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February 07, 2005
Qui custodiet ipsos custodes?
I have not had anything to say about Eason Jordan's comments at Davos for several reasons, not least because it's really Captain Ed's beat and he's covered it extremely well (start here, then check the main page for the rest and keep scrolling). Further, without a transcript or video of the event there is a he-said, she-said aspect to the dispute that makes it difficult to reach any definitive conclusions. While I consider it probable that Jordan did try to tar the U.S. military with an accusation of American policy directed towards murdering journalists, such an action is to expected from the media, which has a pronounced leftward tilt that is visible to anyone who isn't already planted towards that end of the spectrum. Jordan's words, if reported accurately, aren't going to convince anyone of anything they don't already believe: if you think the media tilts to the left, Jordan simply confirms what you already knew. If you think the media is objective or tilts to the right, Jordan is either an aberration or a courageous truth-teller. The news isn't changing minds in either case.
Then I read Gerard Vanderleun's essay about the situation. Gerard posits that reporters are unwilling to report on misconduct by someone like Jordan because it will result in their being blacklisted in their profession. Other media moguls will protect Jordan in order to maintain their own protection, and the story will never reach the major papers or be mentioned in television news. And while I cannot judge why the story hasn't yet surfaced in the media outside a few outliers, it is indisputable that as of this writing it remains unmentioned in any of the major media outlets (CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, the New York Times, the Washingon Post).
Perhaps it's just not newsworthy. Does it matter that the director of news for the biggest cable news network in the world accused the United States of deliberately targeting journalists for death? Certainly if there were any evidence to the accusation that's worthy of publication in my mind: a policy to murder journalists would be a massive scandal that would (one hopes) bring down the Bush administration. That seems to suggest that Jordan didn't actually have any evidence that his accusation was true. So is it newsworthy that Jordan made such an accusation on an international stage knowing he had no evidence to support it? Your mileage may vary, but I think the head of a major news organization being willing to throw out such inflammatory claims without evidence in public forums is worthy of at least a little comment. Nonetheless, my concern is not with Eason Jordan, who I suspect was just looking to pump himself up before a big audience by pretending to 'speak truth to power.' If Mr. Jordan is able to make such statements with impunity, I think the republic will survive.
The pretensions of the occasional blogosphere triumphalist notwithstanding, the media I cited above remain the primary method the vast majority of Americans get their news. We depend on the media to do certain things: get the facts right and talk about what matters, in particular. They often fail us on these issues, as the fact I even know who Scott Peterson is will attest, but we assume they'll get the big ones right. If they had evidence that President Bush was involved in something illegal, it's a pretty safe bet they'd come forward with it, and that's an important part of our republic. However many journalists learned the wrong lessons from Watergate, Woodward and Bernstein nevertheless did the country a great service by exposing the malfeasance of the Nixon administration. We need a strong and independent press to keep an eye on the government for just such issues.
That need puts a great deal of power in the hands of the press. Wherever power concentrates, you can count on finding people who want to turn that power to their own ends. Outside the media, we count on the media to look for such people and expose their abuses. But what happens when the media is the one abusing power? If we can't count on the media to bring to light a relatively minor transgression like a network executive spreading lies, we certainly can't count on them to do so when someone in the media does something far more heinous. Which would mean that the media not only holds tremendous power, but it holds power that is unaccountable. That's a bad combination.
Some may argue that Jordan has the right to express his opinion as he did. My response is that Jordan has the same rights as anyone who occupies a position of power, which is to say that he can say what he wants, but some speech marks him as incapable of holding that position. President Bush has not lost his First Amendment rights simply by becoming President. Nonetheless, were he to advocate clearly unconstitutional policies (a very gray area, granted), he would mark himself as unfit for the office and his removal would be the proper remedy. Eason Jordan is executive vice president and chief news executive of CNN. When he says that the United States is intentionally targeting journalists in combat zones, his words carry a great deal of weight. If he's willing to throw out wholly specious or unsubstantiated claims in public fora, he has demonstrated that he isn't fit to run a news division, particularly at a network where news is all there is.
It's certainly possible that I'm wrong, and that it's ok for Jordan to make baseless claims and still run a news division. But if the media won't even raise the question, we've got a bigger problem than anti-American news executives.
Posted at February 7, 2005 06:31 PM
I apologize for only allowing authenticated commenters, but comment spam overwhelms the site if I don't use those measures to prevent it. I reserve the right to delete any comment, although generally comments will only be deleted due to use of profanity or personal attacks on people. I have no objection to vigorous argument, but when name-calling begins, I'm putting a stop to it. In the immortal words of Eugene Levy, "People, people, let's stop this before somebody says something untrue!" If you want to call people names, I recommend you get your own blog.
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I am quite positive if the pictures of Abu Grhaib hadn't leaked, you'd be saying the same thing about all those folks in the media who were writing "unsubstantiated" stories about torture going on. Reading the foreign press in 2003, Q1/2004, there were lots of stories about Gitmo, Iraq and Afghanistan.
The powers that be in those oh-so-lefty ivory towers in the US media where mute. These guys knew what was going on, but they didn't have the beef - or maybe they wanted to give the Administration a pass. How liberal.
Sy Hersh doesn't have pictures of the SoF folks in Iran - you really think he's pulling it out of his a**? You think he's making it up?
Call it the See-no-evil-until-I-have-the-JPEG syndrome.
Read your history about what Sy went through with My Lai and W&B went through with Watergate. Phoenix, Cointelpro, Iran Contra, Chalabi, Office of Special Plans, trumped up WMD's - denied all around, very little beef. Couldn't be happening. They were just evil, liberal reporters trying to take down good men. Most, if not all of these stories involved reporters and editors crossing over the line into educated speculation or nothing but anonymous sources.
Jordan knows what is going on. No, he can't prove it. He's not an idiot. He wouldn't be saying this to the Davos strata unless he wanted them to be talking about it. His first obligation is to his reporters, not your gov't or editorial sensibilities. This is his way of saying "we know what you're doing, and even if you aren't, you better be more careful".
Nothing Bush is doing is illegal. That's the problem. Our Attorney General doesn't think the president is bound to torture conventions. He is God's own Unitary Executive. Torturing non-combatants is not real torture, when you read and understand the legalese.
If our gov't can legally target ANY foreigner (reporters and stringers/interpreters working for US media) as intelligence assets, what makes you think a Presidential Finding or Theater Rules of Engagement couldn't be written to kill them? I mean, it is just totally unreasonable to believe any Al Jazerra guy could ever be assisting the terrorists cause, right? And even if he did, jeez, we'd never, EVER think to target him. Or ask an Iraqi paramilitary to do it for us. These things are just beyond comphrension...
Yeah, right.
Posted by: Steve at February 7, 2005 11:43 PM
Steve, may I suggest you get your own blog to spin your beliefs? You clearly have rather strong opinions, albeit an unfortunate aversion to backing them up with facts. Why don't you go over to Blogspot or Typekey and spin them there, instead of trolling my comments?
Out of curiosity, since you're so certain Hersh is just another objective reporter putting the truth out there, do you also believe his reporting on the Kennedys?
My big concern here, which you either ignored or don't understand, is that the media has an appalling amount of power that appears to have few checks or balances. Whether you believe they're liberal, conservative, libertarian, or any other ideology, unchecked power is a bad thing.
Posted by: Andrew at February 8, 2005 05:48 AM
Heh..
You said: "such an action is to expected from the media, which has a pronounced leftward tilt that is visible to anyone who isn't already planted towards that end of the spectrum"
Well, I would rephrase that as "such an action is to expected from the media, which has a pronounced rightward tilt that is visible to anyone who isn't already planted towards that end of the spectrum" Considering stories covered, and not covered during the last election, on the war in Iraq, and other issues - and the lack of liberal commentary in the socalled MSM. The brouhaha you mention above does not, in my mind, justify calling the media as a whole 'Liberal'.
As for your concerns about media power, what would you do? Limit speech? Limit media conglomeration? (wait - the Bush Adminstration encouraged that!).
Anyway, I'm a somewhat liberal individual who enjoys reading your blog because you are willing to back up your positions with facts and argument, and dicuss and explore both your POV and the POV of those who disagree with you. Even when I think you are wrong, I don't generally think you are 'full of it' - keep it up (and if I ever start a blog, I'll link to yours)
Posted by: Michael at February 8, 2005 11:42 AM
Michael,
Good question about what to do. I certainly don't want to see the government get involved with it, and I don't want to see restrictions on speech. This may be a problem without a good solution. In the long term, I think the growth of the blogosphere will help to some extent, by holding issues like this up to public view until the media can no longer ignore them, but I'm less sanguine than some about how effective the blogosphere really is.
Posted by: Andrew at February 8, 2005 11:58 AM
I am absolutely, positively, certain that Hersh is NOT objective. Having seen him speak, I doubt he would say he is. But we'd all be a bit more ignorant of the truth if his 'power' had been more rigorously 'checked'. Re the Camelot book, sure, I'd bet Hersh has it 80% right.
Our Founders got it right with the 1st Ammendment. While some of them quickly regretted it (and didn't have a problem jailing folks over it), you can't have too much of it.
You don't say it, but I assume you want Jordan's peers to out him on a "relatively minor transgression", and because they don't, they are above accountability. On this particular issue, I see editors who feel as close to their staffs as say, you might have felt towards those under your command. Friends of theirs are dead. Some of them by 'friendly fire'. Is it strange that he'd be more worried about that than say, applying rigid editorial principles before mouthing off?
If you mean why aren't journalists writing about Jordan, I doubt it has more to do with fear (can't write about my bosses peers) than that most of them don't do investigative journalism (I'm positive Hersh would agree with that). Or maybe, because, this isn't some abstract story to them. Getting targeted (by anybody) is personal.
That's not to say certain stories are avoided or supressed. But they mostly revolve around corporate issues (ie, Media Consolidation last year). That's different, because I doubt the editors and journalists get a vote on that.
Posted by: Steve at February 8, 2005 12:51 PM
Andrew:
I guess I fall in with the crowd that says, eh, so what? A highly placed news executive says something wrong that cannot be substantiated. Happens on Fox news all the time. What's the big deal?
On the other hand, we have a story about a reporter who dons a fake name, gets into the White House press briefings, tosses softballs to the press secretary that are intended to support the Bush administration's point of view, and quite possibly could be the source (or knowledgable) of the Plame name leak. What's Instapundit's response? "well it's a shame that blogs are attacking this man's personal life."
No, Glen, you don't get it or are hiding from it. Mr. "Jeff Gannon" was a conservative propaganda tool at best, a White House disinformation source at worst, and was found out. That's the story. Jordan? Yawn.
Posted by: J. at February 10, 2005 08:48 AM
Wow - haven't stopped by in awhile and just look at what you've done to the place!! I like it. Very nice.
Regarding Jordon, since the man has said (on the recorded record) these things before I don't believe there is much doubt anymore of the veracity of the claim. Yes I do have a big problem. Everybody was calling for heads to roll with Abu Ghraib without a shred of evidence this went to the top of the ladder (still don't). The Army was already investigating this situation before it hit the MSM. How many headlines have there been on this topic? Hundreds. But you get the top cable news executive slandering thousands of people and the MSM is absent. I'd say that's a major double standard. Tells me the MSM is not interested in balanced reporting nor taking one of their own to the woodshed. It was the same go around with Dan Rather.......seems to be a pattern here. The only time the MSM juices up on a media type is when it's a known Conservative columnist where they let loose.
Posted by: Toni at February 10, 2005 11:09 AM
Out of curiosity, J., can you cite a single instance of a Fox news executive making a similiarly unsubstantiated observation in a public forum? I'm not saying it doesn't happen, I'd just like to hear at least one instance before I accept that it happens 'all the time.'
Posted by: Andrew at February 11, 2005 09:32 PM
hi
would you care to simply tabulate number of press related people who died (were killed / murdered ? ) during US government's war on afganistan and iraq ? just the numbers and see how does it compare with the past norms . Living here in US but having a habit to read news from all around the world i do see a very different picture on what is reported ( and accepted as the norm ) here .
Posted by: badri at February 12, 2005 11:47 AM
badri,
One of the points of concern I had over this issue was the fact Jordan raised this issue, but never produced any data regarding the point. Had the press been somewhat more interested in the story, they could have looked into questions like that. If Jordan was correct, that's an awfully big story.
Posted by: Andrew at February 12, 2005 12:38 PM
Posted by: Steve at February 13, 2005 12:34 PM
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