RConversation

Sex at Davos

No I'm not at Davos this week, in case you hadn't already guessed. I went three years in a row, but was not invited back this year. I'm in very good company, and agree with Joi Ito's perspective on being an ex-Davosian. Some people have asked me whether I didn't get invited back because I actively blogged about the Eason Jordan incident last year. Hard to say. Rony Abovitz, who initially blogged Jordan's ill-fated Davos remarks, was invited back as a member of the Technology Pioneer program which he is entitled to be part of for three years. (Rony has been blogging about his reflections one year later here and here.) At any rate, I am glad to see that the Davos Blog is still going, although they're not letting people post directly without first having their content vetted. This year, the blog-nannies will be making sure that anything meant to be off the record stays off the record... and that things don't get too out of hand...

So it's up to out-liers like me to pass on juicy tidbits of Davos gossip. Which brings me to the real subject of this post. While I can confirm that sex does indeed happen at Davos, it appears that many of the type-A overachieving attendees could use a little help. A source of mine who is in Davos right now forwarded me the description of a panel scheduled for Thursday afternoon:
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All You Ever Wanted to Know about Relationships -- But Were Afraid to Ask

Date:  Thursday, 26 Jan 2006

Time:15.00 - 18.00

Location:Rotary, Hotel Belvédère

Relationships and sexuality may be the only truly universal part of human life. Early childhood attachments and experiences can result in patterns that sometimes need to be relearned if we are to build lasting relationships in an increasingly stressful world. Join this session with a leading sexologist to discuss what makes relationships work.
1) Why is emotional self-knowledge such a taboo in society?
2) Why does the way we allocate our personal time often threaten our relationships and sex lives?
3) What are some of the tools to overcome old patterns and keep desire flowing?

Presented by:

Dagmar O'Connor      Psychologist      Dagmedia Corp.

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I'll be curious to hear whether many CEOs show up for this one...

Reuters on journalists killed in Iraq

Reuters CEO Tom Glocer talks to John Battelle about plans to build an online broadcast network. Very interesting, and I'll comment more on that later. At the end of the interview they talk about Iraq and journalists who get killed there:

Q: How are things going in Iraq?

A: Nothing is as bad as the call that says, "Tom, I'm sorry, we've lost another one." And, unfortunately, at least two of the three people we've lost, and arguably the third one as well, have been at the hands of U.S. forces, due to friendly fire.

Q: You have a dispute over a case in which some of your journalists were interrogated by the military in Iraq.

A:  I have been to the Pentagon and spoken to [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld's chief of staff. I take it at face value that they do not intentionally target journalists. My difference with them is over how hard do you try not to target them. Their stock answer is essentially, "You want to be safe, you embed." From a journalistic point of view, we refuse to do only that.

Maybe it wasn't really meant to be on the record?

There seems to be some confusion as to whether the Davos panel at which Eason Jordan made his controversial remarks was or wasn't on the record.  The WEF is now saying it wasn't, or not completely, until they make a policy decision about it. However many of us at Davos believed the session was on the record because it was conducted in a room called Sanada 1&2. Here are the official guidelines issued to media and potential bloggers before Davos began:

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‘On and Off the Record’ Policy for AM 2005

All plenary sessions are fully ‘on’ the record.

All sessions that are broadcast or webcast are ‘on the record’  (for 2005 that means all sessions in the Congress Hall or Sanada 1 and 2)

Every other session is only ‘on the record’ in terms of content.  That is to say what was said can be reported – but it must not be attributed to any individual.  However, should the journalist get the agreement of any participant to be quoted that is of course acceptable.

Naturally, all private meetings are off the record.

This policy is clear and simple and allows greater transparency.  It can also be very simply and effectively enforced.  Any transgression will lead to immediate withdrawal of badge and any future access to World Economic Forum events.
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Upon closer reading, it seems one could interpret that parenthetical "(for 2005 that means all sessions in the Congress Hall or Sanada 1 and 2)" in a couple of different ways...

UPDATE: the WEF's Mark Adams responded to my query about this as follows:

my understanding was that since this session was not webcast or broadcast it was 'off the record'

Certainly, no announcement was made at the begining of the session - as far as I remember - that it would  be on the record.

In any case - a session summary is available on our website and we will not be trying to get a transcript of the session.

It's unclear what this means as far as releasing the tape is concerned, as he didn't address that part of my query in his reply. As for the session summary on the WEF website, it doesn't even mention the controversial remarks or anything related to them.

BBC's Sambrook chimes in

Jay Rosen has received this response from the BBC's Richard Sambrook, who was on the Davos panel where CNN's Eason Jordan made his controversial remarks.  Sambrook believes that Jordan's initial comments (which he later tried to correct and clarify) have been widely misunderstood. A long excerpt:

Eason's comments were a reaction to a statement that journalists killed in Iraq amounted to "collateral damage". His point was that many of these journalists (and indeed civilians) killed in Iraq were not accidental victims--as suggested by the terms "collateral damage"--but had been "targeted", for example by snipers.

He clarified this comment to say he did not believe they were targeted because they were journalists, although there are others in the media community who do hold that view (personally, I don't). They had been deliberately killed as individuals-- perhaps because they were mistaken for insurgents, we don't know. However the distinction he was seeking to make is that being shot by a sniper, or fired at directly is very different from being, for example, accidentally killed by an explosion.

Some in the audience, and Barney Frank on the panel, took him to mean US troops had deliberately set out to kill journalists. That is not what he meant or, in my view, said; and he clarified his comment a number of times to ensure people did not misunderstand him. However, they seem to have done so.

A second point he made, which in my view is extremely important, is that when journalists have been killed by the military in conflict it has been almost impossible to have an open inquiry or any accountability for the death on behalf of families, friends or employers. Very little information is released, we know investigations do take place but the results are not passed on.

This culture of "closing ranks" coupled with hostile comments about the media from senior politicians and others, has led some in the media community (not necessarily Eason or myself) to believe the military are careless as to whether journalists are killed or not and to no longer respect the traditional right to report.

As yet, for example, there has been no adequate explanation for the attack on the media hotel in Baghdad, the Palestine, which killed one Ukrainian Reuters cameraman and one cameraman for Spanish TV in 2003. The US tank commander suggested he had come under sniper fire from the building. That is now clearly not the case; it was well known, including in the Pentagon, that the Palestine was used by the media and yet it was attacked directly and purposely. Why? An absence of explanation unhelpfully feeds suspicion in some quarters.

Sambrook says he is leading an international inquiry to find out why journalist fatalities worldwide have dramatically increased in the past few years. They may recommend changes in international law "which ensure that when journalists are killed we can get a proper and open investigation and sense of accountability."

Tracking "Easongate"

You know it's bad when the cartoonists start weighing in. (via Instapundit)

I've decided to track the spread of "Easongate" online. From now on everytime I come across an online news item or blog post about this, I'm going to tag it in del.icio.us, with "Easongate."  If you'd like to help track the conversation please tag everything you come across with the same tag.  (For more about how to use del.icio.us tags see this tutorial.) 

So far, most of the activity is on the right-hand side of the political spectrum, with center and left blogs plus non-rightwing MSM largely silent. 

It's pretty clear that the Right is light-years ahead of the Left (or the center) when it comes to blogstorm warfare tactics.

Rony's conversation with Hugh

Rony Abovitz has answered a bunch of Hugh Hewitt's questions about the circumstances under which CNN's Eason Jordan made his remarks at Davos about U.S. troops targeting journalists. His account is consistent with what I witnessed (though as I've said, I don't have verbatim notes). Rony points out that there was a video camera there. I saw the camera too. It definitely belonged to the World Economic Forum, not any media organization, because the cameraperson had a WEF staff badge. I saw no other video cameras.  I've also checked on the ground rules for sessions held in that particular room, and they were indeed considered to be "on the record" (not all WEF events are). So releasing the recording and transcript would not violate any prior understanding with the panelists.

At the end of his e-mail discussion with Hugh, Rony concludes by saying he is not out to be part of a right-wing "lynch mob," he's just interested in the truth:

Last comment. This issue is turning into a right vs. left agenda issue, a lynch mob against Eason Jordan issue, and feeding into many different agendas. I hope that any news media (bloggers, print, major, minor) covering this can respect my original intent which was to not leave this kind of allegation hanging in the air, but to carry it through to the point where the truth is known, and known to all sides.

The WEF video would resolve the "what Eason said" component of the story. As to the other components, there must be hundreds of people around the world (soldiers, journalists in Iraq, and friends and family of journalists in Iraq) who can weigh in as to what is actually happening on the ground.

Yes indeed, it would be nice to hear from more people on the ground.

Where is the truth?

Rony Abovitz laments in a new post on the fallout over his account of Eason Jordan's comments at Davos:

I am finding it harder and harder to understand the truth on this subject. I have, and likely only can, scratch at the surface here, but there appears to be some depth and complexity to what really is a tangled web of issues that may be even more frightening when the light of day shines upon it.

Further down he writes:

In this debate and discussion I made the decision to say something - to speak out. That decision has sparked a lot of things, including some intense pressures coming from a lot of sides. But I now feel an obligation myself to not give in to any side, but to ask for, in fact to demand, an accounting of the truth.

Read his whole post. I agree with him that this is not a black-and-white issue.

The right wing bloggers have been very vocal on this story. The left and middle have been largely silent. We have yet to hear much from journalists working on the ground in Iraq. I heard back from my friend Brian Palmer who wrote:

I would have to say that I have no personal experience with this. I can tell you that I have found it difficult to get unspun soundbites/comments from folks above a certain rank, generally speaking, but that's the main kind of news management I have  encountered, not news management by bullet.

One perspective from one embedded journalist. We need many, many more - from other freelancers as well as people working for major news organizations. Rony points to this list of journalists killed in Iraq, compiled by Reporters Without Borders. But there is no info on who killed them or the circumstances of the killing.

Response from Eason Jordan

I emailed Eason Jordan to clarify what he said in the Davos panel, since I do not have a transcript or recording, and my notes are inexact. Here is his reply:

Rebecca:

Here's what's important.  First, I stressed insurgents are to blame for the vast majority of the 63 journalist deaths in Iraq.  Second, when Congressman Franks said the 63 journalists killed in Iraq were the unfortunate victims of "collateral damage," I felt compelled to dispute that by pointing out journalists in Iraq are being targeted -- I did not say all journalists killed were targeted, but that some were shot at on purpose and were not collateral damage victims.  In response to a question about whether I believed the U.S. military meant to kill journalists in Iraq, I said, no, I did not believe the U.S. military was trying to kill journalists in Iraq.  Yet, unfortunately, U.S. forces have killed several people who turned out to be journalists.  In several cases, the U.S. troops who killed those people aimed and fired at them, not knowing they were shooting at journalists.  However tragic and, in hindsight, by Pentagon admission, a mistake, such a killing does not fall into the "collateral damage" category.  In Iraq and Washington, I have worked closely and constructively with U.S. military and civilian leaders in an effort to heighten the odds of survival for the courageous journalists in Iraq.

Eason

In a follow-up email he added:

Most importantly, I do not believe the U.S. is trying to kill journalists in Iraq.  To the contrary, the U.S. military has worked hard to protect journalists in Iraq.  Nevertheless, there have been several tragic episodes in which U.S. forces killed journalists in what turned out to be cases not of collateral damage but of mistaken identity.  Feel free to paste that, too.

UPDATE: After I had already posted the above, I received the following:

To be clear, I do not believe the U.S. military is trying to kill journalists in Iraq.  But the U.S. military has killed several journalists in Iraq in cases of mistaken identity.  The reason the word "targeted" came up at all is because I was responding to a comment by Congressman Franks, who said he believed the 63 journalists killed in Iraq were the victims of "collateral damage."  Since three of my CNN colleagues and many other journalists have been killed on purpose in Iraq, I disputed the "collateral damage" statement, saying, unfortunately, many journalists -- not all -- killed in Iraq were indeed targeted.  When someone aims a gun at someone and pulls the trigger and then learns later the person fired at was actually a journalist, an apology is appropriate and is accepted, and I believe those apologies to be genuine.  But such a killing is a tragic case of mistaken identity, not a case of "collateral damage."  That is the distinction I was trying to make even if I did not make it clearly at the time.  Further, I have worked closely with the U.S. military for months in an effort to achieve a mutual goal: keeping journalists in Iraq safe and alive.

Rony's new "Fix the World" blog

Davos participant and "technology pioneer" Rony Abovitz has started a new blog, fixtheworld. His mission:

This will be a running supplement to my blogs started at the World Economic Forum Conference 2005. It will be an attempt at open source discussion, posts, and articles on how the world can be fixed.

Check out his posts on the Forumblog and let him know what you'd like followed-up on.

Blogstorm descending on CNN

Right-wing blogs, including Little Green Footballs, have moved their sights from CBS to CNN.  At the center of the blogstorm are comments made by my former boss Eason Jordan at Davos, in which he alleged that the U.S. military had been targeting journalists in Iraq. See the original post about it by Rony Abovitz (founder of the digital surgery company Z-Kat, attending the forum as a "tech pioneer"), which he posted on the Forumblog - an "unnoficial" blog where World Econ Forum participants posted their impressions and views about sessions they attended. The official WEF summary does not mention Eason's remarks, and there is no transcript or webcast. But I was in the room and Rony's account is consistent with what I heard. I was also contributing to the Forumblog, but to be honest, Jordan happens to be my former boss who promoted me and defended me in some rather sticky situations after my reporting angered the Chinese government. As CNN's "senior statesman" over the years, Eason has done some things I agreed with and other things I wondered about. But at least when it came to China, he was no apologist and defended my reports on human rights abuses and political dissent. So I don't feel that I'm in a position to speak objectively on this issue, especially since I haven't been in Iraq and don't know the real situation on the ground. I would very much like to hear from other journalists working in Iraq. I'd like to hear, particularly, from other CNN reporters working in Iraq. Whether they'll be willing to speak out publicly on this issue is doubtful, but maybe others will. Maybe we'll hear from some of them anonymously. Maybe Kevin Sites and other journalists blogging from Iraq will let us know what they think.

UPDATE: I have emailed people at the World Economic Forum requesting a verbatim transcript of what precisely was said during the panel in question. I have also emailed Eason Jordan asking him whether he'd like to confirm and/or clarify his comments, since I did not record the session myself and my notes are not verbatim.