Patterico's Pontifications

2/14/2005

L.A. Times: Clueless About the History of Eason Jordan

Filed under: Dog Trainer,General — Patterico @ 10:55 pm



I’m falling asleep on the job, folks. The L.A. Times story on Eason Jordan’s resignation had this absurd paragraph:

While at CNN, Jordan also had provoked many activists and critics in an April 2003 opinion piece in the New York Times. Jordan asserted that he sometimes could not allow his network to report all it had learned during the intense early days of combat in Iraq, for fear that releasing certain confidential information would put lives in jeopardy.

Ha! Power Line reports that alert L.A. Times reader Diana Magrann wrote the “Readers’ Representative” to suggest a more accurate version of reality:

In April 2003, Jordan admitted in a New York Times opinion piece that CNN had withheld knowledge of numerous instances of Saddam’s brutality in order to maintain access.

Given the paper’s past demonstrated inability to correctly interpret op-ed pieces, it comes as a pleasant surprise that the “Readers’ Representative” is recommending a correction. Thanks to Ms. Magrann for keeping the paper honest. She can guest-blog here any time. (Thanks to Xrlq for the pointer to the Power Line post.)

UPDATE: The correction, which also touches on the mistake in referring to a link to Roger L. Simon, is technically accurate but ridiculously devoid of content:

CNN resignation — An article Saturday in Section A about the resignation of Eason Jordan, CNN’s vice president and chief news executive, said that a website called Easongate.com offered a clearinghouse of criticism related to Jordan’s statements about journalists killed by U.S. troops in Iraq, including a link to “mainstream columnists such as Roger L. Simon.” In fact, one link is to a website and blog by Roger L. Simon, a mystery writer and screenwriter, not Roger Simon, the columnist for U.S. News & World Report. The article also said that in an April 2003 opinion piece in the New York Times, Jordan wrote that he did not allow his network to report all it had learned “during the intense early days of combat in Iraq, for fear that releasing certain confidential information would put lives in jeopardy.” Jordan’s essay was about his network’s coverage in the years preceding the war as well as in the early days of the war.

Instead of the bolded language, what was wrong with Diana Magrann’s language? This way, even with the correction, L.A. Times readers never learn about the scandal of Jordan’s decision to cover up Saddam’s brutality in order to keep a CNN bureau in Baghdad. That can’t be the right way to handle this correction.

UPDATE: Thanks to Michelle Malkin for the link, and welcome to her readers. If you wish to bookmark the site, here is a link to the main page.

UPDATE x2: If you look at Jordan’s op-ed itself, there is only one incident described there that even arguably could have occurred after the war began. The vast majority of the incidents he described occurred well before the beginning of the current war.

4 Responses to “L.A. Times: Clueless About the History of Eason Jordan”

  1. […] om alert reader Thomas B., I alluded to this possibility yesterday, noting in an update to this post: “If you look at Jordan’s op-ed its […]

    Patterico's Pontifications » L.A. Times Issues Correction to Yesterday’s Correction on Eason Jordan (0c6a63)

  2. THE LOS ANGELES TIMES’ WEAK CORRECTION
    The Los Angeles Times runs a lame correction regarding its Eason Jordan coverage. Reminds me of Slate’s awful correction a few months ago….

    Michelle Malkin (3ca10e)

  3. Patterico,

    We were discussing how to make a guide to retraction on Daily Pundit when your recent article came up (which goes into more detail than I do here, so please read):

    http://www.dailypundit.com/archives/016889.php

    I think your article is an excellent start, but IMO it can be improved by making things more explicit. Do you think you could have a stab at this?

    The basic idea is to get something easily linked to that all the major centre or right of centre blogs would endorse (since they are most likely to attack the MSM). That would include but not be limited to yourself, Instapundit, Powerline, Andrew Sullivan, Captain’s Quarters, LGF, Matthew Yglesias, Volokh, (maybe even Kos or Atrios!).

    That way the MSM and the left can’t complain about shifting the goalposts, and we can hammer them with abandon for anything less than an appropriate retraction. And perhaps we will see blog-style retractions in the MSM much earlier than we otherwise would.

    p.s. your blog ate my comments the first time!!!

    Darvin Hansen (734120)

  4. Nice post! I 100% agree 🙂 Good content and nice work.
    -Mike-

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