Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Big Media Responds to Eason Jordan

The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz finally wrote about the Eason Jordan Controversy today in this article. He doesn't exactly say anything new except trying to pass off the whole controversy as irrelevant since the critics of Jordan have mostly been bloggers:

No transcript exists of the Jan. 27 session, which was supposed to be off the record, and a videotape of the event has not been made public. The dispute erupted when Rony Abovitz, co-founder of the technology company Z-Kat, posted an account on the forum's Web site of what Jordan said, while also noting that he had backpedaled when challenged.

This triggered widespread denunciations of Jordan by conservative bloggers, who have also criticized the mainstream media for not reporting the remarks.

Although Kurtz himself doesn't say it in the article, the Post does acknowledge at the end of the article that he hosts a show on CNN.

LaShawn Barber has been closely following the story and has lots of links to other great critiques of the article. She also correctly suggests that the bigger issue is CNN's pattern of anti-American, anti-military coverage of which Mr. Jordan's statements are just a small part. Could it be that CNN is trying to rebrand itself as the ideological antithesis to Fox News?

Meanwhile, this was discussed last night on CNBC's Kudlow and Kramer (video available at this link). (Hat tip: Instapundit)

It's clear that Howard Kurtz was doing the best he could to try to cover for his boss. Whether he agrees with Mr. Jordan's statements is not clear from the article.

It's also clear that CNN stands by Mr. Jordan's statements and fails to see the problem not just with this statement but previous statements as they continue to allow Mr. Jordan to have a job with the network.

It's even clearer that the MSM are not reporting this story in an attempt to protect one of their own. I suspect that there are many within the MSM (particularly in positions of authority) that agree with Mr. Jordan on this issue.


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