Fox has called CNN out. Will they respond?
'The Crime Here Is Intellectual Cowardice'
J$P Instant Transcript! Brit Hume and the All-Star Panel dissect the Eason Jordan affair.
From Special Report with Brit Hume, February 9 2005:
BRIT HUME [FOX NEWS]: Eason Jordan is the chief news executive of CNN--there you see him on the right here, that's a picture taken at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. On a panel there he said something that Barney Frank, the very liberal Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts, noted. Frank quotes him:
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[H]e knew of about 12 journalists who had not only been killed by American troops, but had been targeted as a matter of policy.
Congressman Frank called Jordan on that. Also in the audience was Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, who since has said he was outraged by what he heard. Jordan has since said that he didn't mean to say that it was the policy of the US or the coalition to shoot journalists. But others heard him, as I've noted, to the contrary. So what about--and so this thing is out there, it's gotten into the media now, and the Davos conference has the tape of the incident, hasn't released it. We've got a kind of a juicy flap going on here. Mort, what about it?
MORT KONDRACKE [ROLL CALL]: Eason Jordan doesn't have tenure, the way our friend from the University of Colorado does. Why this is--he's the news director of CNN. If he knows of 12 journalists who have been specifically targeted by coalition forces, that is one whale of a story that ought to be on CNN. And the people, his higher ups on CNN, ought to be demanding to know why this, why he's revealing this off the record in public.
HUME: Remember, he's the higher up, though. He's the chief news executive.
KONDRACKE: Yeah, but he's got bosses. This is not the first time that he's come up with stuff like this. He said, he's the one who revealed that CNN had made deals with Saddam Hussein--
HUME: To do what?
KONDRACKE: --to conceal the fact--
HUME: Wasn't there some story, Saddam Hussein's sons had some assassination plans in mind, and they were revealed to him, I guess, and to CNN journalists who knew of them. And they were afraid to report it because they were afraid it would come back on them.
MARA LIASSON [NPR]: They were also afraid--
KONDRACKE: In order to get interviews.
LIASSON: He also said that he didn't report certain things because he felt it would endanger the safety of some of CNN's personnel over there.
HUME: Right, and some of the things that he knew about happened, and some people got killed.
LIASSON: Yeah, but I agree with Mort. If he has evidence of this he should come forward. I mean, this is an explosive charge. Now, he was--
HUME: Question is, what do you believe about what he, based upon who you've heard on this, who said--
LIASSON: Two people, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, who are liberal Democrats, both said that he said this. David Gergen said that he seemed to walk it back, and a BBC executive who was there said that he seemed to clarify his remarks on the spot. The best thing to do would be to release the videotape and see what he said.
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER [COLUMNIST]: Look, Dodd and Frank are not liars. They heard him say that American targeted journalists.
HUME: Do you mean that they're not liars, or do you just mean that they're not liars about this in your opinion?
KRAUTHAMMER: Well generally speaking. I know Frank and I think he actually, when he got into his scandal you remember some years ago, he was incredibly honest about it.
HUME: He told the truth, yeah.
KRAUTHAMMER: And that's why everybody gave him a pass. And they wouldn't have a reason to lie about this.
And that they were, obviously, genuinely shocked. And what was shocking was this accusation. So when I, the crime here I think is intellectual cowardice on the part of Eason Jordan.
I mean, if he said this and then he tried to walk it back, he wasn't trying to explain it, he was trying to undo it. But then he says in a statement that has been released, he never has believed that American troops have deliberately attacked journalists. Well, if he doesn't, why is he spreading a rumor that he believes is false, malicious, libelous, and will endanger American troops? I mean, you don't truck in rumors like that. He essentially says, now he was just reporting what others are saying.
If he thinks it's a falsehood, why is he repeating it? So I think that is the real problem here, and I think as Mort indicated, he did, he's admitted that in the past he's sort of covered up and suppressed news in Iraq because he didn't want to, say, endanger his employees. Well, if you're going to give our news shaded by Saddam Hussein and essentially censored, you ought to either get out of Iraq, or say it openly on the air: the news you are now hearing is approved by this regime, so everybody will know it's not honest news. There's dishonesty here which I think is the real problem.
KONDRACKE: I mean, he is the news director of CNN, and it also raises questions about whether this is an attitude that informs all the reporting of CNN. I mean, he's said other things in the past too, that the Israelis have deliberately targeted CNN personnel. Everybody sort of knows, I think, that the Palestinians under Yasser Arafat at least, put pressure on correspondents from all networks. He seems to have a bias against Israel in this case.
HUME: That is it for the panel...
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