Watch Your Metaphors, Please!
An unscripted, off the cuff, unflattering remark about the President’s agenda or policies can cost a journalist his job.
By Frederick Sweet
On the February 11th PBS “News Hour,” host Jim Lehrer darkly cautioned syndicated journalist Mark Shields to “watch your metaphors, please,” after Shields made an allusion to the Kool Aid that the Rev. Jim Jones used to kill his followers at the Jones Town colony in Guyana, decades ago.
This is just another troubling example of journalists being told to watch their mouths when criticizing the President.
Lehrer's Stern Warning
The Lehrer-Shields dialogue went like this:
Lehrer was talking with conservative columnist Richard Lowry and Mark Shields of the Washington post about President George W. Bush's recent campaign to “sell” his Social Security plan to the public. Lehrer asked Lowry about the effectiveness of Bush’s “selling his crisis message on Social Security.” Lowry said that Republican support in the House of Representatives “firming up” and Bush would win if some Democrats would come on board.
Lehrer then asked Mark Shields what he thought.
JIM LEHRER: Mark?
MARK SHIELDS: It’s a great screenplay. It's a great screenplay. It really is. The president spending political capital. Rich is right. Jim, we can’t call them town hall meetings. They aren’t town hall meetings; they’re pep rallies, they’re pre-selected. You can't get in there unless you've signed on, unless you've drunk the Kool-Aid and said you’re totally with the president. So these are not town meetings.
JIM LEHRER: [sternly] Watch your metaphors, please!
MARK SHIELDS: [defensively] It really is. They’re pep rallies. And I think Rich is absolutely right. The president is behind the eight ball on this politically.
This was on PBS, the American citizens’ television station. I was witnessing the chillingly tragic consequence of the Bush Administration’s attempts at public mind control.
This dawned on me because I’d just returned to the 'States' after having spent three weeks working on a project in recently freed Eastern Europe. The irony of this is that pre-Cold War communist countries were repeatedly accused by American leaders of brain washing their people, of using state-sponsored propaganda, and a plethora of other approaches to public mind control. Now, the Bush Administration had successfully accomplished with subtlety what the Soviet Union had been unable to do with its heavy handed approach.
In Bush’s world, American journalists must be careful of what they think -- and especially say – when their comments are carried on the airwaves.
CNN’s News Chief Loses Job After Comments on Iraq War
Think I'm exaggerating? The very same day as Lehrer warned Shields on PBS about “watching his metaphors,” The New York Times reported, “CNN News Chief Quits Following Controversial Remarks.” This underscored what not saying nice things about the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq can lead to.
CNN’s Chief News Executive Eason Jordan quit Friday, February 11, 2005, amid a furor over remarks he had made at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last month about journalists killed by the U.S. military in Iraq. During a panel discussion, Jordan had said that he believed several journalists who had been killed in Iraq by coalition forces that included American troops had been targeted. That did it. Soon Jordan was made to recant.
“I never meant to imply U.S. forces acted with ill intent when U.S. forces accidentally killed journalists, and I apologize to anyone who thought I said or believed otherwise,” he said in a memo to CNN staff members.
So apparently it is forbidden for American journalists to dare imply that Bush’s army in Iraq may have targeted journalists.
Jordan was speaking at what was initially a very mild panel discussion titled “Will Democracy Survive the Media?” The flap came after Jordan said that he knew of 12 journalists who had not only been killed by US troops in Iraq, but had in fact been targeted. He repeated the assertion a few times, which seemed to win favor in parts of the audience.
The discussion was moderated by David R. Gergen, Director for Public Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. The panel included Richard Sambrook, the worldwide director of BBC radio, U.S. Congressman Barney Frank, Abdullah Abdullah, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Afghanistan, and Eason Jordan. The audience was a mix of journalists, World Economic Forum attendees, and a US Senator from Connecticut, Chris Dodd.
Jordan, an advocate for protections for journalists overseas, was responding to a comment by Congressman Frank that the 63 journalists killed in Iraq were collateral damage. CNN previously reported that most of the journalists were killed by anti-U.S. forces but that the Pentagon has acknowledged killing some journalists accidentally.
However, one witness at the Davos meeting, a Florida businessman named Rony Abovitz, said he was shocked by Jordan's initial claim and asked him to prove it.
“I was quite surprised, especially by his passion for what he was saying,” Abovitz wrote in an entry detailing Jordan’s comments on a blog from the World Economic Forum. “I thought that this was a huge story, very damning to the U.S., if true.”
Abovitz said that others in the room, including Sen. Christopher Dodd, and Rep. Frank, joined in the debate, which became heated before being broken off. But Abovitz, who co-founded a medical technology company in Hollywood, Fla., said that he felt obliged to blog it after realizing that others weren’t going to report on it.
Abovitz, who has been deluged by requests for interviews, said both the right and the left have used this as a way of moving their agendas forward. But he said that wasn’t his intention.
“My real interest is in this concept of transparency, accountability and objective fairness in media," Abovitz wrote. "These were values discussed at the WEF, and right in front of my eyes they were being put to a serious test.”
“Due to the nature of the forum, I was able to directly challenge Eason, asking if he had any objective and clear evidence to backup these claims, because if what he said was true, it would make Abu Ghraib look like a walk in the park. David Gergen was also clearly disturbed and shocked by the allegation that the U.S. would target journalists, foreign or U.S. He had always seen the U.S. military as the providers of safety and rescue for all reporters.
“Eason seemed to backpedal quickly, but his initial statements were backed by other members of the audience (one in particular who represented a worldwide journalist group). The ensuing debate was (for lack of better words) a real ‘shit storm.’”
Intensifying the issue was the fact that the session was a public forum attended by a U.S. Congressman and a U.S. Senator that was presented in front of an international crowd, and was being broadcast,
However, Rebecca MacKinnon, describing herself as a recovering TV reporter-turned-blogger, posted the following comments in her article “Blogstorm Descending on CNN” at the Captain Ed Weblog (2/2/05). Writes Mackinnon:
"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."
Mackinnon continues,
“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.”
CNN Backs Jordan, Sort Of, With Too Little, Too Late
On February 7, 2005, CNN finally responded to the allegations that Jordan had committed an irresponsible act of journalistic “misconduct” in Davos, Switzerland:
“Many blogs have taken Mr. Jordan’s remarks out of context. Eason Jordan does not believe the U.S. military is trying to kill journalists. Mr. Jordan simply pointed out the facts: While the majority of journalists killed in Iraq have been slain at the hands of insurgents, the Pentagon has also noted that the U.S. military on occasion has killed people who turned out to be journalists. The Pentagon has apologized for those actions. Mr. Jordan was responding to an assertion by Cong. [Barney] Frank that all 63 journalist victims had been the result of ‘collateral damage’.”
Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin blogged her follow-up on this story after speaking with Rep. Barney Frank (who reiterated Jordan's fateful words at Davos) and with David Gergen, who had moderated the panel discussion.
According to Gergen (who has known Jordan for 20 years), Jordan had, in fact, said that journalists in Iraq had been targeted by military “on both sides.” Jordan then “realized as soon as the words had left his mouth that he had gone too far” and “walked himself back.”
Gergen told Malkin that he asked Jordan point blank whether [or not] he believed the policy of the U.S. military was to sanction the targeting of journalists. According to Gergen, Jordan answered no, but then proceeded to speculate about a few incidents involving journalists killed in the Middle East -- a discussion which Gergen decided to close down because “the military and the government weren't there to defend themselves.”
Thus, in Gergen’s account, Jordan did not appear to have “walked himself back” far enough for Gergen to think it appropriate for the discussion to have continued.
But in Bush’s New World Order, by February 7, 2005, seasoned journalist Jordan had already been driven from his newsroom -- permanently. So then the issue is not simply whether or not journalists are targeted in Iraq by American troops, which is still unresolved. Rather, today’s issue is that American journalists who open their mouths and don't follow some kind of ideological line are targeted at home. For a free and democratic society, that should be frightening.
Frederick Sweet is Professor of Reproductive Biology in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. You can email your comments toFred@interventionmag.com |
