With all the buzz about Eason Jordan's resignation, it's difficult to know where to begin in listing recommended links. But whatever sources I link to or which you find on your own, this round we've seen more vitriol poured on New Media in general, and the blogosphere in particular, than at any time since Rathergate. Perhaps even more this round, and not always from predictable sources.
Jordan's resignation was a much less public event than Dan Rather's disgrace, and, for all of Jordan's past expressions of disgust with the U.S. military and his kow-towing to Saddam, he's hardly the household name that Rather has been for decades. In that sense, the editorial on Jordan in today's WSJ is correct when it says that "Easongate is not Rathergate." But as Captain Ed has pointed out, the Journal doesn't mention that "Davos was not an isolated incident."
The Big Trunk at Power Line makes the same point, with an excellent rundown of Jordan's previous attempts to smear the U.S. military. He also links to a detailed time line of Jordan's words at Easongate. The first untrue charge made by Jordan came on October 10, 2002, in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he charged that the Israeli military had deliberately targeted CNN personnel "on numerous occasions."
There's also today's big article in the New York Times, where you may read this:
At the same time, some in the traditional media are growing alarmed as they watch careers being destroyed by what they see as the growing power of rampant, unedited dialogue.
Steve Lovelady, a former editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Wall Street Journal and now managing editor of CJR Daily, the Web site of The Columbia Journalism Review, has been among the most outspoken.
"The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail," he lamented online after Mr. Jordan's resignation. He said that Mr. Jordan cared deeply about the reporters he had sent into battle and was "haunted by the fact that not all of them came back."
Ed Morrissey was quoted in this piece, and he thinks it's fundamentally fair. That's good to know, and he also believes that the obnoxious language above is taken a bit out of context. In a post from yesterday, Ed takes the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to task for making Jordan into a martyr, something other media are bound to do as well. Ed has many other worthy posts as well, as he's covered Easongate better than perhaps any other blogger. To boot, his recent posts are made from a hospital, where his wife has undergone a successful pancreas transplant. "Hospiblogging" he calls it, and we're all thankful everything is going well.
Michelle Malkin is also on the beat, with an op-ed in today's NY Post. Of the backlash against bloggers, Michelle writes:
Take Bertrand Pecquerie, director of the World Editors Forum, the organization for editors within the World Association of Newspapers, please. Mourning Jordan's decision to step down, Pecquerie likened bloggers to the "sons of Senator McCarthy" and "scalps' hunters."
Steve Lovelady, managing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review Daily Web site, blasted Jordan's Internet critics in an e-mail to New York University professor Jay Rosen's blog PressThink (available at journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink): "The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail."
Also on Rosen's site, reader William Boykin fumed: "Jordan has just been tire-necklaced by a bloodthirsty group of utopian, bible-thumping knuckledraggers that believe themselves to be bloggers but are really just a street gang." And these unhinged heavy-breathers accuse bloggers of being a lynch mob?
Michelle has additional commentary and links at her blog.
The best big media editorial I've come across is from today's New York Sun, edited by Seth Lipsky. Lipsky bests his former colleagues at the WSJ with this beginning:
If one is an incident, two is a coincidence, and three is a trend, feature this - top news executives at the New York Times, CBS News, and CNN, all toppled in the past two years by scandals that were heightened by pressure from new journalistic outlets. Taken in isolation, the departures of the New York Times's executive editor, Howell Raines, and his managing editor, Gerald Boyd; the managing editor of the CBS Evening News, Dan Rather, and three other CBS executives; and the executive vice president and chief news executive of CNN, Eason Jordan, would each be big events. Taken together, they suggest a news industry in the midst of a stunning revolution.
Glenn Reynolds has some additional thoughts at Slate; and, via PoliPundit, this from The Word Unheard:
Former CNN News Group Chairman Walter Isaacson wrote in an e-mail to the AJC that Jordan was dedicated to "the value of hard reporting by real journalists [can you hear it coming?] who braved going out into the field, like he so often did, rather than merely opining. [Careful there, big fella. You know not the boots we have worn.] It's ironic that he was brought down partly by talk-show and blogging folks who represent the opposite approach and have seldom . . . ventured out to do . . . frontline reporting."
Alright. Isaacson wants the gloves off? Fine.
Let's just stop right there and turn this ship right around:
It's ironic that the American Military men and women were slandered by a news executive and reporting folk who represents the opposite approach and has never...ventured out to do...frontline fighting...to preserve (or in this case, establish in Iraq) the very freedoms he abuses so recklessly.
Nicely said.
Also check out Instapundit, with additional links to Jeff Jarvis and others.
Update: Much more at Hugh Hewitt, including (via Ed Morrissey) the news that Bret Stephens penned this morning's WSJ editorial. See also Eugene Volokh's post on lynch mobs (not).
Update: Hugh Hewitt, who earlier said that Bret Stephens wrote the unsigned WSJ editorial attacking bloggers, says he's been informed that Stephens did not write the editorial in question.
| Feb. 14, 2005 | 7:01 PM