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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-1484866,00.html

February 15, 2005

Citizen journalists relish their power to overthrow press
From Tim Reid in Washington

A TOP CNN news executive who was forced to resign over remarks about US soldiers killing journalists in Iraq has highlighted the power of internet bloggers to end the careers of some of the traditional media’s most prominent figures.

Eason Jordan, CNN’s chief news executive, resigned on Friday after being pounded for days by bloggers — “citizen journalists” who publish their own websites — for reportedly saying at an international conference that United States soldiers had targeted 12 journalists killed in Iraq.

Mr Jordan’s departure comes after the humiliation heaped upon the veteran CBS anchorman Dan Rather after bloggers exposed flaws in National Guard documents he used in making allegations about President Bush’s Vietnam-era military service. Mr Rather was forced to retract the story in September and will step down as CBS anchor next month.

The key to both men’s fall, analysts believe, is that were it not for being exposed by the lightning-quick and unregulated blogosphere, they would have probably escaped.

The mainstream media — instinctively more reluctant to attack one of its own — may not have questioned the authenticity of the CBS documents; and without the online fury that greeted Mr Jordan’s alleged comments, the story may well have disappeared.

During a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on January 27, Mr Jordan, according to various witnesses, said that he believed that the US military had aimed at journalists and killed 12 of them.

It is still unclear what words he actually used because the forum organisers, who videotaped the “off the record” panel discussion, has refused to release it or provide a transcript.

Barney Frank, a Democrat congressman on stage with Mr Jordan, said after the event that the CNN executive at first implied that “it was official policy to take out journalists”.

Challenged by other panellists, Mr Frank said that Mr Jordan modified his remarks but did not remove the sense that US soldiers intended to harm journalists. That may have been the end of the matter but for Rony Abovitz, a US businessman. He had been asked to write the forum’s first ever blog — his own first blogging effort.

Having asked journalists covering the event if they were going to report Mr Jordan’s remarks — and concluding that they were not — he posted his own online report.

By the next day his blog had been picked up by mostly conservative bloggers, who started an intensive internet campaign, not only against Mr Jordan for slandering US troops but also the mainstream press for ignoring the story.

A website, Easongate.com, was established and deluged with angry denunciations about Mr Jordan. The online onslaught gained momentum, forcing the story into the mainstream press last week.

Mr Jordan denied the accusations. He issued a statement saying that he meant to distinguish between journalists killed because they were in the wrong place when a bomb fell and those killed by US troops who mistook them for the enemy.

But the pressure was too great. He resigned, he said, to avoid CNN being “unfairly tarnished” by the controversy.

In the past week liberal bloggers have forced the resignation of Jeff Gannon, a pseudonym used by a White House reporter who wrote for a conservative website owned by a Republican activist.

When he asked President Bush about Democrat senators who have “divorced themselves from reality”, liberal bloggers attacked, raising questions about how he got White House access and whether he was a fake reporter.

[kate]

[coldwarvet]

For a moment I took myself back to the time of Kerry's Fulbright senate testimony. How different the outcome would have been if the bloggers were there to defend the honor of our troops and prosecute Kerry, Fonda, and the rest of the anti war anti America crowd? However, I live in reality and what happened, happened. Perhaps the internet will become the vehicle that rights the wrongs and restores the honor to our Viet Nam era troops.

CWV
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