Monday, February 14, 2005

The New York Times picks over the Eason Jordan affair.

Jeff Jarvis responds.

The rest of us yawn and move on.

At least 4 journalists from the mainstream media have already died on assignment this year.

Let me know when a blogger puts his or her life in mortal danger to get a story and I'll rethink.

UPDATE:
BBC Global News boss Richard Sambrook has posted his thoughts on the affair on his internal BBC blog.

It's not available outside the intranet so I republish it in full.

For once, I find myself agreeing with BBC management.

"I'm shocked by Eason Jordan's resignation at the end of last week following his remarks on a panel at Davos (see earlier post). He was being hounded by the US bloggers - unreasonably. He had clarified his comments and apologised for any misunderstanding. However the bloggers scented blood and continued to pile on the pressure, the story broke into the mainstream and Eason felt he should stand down rather than let CNN be damaged by association. So he has resigned because he was accused of holding views which he repeatedly said he didn't hold...a strange world.

"Eason is a good man. In the last year alone he has made 12 trips to Baghdad to support the CNN team and to try to put in place arrangements to improve their safety. He joined CNN in its earliest days and developed their newsgathering through the eighties and nineties, building for himself a reputation as a fierce and uncompromising competitor.

"The broadcast news industry is the worse for his departure."

6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Interesting comments from Richard Sambrooke Stu. These been a few articles about this story up on Lexis today if your interested.

Off topic but it looks like the BBC has done well in the Royal Television Award Nominations this year:

http://www.rts.org.uk/awards.asp?sec_id=720&from=section

Are you going to it Stu?

4:38 PM  
Blogger Guy Jean said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

2:33 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Stu,
"Yawn" is right: you're continual sneers at "bloggers" (lumping them all together is your first mistake) is getting boring, and merely shows how little you know. Not all bloggers are wannabe journalists, nor are they all "the bloggers" referred to by Richard Sambrook (many of those "bloggers" I'd suspect are not real bloggers at all).
Intelligence has been called the ability to make finer and finer distinctions, so you might increase your intelligence by visiting here and here and here. The latter is run by a pair of full-time lawyers, but perhaps they should give that up and join the Marines? Get off your high horse.

2:43 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Not all bloggers are "bloggers" (as referred to by you and Sambrook), and not all bloggers hide behind their computer screens. Here are two who do not. I'm not saying they always tell the truth, but their honesty and their blogs help those of us who care about gaining correct and accurate information, by giving us some alternative sources against which to check, so we don't all have to rely only on CNN, Fox, BBC. As a journalist, I'm sure you'll agree that relying on a single source and not cross-checking with other sources is not worthy of the name of journalism.

2:54 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

While the "serious journalists" are yawning over the Eason Jordan story, a real story is over here.

5:55 AM  
Blogger Richard Amor Allan said...

As an aside, CNN's online service posted this story yesterday:
http://money.cnn.com/2005/02/14/news/economy/blogging/index.htm?cnn=yes

The power of the blog to shape your career!

10:09 AM  

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