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.
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