Further proof Al Jazeera runs circles around CNN
Eason Jordan, CNN news chief executive, resigned today amid the controversy surrounding remarks he made regarding journalists killed in Iraq.
During a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum last month, Jordan said he believed that several journalists who were killed by coalition forces in Iraq had been targeted.
He quickly backed off the remarks, explaining that he meant to distinguish between journalists killed because they were in the wrong place where a bomb fell, for example, and those killed because they were shot at by American forces who mistook them for the enemy.
No transcript of his remarks has been uncovered, so we'll never know whether his words have been taken out of context or otherwise misconstrued.
On one level, the controversy seems justified. It was a fairly impolitic thing for him to say, and given that he ostensibly represented CNN at the time, it's easy to see how his personal opinions would get projected on the news division he heads. In short, it's the kind of no-no for which Daniel Okrent would take a New York Times exec to task in a similar scenario.
But if you remove Jordan from his hat as CNN news head, you have to wonder if his remarks were actually out of line. I'm sure not every U.S. soldier wants to kill any and all reporters. But by the same token, the military doesn't much care for non-"embedded" journalists in Iraq or Afghanistan or any other theater of combat. It's not so much fun when you can't strictly regulate not only the information journalists can access, but also their ability to disseminate it to the outside world.
Let's face it, how many scathing indictments of the war have you seen from journalists reporting from "somewhere in Iraq with the 153rd Division"? Not many.
And it's not like the military has never bombed the offices of a news organization. Certainly not in November 2001, when a U.S. missile destroyed the Kabul offices of Al Jazeera. Because surely the military had no idea where the offices of an independent Arab news network broadcasting exclusive tapes of Osama bin Laden was. In an example Jordan would've done well to follow, Al Jazeera Managing Director Mohammed Jasim al-Ali didn't speculate on whether the attack was intentional. He simply noted, "This office has been known by everybody, the American airplanes know the location of the office, they know we are broadcasting from there."
Does it seem plausible that some overzealous U.S. troops would intentionally take aim at a reporter or two under cover of mistaking them as the "enemy"? Draw your own conclusions.
During a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum last month, Jordan said he believed that several journalists who were killed by coalition forces in Iraq had been targeted.
He quickly backed off the remarks, explaining that he meant to distinguish between journalists killed because they were in the wrong place where a bomb fell, for example, and those killed because they were shot at by American forces who mistook them for the enemy.
No transcript of his remarks has been uncovered, so we'll never know whether his words have been taken out of context or otherwise misconstrued.
On one level, the controversy seems justified. It was a fairly impolitic thing for him to say, and given that he ostensibly represented CNN at the time, it's easy to see how his personal opinions would get projected on the news division he heads. In short, it's the kind of no-no for which Daniel Okrent would take a New York Times exec to task in a similar scenario.
But if you remove Jordan from his hat as CNN news head, you have to wonder if his remarks were actually out of line. I'm sure not every U.S. soldier wants to kill any and all reporters. But by the same token, the military doesn't much care for non-"embedded" journalists in Iraq or Afghanistan or any other theater of combat. It's not so much fun when you can't strictly regulate not only the information journalists can access, but also their ability to disseminate it to the outside world.
Let's face it, how many scathing indictments of the war have you seen from journalists reporting from "somewhere in Iraq with the 153rd Division"? Not many.
And it's not like the military has never bombed the offices of a news organization. Certainly not in November 2001, when a U.S. missile destroyed the Kabul offices of Al Jazeera. Because surely the military had no idea where the offices of an independent Arab news network broadcasting exclusive tapes of Osama bin Laden was. In an example Jordan would've done well to follow, Al Jazeera Managing Director Mohammed Jasim al-Ali didn't speculate on whether the attack was intentional. He simply noted, "This office has been known by everybody, the American airplanes know the location of the office, they know we are broadcasting from there."
Does it seem plausible that some overzealous U.S. troops would intentionally take aim at a reporter or two under cover of mistaking them as the "enemy"? Draw your own conclusions.
posted by Alexander Dubcek | 16:43
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