducing the notion of "collateral damage". Know where we could find one of those, Howard? Oh, wait---Captain Ed of the Starship "Blogswarm" already dug this up.

Blogs operated by National Review Online, radio talk-show host Hugh Hewitt and commentator Michelle Malkin were among those that began slamming Jordan last week after a Davos attendee posted an online account, but the establishment press was slow to pick up on the controversy. The Washington Post and Boston Globe published stories Tuesday and the Miami Herald ran one Thursday. Also on Thursday, Wall Street Journal editorial board member Bret Stephens, who was at Davos, published an account accusing Jordan of "defamatory innuendo," and the Associated Press moved a story. As of yesterday, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and USA Today had not carried a staff-written story, and the CBS, NBC and ABC nightly news programs had not reported the matter. It was discussed on several talk shows on Fox News, MSNBC and CNBC but not on CNN.

Why no mention of the Washington Times, Howard? Another conflict of interest on your part?

Gergen said Jordan's resignation was "really sad" since he had quickly backed off his initial comments. "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."

Is Gergen an uber-weasel or what? Number one, it wasn't a single mistake---he made these comments before. Number two, it wasn't because people "beat up on him in the blogosphere"---that was Jeff Gannon's situation. If Kurtz' paragraph above is to be believed, Jordan was on the way out anyway.

At least this quote amply demonstrates how the Mouth of Sauron thinks---the real evil and real power is vested within the little guy typing at his home computer, not the millionaire head of a global media empire.

Wonder why you quoted him, but didn't quote an equally-strong voice (say, Hugh Hewitt) as to why Jordan should have gone?

In his statement, Jordan said: "I have great admiration and respect for the men and women of the U.S. armed forces, with whom I have worked closely and been embedded in Baghdad, Tikrit, and Mosul" and other places. "As for my colleagues at CNN, I am enormously proud to have worked with you, risking my life in the trenches with you."

Ahh, so Jordan now claims to have risked his life "in the trenches". When did this happen, exactly?

And when did Jordan manifest anything but contempt for the U.S. military?

Believe me, if Kurtz could have found a soldier saddened by the resignation of this great cheerleader for our armed forces, he would have quoted them. Until Private Tooth Fairy makes it through Basic, that ain't gonna happen. Such a soldier doesn't exist.

He touched off a furor with a New York Times op-ed piece in April 2003, saying CNN had withheld information about some of Saddam Hussein's abuses out of concern for its Iraqi employees in Baghdad. This sparked criticism that the network was collaborating with a murderer's regime to maintain its access. Jordan wrote that Hussein's son Uday had told him in 1995 of plans to assassinate two of his brothers-in-law and the man giving them asylum, King Hussein of Jordan. The CNN executive said he had warned the king; the brothers-in-law were later killed.

Howard Kurtz hosts CNN's weekly media program.

Well, thanks anyway for reminding us of another reason to be glad Jordan's gone. You might have touched base with Franklin Foer of The New Republic, who has a rather different take on Jordan's integrity than you do:

As Baghdad fell last week, CNN announced that it too had been liberated. On the New York Times' op-ed page on Friday, Eason Jordan, the network's news chief, admitted that his organization had learned some "awful things" about the Baathist regime--murders, tortures, assassination plots--that it simply could not broadcast earlier. Reporting these stories, Mr. Jordan wrote, "would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff."

Of course, Mr. Jordan may feel he deserves a pinch of credit for coming clean like this. But this admission shouldn't get him any ethical journalism trophies. For a long time, CNN denied that its coverage skimped on truth. While I researched a story on CNN's Iraq coverage for the New Republic last October, Mr. Jordan told me flatly that his network gave "a full picture of the regime." In our conversation, he challenged me to find instances of CNN neglecting stories about Saddam's horrors. If only I'd had his Times op-ed!

In fact, Jordan at least seemed well aware of Iraqi horrors, even when it came to Iraqi intelligence "targeting" his own people:

In December, Jordan said, he met with Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf to ask permission for CNN to send journalists into areas of northern Iraq that had been under Kurdish control since the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

"He bristled, and he said, 'Mr. Jordan, if you send a CNN team there, the severest possible consequences will come to them,'" Jordan said. "And I said, 'What does that mean?' He just snapped back. He said, 'Don't you understand? The severest possible consequences.' It was clear he was talking about assassinating those journalists."

Some risk-taker, eh? Rather than lose CNN's much-vaunted Baghdad access rights, Jordan was willing to recycle Ba'athis propaganda and send those reporters he so loved into areas where his good buddies in Saddam Hussein's regime would have them assassinated.

Kurtz to his credit did deal with some of this previous Eason Jordan controversy head-on:

Cincinnati, Ohio: I hope you will be covering the astounding column in the New York Times by Eason Jordan regarding what CNN knew and didn't report. This is a major story considering their slanted war coverage. They are all too ready to report alleged atrocities by U.S. forces and not so quick to report what they knew firsthand. I can understand them not reporting these specific instances, but to have slanted their reporting in support to the regime is disgusting.

Also a caller to Rush just brought up how close was Eason to Uday that Uday confided that he was planning to murder his brother-in-laws. How nice he notified the King of Jordan. What about the poor sots who were going to be murdered. If he truly thought he and the interpreter were the only ones who knew and didn't tell to protect the interpreter then he can not claim that this was typical bluster from Uday. We must assume they had a close relationship.

Does CNN also have a nice close relationship with Castro and are we being treated to only one side of the situation in Cuba. The possibilities are endless in the world.

They disgust me.

Look forward to seeing your coverage of this issue.

Howard Kurtz: I deal with this in today's Media Notes print column. I don't agree that CNN's coverage has been "slanted," but I do think it raises all kinds of questions that the network sat on disturbing stories of human rights abuses, as Jordan now acknowledges. I asked about his relationship with Uday and he says they were not close but that Uday just went berserk in making these threats (which prompted Jordan to warn King Hussein). His rationale is that CNN could not have reported the specifics without jeopardizing lives, including those of the network's Iraqi employees in Baghdad, but I don't find that explanation entirely convincing. CNN could have just pulled up stakes in Baghdad rather deal with these thugs, but was unwilling to do so.

Philadelphia, Pa.: How can CNN maintain any kind of credibility after one of its executives admits to suppressing stories for years? That would seem like a cardinal sin of journalism, and it would be very hard for CNN to ever gain credence again.

Howard Kurtz: I think they've taken a hit. There are lots of instances of news organizations withholding information (such as troop movements or imminent arrests) that could jeopardize people's lives, but usually the information gets published after the crisis has passed. In this case you have CNN's top news executive acknowledging that the network suppressed important stories about Saddam's regime for a dozen years. That makes the situation very different.

This only makes his recent toadying all the more curious. How could any journalist be a fan of Eason Jordan?

Maybe in the aftermath of a future resignation you'll tell us all you know about this one, Howie.