Hmmmm. It turns out Eason Jordan's credentials as a professional journalist are rather thin (Atlanta Journal-Consititution, registration required):
Long before Jordan's rise and fall at CNN, he worked the overnight shift, often alone, on the network's international assignment desk.Working in a chilly newsroom, wearing gloves with the finger portions cut off, he was the main late-night connection between the newborn network in Atlanta and its reporters overseas. He figured out how to send footage from distant countries, how to reach information ministers a world away and how to feed an often-gawky 24-hour operation.
Certainly it was heady stuff for a twentysomething college dropout with little journalism experience.
But in CNN's early days, credentials didn't always matter as much as eagerness, which Jordan had in abundance, say those who worked with him.Timing ultimately played Jordan's way. He was promoted to lead CNN's international assignment desk not long before the start of the Gulf War, and he shared in CNN's greatest moment as the network's Baghdad Boys scooped the world.
The work got Jordan noticed within CNN. Johnson quickly promoted him to better positions, and eventually chose him to serve as his second in command.
So Jordan was way in over his head, in a highly influential role at the pioneering cable news network - which was inventing itself from scratch when he joined it. That explains a whole lot. But it doesn't explain why so many professional journalists who do have solid training have leapt to his defense. For that we have to look deeper at the structure and culture of the media industry today.
More on that later. H/t to Glenn Reynolds for the link to the article.
He wasn't really a journalist; he was CNN's access guy.
It's not unique. Journalism is, after all, a trade rather than a profession. And that would explain why they guard their prerogatives so jealously: they don't really believe that they deserve them. And they're probably right.
Contratulations Iraq!
Shiites and Kurds can fairly hold that mystic chord of memory and retrieve their nobler Sumerian roots (first writers of the written word).
Beware of the International Nannies and the degrading Mullocracy, all cowtowing to the mobile fascist network.
We Humans were all born to be in line with God, the Creator (not proud little man, the destroyer, usurping Creation).
Enjoy your victory and your Republic...if you can keep it.
Your true friends will help you help yourselves stay free.
Love,
Your Roving Poet,
Lily Panaeti
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Robin
"So Jordan was way in over his head, in a highly influential role at the pioneering cable news network - which was inventing itself from scratch when he joined it. That explains a whole lot."
Been mulling this one over for a bit. Are you suggesting that the only people qualified to be journalists or sitting in Jordan's position should be those that are college educated?
The reason I bring this up is because I'm not a college educated sheep skin toting working class citizen, yet I'll put my credentials on the line with any Computer Science major when it comes to large mainframe computers and data processing.
Not necessarily. What I'm trying to dig into are the criteria that separate professional journalists from amateurs in the blogosphere. Is professional training one of those criteria?
Legally, there are both privileges and protections accorded journalists that have not been accorded to bloggers. One way to identify the press has traditionally been that they work for a corporate entity and that there is editorial oversight. But as pros go off to form their own online magazines, for instance, those guidelines are harder and harder to apply.
I wonder what the courts will do when a blogger is sued for, say, libel and the defense is that the blogger was practicing "citizen journalism".
More re: the issue of credentials, many fine journalists learned their craft on the job in the 20th century. The trouble is, CNN was breaking new ground when Jordan joined them. He had neither an apprenticeship at an established news outlet of quality nor journalism school training.
So he apparently did what he could do - put in a lot of hours wiring things together and then later, wiring access with people like Saddam. And at Davos he was attempting - probably successfully - to wire access to the Arab and European markets, about which he cared a great deal more than the US one.
But was he telling the truth? Sadly, atleast if the military isn't incompetent, yes.
I have not seen credible evidence that suggests targetting to me. I've read both of the reports on the Palestine hotel incident and talked with people who have combat experience (including people who opposed our entry into Iraq) and I don't find evidence of targeting.
What I do find evidence of is what the military calls a non-linear battlefield. In other words, there's no "behind the lines" any more. Combine that with the regular pattern of TV broadcasts at the sight of insurgent attacks, for instance, and I believe that what is happening is that journalists are now in siutations they would not have been in in previous wars.
Precision strikes are planned carefully, but there are never any guarantees. TV studios situated right next to the Iraqi ministry of information during the main phase of a war are almost certainly going to bear the side-effects of an attack on that ministry and it is not reasonable to expect that the ministry will be spared due to the TV station nearby.
That said, I'm open to serious inquiry. But it has got to be an inquiry that takes the full range of facts into account and it has got to be an inquiry which does not start from the automatic assumption that the battlefield should be shaped around the needs and desires of journalists.
a-
If he was telling the truth, why did he say it at a private conference, rather than in the 6:00pm news cycle on CNN Headline News??
...because it couldn't meet any standard of journalistic evidence?
A.L.
And Roger Ailes of Fox News, what's his journalism background exactly? All I found was extensive experience in PR for Republicans and conservatives? I guess his non-journalist viewpoint is more to some people's taste.
There is a difference between the truth and being able to proof it. Telling the truth is all you need in a private conference but it isn't enough to run it on CNN.
There is a difference between the truth and being able to proof it. Telling the truth is all you need in a private conference but it isn't enough to run it on CNN.
On CBS though, they would run it as "fake, but accurate." Once again the "reality-based" community has no use for evidence when it contradicts a well-beloved conspiracy theory.
Being unable to prove the statement suggests to me that the concern is libel.
Libel and lies are two different things so. If you say something bad and you can't proof it that it is libelous but it can be the truth
According to the site you link to, Andrew, Ailes started out in broadcast TV. A brief google turned up enough bio to suggest that Ailes is basically a broadcast person, albeit one who stared in TV, moved to the message side of the business (political communications) and then back to managing broadcast production and networks.
Ailes' career in television began in Cleveland, Ohio, where he was a producer and director for KYW-TV, for a then-locally produced talk-variety show, The Mike Douglas Show. He later became executive producer for The Mike Douglas Show, which syndicated nationally. He received two Emmy Awards for The Mike Douglas Show (1967, 1968). It was in this position, in 1967, that he had a spirited discussion about television in politics with one of the show's guests, Richard Nixon, who took the view that television was a gimmick. Later, Nixon called on Ailes to serve as his executive producer of TV. Nixon's election victory was only Ailes' first venture into presidential television.
Ailes founded Ailes Communications, Inc., in New York in 1969, and consulted for various businesses and politicians, including WCBS-TV in New York. He also tried his hand in theater production with the Broadway musical Mother Earth (1972) and the off-Broadway hit play Hot-L Baltimore (1973-76), for which Ailes received 4 Obie Awards. He was executive producer for a television special The Last Frontier in 1974. He produced and directed a television special, Feiini: Wizards, Clowns and Honest Liars, for which he received an Emmy Award nomination in 1977.
Ailes carried out political consulting for many candidates during the 1970s and 1980s, but returned to presidential campaigning as a consultant to Ronald Reagan in 1984. ...In 1984, Ailes won an Emmy Award as executive producer and director of a television special, Television and the Presidency. In 1988, Ailes wrote a book with Jon Kraushar, You Are the Message: Secrets of the Master Communicators, in which he discusses some of his philosophies and strategies for successful performance in the public media eye.
Ailes also won acclaim for his work in the 1988 presidential election, in which he helped guide George Bush to a come-from-behind victory over Michael Dukakis. He did not work on the losing 1992 Bush campaign against Bill Clinton. In 1991, Ailes convinced a syndicator to bring Rush Limbaugh from radio to television and became exec-utive producer of the late-night show. He announced his withdrawal from political consulting in 1992.
In 1993, Ailes became president of NBC's cable channel CNBC and began planning another NBC cable channel, America's Talking. The new channel debuted on 4 July 1994. Ailes also hosts his own nightly show, Straight For-wareL Since Ailes took over at CNBC, ratings have increased 50% and profits have tripled.