THIS MAN HAS NO SENSE OF SHAME

CNN Exec Eason Jordan goes on TV to tell you that security restrictions on journalists mean that you aren't getting the full story from Iraq.

EASON JORDAN: Well, this has been a nightmarish time for CNN. In January, I was in Baghdad to bury two of my colleagues, Iraqi nationals who were killed on the job for CNN. In the last few weeks, we've had to batten down the hatches even further, very rarely sending people outside of the hotel where we have our office because it's just too dangerous to go outside the hotel.

We have armed security guards. We've sent out the smallest number of people possible when we feel we can and must send people out. But I think news consumers are being shortchanged to a degree, not just on television but in print, because journalists are not able to do their jobs effectively, and certainly the depth and breadth of reporting that you saw even a month ago was far more vast than what news consumers get today.

I find it difficult to even express the contempt I feel for this man. We're being shortchanged to a degree? Well I suppose that we are. And I applaud him for making that clear and explaining the limitations on reporting clearly and explicitly so that we can evaluate what we're getting from Iraq knowing that. Would that CNN had bothered to do the same, or even hinted at the need to do the same, at any point during the years when it was bragging about the fact that it was the only Western news outlet broadcasting from Saddam's Iraq and doing nothing more than towing the line to ensure the fact that it was able to keep that distinction. Mr. Jordan comes to the benefit of being honest with CNN viewers very, very late in the game.

Just the same, at least he is being honest now, and that's worth keeping in mind. When we hear news from Fallujah, we are hearing news, essentially, from a single news crew.

EASON JORDAN: Well, in Fallujah in particular, there's been an effort to pool resources. The five U.S. TV networks have come together and agreed to share resources. For example, right now in Fallujah there's a Fox News cameraman, a CNN producer, and one or two others working together to provide reports for all of the U.S. networks, and that's an effort to minimize exposure, keep the fewest number of people in these hot spots as absolutely necessary, but still provide the absolutely essential coverage from the most intense battlefield in Iraq right now, which is Fallujah.

That means that the coverage is even more reflective of a pack mentality than usual. I'm not criticizing that decision. I'm saying be aware of the way it will impact coverage you're watching. And I'm saying that the networks -- and CNN in particular -- should never be forgiven, no matter how good their coverage of current events in Iraq might be (it it ever gets good) for the way they let us down in Iraq before the war.

Comments

[Walter Wallis]

I wonder how many armed security guards Ernie Pyle or Bill Mauldin had?

[Leon]

Ernie Pyle had every GI as a bodyguard. They loved and adored him. Of course he was their friend and extremely loyal to them. He didn't think much of the generals though. Telling the story of the regulare GI was his personal mission, he could have cared less about the rest. He also wasn't interested in all the accolades and attention lavished on him. He is an interesting study that I use with my students as part of my World War II unit in American History. If only todays press could take some cues from him. Admittedly he ignored war strategy, but he told the home folks what their men were enduring, including death. One of his most famous columns is about Capt. Waskow, who was KIA in Italy and the reaction of his men to his death, very moving and powerful.

[dauber]

But I bet that death was put into a context that explained what gave it meaning for those men.

[Gordon Daugherty]

Pyle was what they would now call 'embedded'; he moved and lived with the 'dogfaces'. As a boy in the '50s, I read two of his books which I realized later were just collections of his columns. The thing I remember most clearly was that, in each dispatch, he would list the name and hometown of each soldier who was there with him.

A specific thing I remember was a column in which he compiled all the different ways the soldiers tried to pronounce the name of the sulfa powder they were issued to put on wounds (it was probably 'sulfanilamide', but I'm not sure).

[Richard Heddleson]

The most shocking thing about this post is that Jordan is still in his job. That his superiors think he has any credibility speaks to theirs.

[Leon]

Click on the URL to go to a link of the Waskow column.

[Ginnty]

I'm glad you posted this transcript.

I was headed to the computer to e-mail Lehrer about the lack of questions about Jordan's complicity, the crocodile tears that I found deeply offensive, the slant he was giving. Then, I remembered that the two main reasons I knew that were his own letter (which he didn't seem to see as making him so compromised that I,for one, will never again listen to CNN and believe anything they are saying) and Burns' reporting. So, I figured, at least Lehrer was trying to give some balance by putting the two up. But, of course, it was not really balanced and unless Eason's past performance is in the back of a listener's mind than his words don't seem the cheap psychobabble reporters-as-martyrs crap that it is.

[john marzan]

The Jihadist are dumb to target western journalists inside Iraq. Notice that CNN World and the BBC have been covering less and less stories on Iraq recently.

If the Western Journalist can't go outside their hotels for fear of being attacked by anti-coalition forces, then how can report and show videos of the "worsening situation" inside Iraq to the American audiences?

Don't these jihadists know that the anti-Bush, pro-left Media is one of their best "allies" in spreading their anti-Coalition, anti-Bush propaganda?

[dauber]

It depends. On the surface they may have overplayed their hand, but it depends how many "it's now so unsafe we can no longer even do our jobs!" stories we get. Additionally, they seem to have, at least some of them, switched to a strategy of hostage taking. It isn't working: I am stunned by how little coverage the hostages are getting. If that hostage were a journalist, though, things would be very different.