Friday, February 04, 2005
Eason Jordan: Correspondence with CNN
I do, however, have one tidbit to add. A loyal TigerHawk reader has been corresponding with CNN on the matter, and sent me the following exchange, fresh this morning. Here's the first response from "CNN administrator":
From: Admin, CNNia [mailto:CNNia.Administrator@turner.com]
Sent: Friday, February 04, 2005 10:26 AM
To: [Deleted]
Subject: Re: Top Story: War in Iraq
Eason was attempting to speak out on an issue that is important to news organizations all over the world. Unfortunately, he was not clear enough in explaining his assertion. He was responding to an assertion that all 63 journalists killed in Iraq were "collateral damage." While the majority of the 63 journalists killed in Iraq have been killed by insurgents, the Pentagon has acknowledged that the U.S. military on occasion has killed people who turned out to be journalists. Mr. Jordan emphatically does not believe that the U.S. Military intended to kill journalists and believes these accidents to be cases of "mistaken identity."
The loyal TigerHawk reader responded accordingly:
So what does targetting mean exactly? If Mr. Eason meant what you described, than he and CNN, which he represents, must correct his use of language publicly and emphatically. The implication of the word targetting is NOT the meaning which was articulated. The meaning which you articulated in your carefully considered email explanation is ACCIDENTAL. The meaning of TARGETTED is ON PURPOSE. COLLATERAL DAMAGE is far closer to articulating ACCIDENTAL than is TARGETTED. So, Mr. Eason and CNN cannot so easily slither off the hook of responsibility.
As a company which claims to be focused on journalism, CNN is in the WORDS business. If you can't manage the use of language responsibly, either you are incompetent, which would surprise me, or you or Mr. Eason intended to publicly slander the US military, and the US population, to a friendly audience in Davos - that is, one which would happily accept the slander as consistent with their views.
Your network owes an apology to many people for either its incompetence or its scandalous libel. And you should be ashamed of your claim to "journalism" in this instance.
I, certainly, could not have written it better. CNN should apologize, and fast.
2 Comments:
By 
Sluggo, at
Fri Feb 04, 06:29:00 PM:
They should apologize immediately, but CBS should have s*** canned Rather more or less immediately, too. They have the sincere belief that they are holding the fort against ignorant hoards of woman-hating, bible-thumping, evolution-denying, gay-bashing, power hungry death lovers and may feel that stretching a point of ethics in this fight won't put a spot on their immortal souls. Funny, but that was Clinton's game. If he could convince enough people that he was all that was standing between the Republicans and the constitution, liberals would put up with almost (?) anything from him, including welfare reform. There's that, there's the fact, as has been pointed out in a number of places, that CNN is now not branding itself for the American public as much as the international demographic, and there's the fact that Eason is almost Ted Turneresque in his compulsion to please his audience. He said what he said. Any fool knows what 'targeted' means. I wonder why it's taking so long to get the video out.
By geoffrobinson, at
Sat Feb 05, 12:43:00 PM:
I'm trying to come up with a proper metaphor but I can't think of anything eloquent or even good. But that's not going to stop me! If you are a ship adrift at sea and something catches on fire, you throw the object overboard even if you have other problems. Ok, so CNN has problems beyond having Eason Jordan as its president. But if they have any clue, Eason Jordan needs to go right away.
What I think is happening at Time Warner is this: they aren't even aware about this. CNN, run by Jordan, is doing damage control. If Eason Jordan's superiors hear about this he is gone. He doesn't want it to reach that point.
