Eason Jordan News

A reporter at The Scotsman weighs in on the Eason Jordan story, under the headline, "Internet storm claims another top media scalp".

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Alex Massie reports on Jordan's resignation, saying:

EASON Jordan knows how Dan Rather must feel. Jordan was CNN’s chief news executive until he resigned last Friday after apparently suggesting journalists killed in Iraq had been deliberately targeted by American troops. When Jordan stood down, he became the second major media scalp claimed by an online army of bloggers in recent months, following Dan Rather’s premature retirement from CBS after 60 Minutes based a report on President George W Bush’s service in the National Guard upon documents that internet pundits and experts quickly revealed as forgeries.

So what did Jordan say? He and his defenders say he was taken out of context, and that what he said was much more innocuous than it's being portrayed.

According to Congressman Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, who was present at Davos, "it sounded like he [Jordan] was saying it was official military policy to take out journalists." Jordan denied that had been his intent. "I was trying to make a distinction between ‘collateral damage’ and people who got killed in other ways." He was supported by the BBC’s Richard Sambrook, who said: "The distinction he was seeking to make is that being shot by a sniper, or fired at directly is very different from being, for example, accidentally killed by an explosion".

OK, maybe he was taken out of context. Maybe not. Jordan draws a distinction between 'collateral damage' and 'people who got killed in other ways'. The Army Technology dictionary defines "collateral damage" as "Damage and destruction of targets or personnel not considered as lawful military targets. For instance, accidental bombing of civilian population or medical facilities.

The Compact OED defines it as "inadvertent casualties and destruction in civilian areas caused by military operations."

The key element in both of these definitons is "accidental" or "inadvertent".

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The alternative to "collateral damage" is non-accidental damage. The "other ways" people might be killed, as an alternative to being killed by accident, is being killed on purpose.

So Eason Jordan's defense is, in effect, "I didn't say the military deliberately targeted journalists, I said they targeted journalists in a way that was not accidental."

OK, that clears it right up.