Jewish World Review Feb. 15, 2005 / 6 Adar I, 5765

Media lynch mob tries to out-blog the bloggers (and fails miserably)

By Jack Kelly

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Real fear is mixing with snarky disdain in the "mainstream" media's attitude toward web loggers in the wake of the resignation last Friday of Eason Jordan as CNN's top news executive.

"Bloggers as News Media Trophy Hunters," said the headline in the New York Times Monday, the first time many of the newspaper's readers were made aware of a controversy which had been roiling for nearly two weeks.

"The New York Times media beat reporters got beaten badly on the Eason Jordan story — by (gasp!) web logs and cable news — and so how do they react? By catching their readers up on what they missed? Of course not. They react by lashing out at web logs," said Jeff Jarvis, whose views were misrepresented in the Times' story.

Web loggers who criticized Jordan are "sons of Sen. McCarthy," said Bertrand Pecquerie, director of the World Editors Forum. "It is very worrying to see this marriage between self-proclaimed citizens' media and mainstream journalists' scalp hunters," he said.

"The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail," said Steve Lovelady, who edits the web site of the Columbia Journalism Review. For those of you unfamiliar with the controversy — that is to say, for those of you who get your news from the "mainstream" media — in a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland Jan. 27, Jordan said the U.S. military was deliberately killing journalists in Iraq. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass), a fellow panelist, demanded proof, which Jordan couldn't supply.

Miami businessman Rony Abovitz, who was in attendance, reported on what Jordan said in his web log. This was read by big foot bloggers Hugh Hewitt, Ed Morrissey (Captains Quarters), Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) and the gang at Power Line, who expressed outrage.

Jordan denied he said the military deliberately targeted journalists, but Abovitz's account was supported by former CNN reporter Rebecca Mackinnon, Frank, and Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn). Power Line uncovered earlier remarks by Jordan accusing the U.S. and Israeli militaries of targeting journalists.

Blogger Tim Schmoyer (Sisyphean Musings) learned a videotape had been made of the session, and tried to obtain a copy. After initially agreeing, the World Economic Forum refused, on the grounds that the session was "off the record."

Bloggers demanded release of the videotape. Last Friday, several U.S. senators joined in that call. Jordan abruptly resigned which, presumably, he would not have done if the videotape supported his story.

Pecquerie and Lovelady have their allegations of "McCarthyism" backward. Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis) became famous in the 1950s for making hysterical and (mostly) unfounded accusations that individuals in the State department and the Army were secret communists. It was Jordan who made hysterical and unfounded accusations against the U.S. military, and it is "mainstream" journalists who are now making hysterical and unfounded accusations against web loggers.

Bloggers are entitled to mount Eason Jordan's scalp on their lodgepoles, next to those of Dan Rather and Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss), all of whom lost jobs because bloggers kept reporting and commenting on stories the "mainstream" media initially ignored, and (except in the case of Lott) would have preferred to go on ignoring.

But the key fact is not that Eason Jordan is now looking for work, but that bloggers were trying to uncover the truth about what he said, while "professional journalists" were trying to suppress it. For us, the "people's right to know"— which we invoke in self-righteous tones when we're prying into the private lives of people who are not journalists — takes a back seat to protecting the reputations of members of our club.

What happened to Eason Jordan — and what happened to Dan Rather before him — shows that we can no longer cover up the stories we don't want you to know about — and there are consequences when the cover-ups fail. That's why there is panic mixed in with our disdain.

We feel about bloggers the way Custer must have felt when he charged that village at the Little Big Horn, and discovered it was much, much bigger than he'd imagined it to be. The bloggers' wigwam is large, and growing. There is plenty of room on the lodgepole for more scalps.