The Wagons Were Circled, and Remain So
By Cori Dauber
Maybe what Eason Jordan said was a firing offense and maybe it wasn't, but this, it seems to me, is now a test for the media.
They barely covered the controversy and when they did for the most part they made sure their readers got no sense of why anyone would have been upset.
Now they have no choice but to cover Jordan's resignation.
Will they explain why he felt compelled to resign?
If you read the Times' coverage today, and that's all you've read to date, you will be absolutely mystified. The only conclusion you'll be left to draw is that there was some kind of right wing cyber-mob after Jordan, and that he decided that nothing short of blood was going to satisfy them, so he decided to fall on his sword rather than let CNN be damaged as an institution the way CBS was. But as to the motivation for the swarm? Either it must be purely ideological or they had it in for Jordan already or they were just looking for the least provocation to go after anyone in the media establishment they already hate as "liberally biased."
But as Jason van Steenwyk explains, for the media to continue circling the wagons now, to not fully explain what it was that set the swarm off -- and what the bloggers were talking about, much less what they discovered in some fine original reporting -- is not only to do their audiences a real disservice. It will continue the erosion of the media's credibility, in part because, as a memo he finds on the Romenesko site argues, it so demonstrates yet again a distancing between the press and the people they claim to ultimately work for. |
