RConversation

My response to some Easongate questions

Hugh Hewit emailed me some questions on Easongate. My answers:

Q:First, was Rony's account "accurate" in the sense that it would have been a responsible filing from any journalist working for, say, a big paper?

A: A news report by a newspaper or news agency would have included verbatim quotes, ideally double-checked from a digital or tape recording made by the journalist.  A TV or radio report would have included the actual "soundbite." Rony's account is detailed, and was clearly written soon after the panel discussion ended. As I've said before, his account of what transpired  is consistent with my recollection of the event. However, since nobody has verbatim quotes, all we have are Jordan's clarifications after-the-fact, in which he admits to have mis-spoken. But we're all relying on memory for what he originally said, and journalists learn the hard way very early in their careers not to rely on memory alone when reporting anything controversial. You get yourself in trouble very fast if you do that.

There were journalists in the room, but it appears that nobody had been planning to do a story on this panel (titled "Can Democracy survive the Media?") and thus nobody recorded it independently. This is pretty normal at Davos. Many but not all panels are off-the-record for quotes (without participant permission) but can be summarized on record. It's not always obvious to everybody what the rules are for which panel. Most of the panel discussions are pretty vague and philosophical anyway, and do not produce hard "news." Journalists get more of their news from press conferences and interviews given on the sidelines of the meeting by many of the corporate and government participants. So reporters with full access to the panels (and only a few are even granted panel audience access) mainly just listen in on the panels and then follow up with the speakers for interviews and quotes afterwards if anything interesting gets said. I'm sure people followed up with Eason afterwards, but since he was already backtracking and nobody had the original quotes, no news editor would have agreed to run a story based on what people recalled him saying but couldn't prove.

So to answer your question: yes, Rony's initial blog post was "accurate" in the sense that several of us in the room have corroborated his account. He has a great memory for detail. But would any news editor have relied on his or anybody else's memory for a news story? No.

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.

Another view on the U.S. military, journalists, and Iraq

Amid controversy over whether U.S. troops did or didn't target journalists in Iraq and what CNN's Eason Jordan did or didn't say, and as the right-wing blogs are storming against what many of them believe to be MSM (mainstream media)'s anti-military bias, comes a documentary assailing MSM from the left: Weapons of Mass Deception.  I have not yet seen it. Just the trailer and this interview on AlterNet, in which Amy Goodman interviews media critic and filmaker Danny Schechter about "fishy deaths of unembedded reporters."  The interview includes the following excerpt from the film's transcript:

Narrator: Journalists and media workers were targeted in Iraq. Was it deliberate? To keep the story on message by intimidating un-embedded journalists. How did the media in the street challenge these killings? Some were killed by so-called friendly fire. Others victims of calculated attacks, missiles, tank shells, and bombs dropped on or near journalists. Some media critics concluded it was intentional, although the Pentagon denied it. Before the war, the BBC's Kate Adey reported she was told by the Pentagon that independent journalists could be targeted.

Reporter:: The 15th floor of the Palestine Hotel was the target. A U.S. tank shelled the Palestine Hotel, which was crowded with journalists, killing two cameramen. One works for a Spanish network, and the other one works for Reuters.

Narrator: Now another incident. Look at this. An American tank on the bridge across from the Palestine hotel in Baghdad. A soldier claimed his tank was fired on. Listen carefully. There are no sounds.

Samia Nakhoul: We moved to the Palestine Hotel because the Pentagon asked our organizations to let us leave because it was a target and when we moved to the Palestine Hotel our organization told the Pentagon we were at the Palestine Hotel. So did every news organization.

Narrator: Again, minutes later no sounds were heard, no one firing at U.S. soldiers. Suddenly without provocation  –

Samia Nakhoul: We saw an orange glow, and this was the tank shell that hit our office. And you can imagine the panic, the wounded – it was me and another photographer. I can't imagine that they would target journalists. You know, I couldn't believe why would they target us? What have we done to them?

Narrator: After the war press freedom groups were still demanding a real investigation. The Pentagon's Victoria Clark told me there was a report that showed that the soldiers were acting in self-defense.

Narrator: Was there any attempt to find out the facts independently or a thorough investigation?

Samia Nakhoul: No  –  the Pentagon never interviewed me personally on it. I don't think any of my colleagues were interviewed by the Pentagon.

Narrator: Samia's organization, Reuters, demanded an independent investigation, but most media companies didn't even press on this issue. No one was held accountable. It was all passed off as an accident, the fog of war and all that.

In the interview Schechter says: "What's also outrageous is that the American media companies did not demand an investigation of this, did not join Reuters in demanding an investigation. So it just wasn't just complicity and collusion in the coverage of the war but a refusal to get involved in an effort to try to find out what really happened, what the facts were. To try to get at the truth of what happened to their own people. That to me compounds the shock of the way in which the media played the role it did." 

The film is apparently opening in New York and a few other places this weekend. Info is here.

Again, it would be useful if we could hear from more journalists on the ground in Iraq about this...

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.

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.

Journalist blogs Iraq election

Freelance journalist Brian Palmer (full disclosure: an old friend from my China reporting days) recently started blogging from Iraq while embedded with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit at Forward Operating Base Iskandariyah.

His latest post describes voting around Iskandariyah and "Musayyib, a predominantly Shia city about 40 km south of Baghdad." Then he goes on to analyze the election's overall meaning:

There seems to be an assumption in the US -- and here among US military folk -- that the election was a transparent exercise in organic democracy when in fact it was something far from that. The vote was orchestrated by the United States, from conception to execution. Washington called the elections and dictated the timetable. On the ground here in Musayyib and throughout Babil province, US Marines were the logistical backbone for the vote. They liaised with US-backed interim government and IECI officials; planned and coordinated security operations; launched pre-election raids on homes of suspected insurgents; arranged transport for officials and voting materials; acted as polling station inspectors before and after the vote.

He concludes:

The election, such as it was, clearly meant a lot to Iraqis who participated. It may provide the foundation for a more equitable society. But it may not. We need answers to certain questions from our own government and the Iraqi interim administration before congratulating ourselves for our beneficence and before heading toward the exit strategy. What was the US role, from soup to nuts? Were voters coerced to vote for particular candidates? How were ballots gathered and processed at the grassroots? If proper ballot-handling procedures weren't followed, does anything happen? Will nonvoters across the country, presumed to be largely Sunni, let the election results stand? The subjects and implementers of Washington's Iraq policy -- the living, the wounded, the dead, and the soon-to-be dead, Iraqi and American -- deserve answers.

Jeff Jarvis, following events via the blogs from New York writes: "It's not about George Bush, pro or con. It's not about America, pro or con. It's not even about the war, pro or con. It's about the Iraqi people and democracy and their future, for which there is only a pro, not a con."  Iraqi bloggers like Mohammed and Omar, Zeyad, Alaa and many others are certainly jubilant, with much gratitude to the U.S. for making it happen. It would be interesting to know their views on some of Brian's questions. The fact that the election was engineered by the U.S. doesn't seem to make it any less "theirs," in their view, judging from what they write. Hoder, the Iranian uber-blogger, is happy for them but asks whether events of the past few days will "embolden neoconservatives" to carry out regime change elsehwere. This has sparked some lively debate in his comments section about the election's legitimacy.