{"id":185,"date":"2005-02-12T08:23:02","date_gmt":"2005-02-12T13:23:02","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=185"},"modified":"2005-02-13T06:45:58","modified_gmt":"2005-02-13T11:45:58","slug":"lies-and-consequences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=185","title":{"rendered":"Lies and Consequences"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Eason Jordan has resigned as CNN&#8217;s chief news executive following<br \/>\nrumors that he said at a conference in Davos that the U.S. military<br \/>\nhad deliberately targeted journalists for death.  Jordan denied making<br \/>\nthis allegation, but two U.S. legislators who were present agree that<br \/>\nhe did, and the Davos organizers have denied repeated requests to<br \/>\nrelease the session video.<\/p>\n<p>But I am not writing to argue about what Eason did or didn&#8217;t do.  I<br \/>\nwant to address the way some people have reasoned about the worst-case<br \/>\ninterpretation of his remarks.  The blogosphere pressure for release<br \/>\nof the video from Davos has been <a href='http:\/\/journalism.nyu.edu\/pubzone\/weblogs\/pressthink\/2005\/02\/11\/esn_res.html#comment15784'>described<\/a><br \/>\nthis way: &#8220;&#8230;tire-necklaced by a bloodthirsty group of utopian,<br \/>\nbible-thumping knuckledraggers&#8221; to &#8220;benefit the torturing,<br \/>\ngulag-building blood-cult known Bush\/Cheney\/Rumsfeld&#8217;s Republican<br \/>\nParty.&#8221;  Even leaving aside the bloody-minded partisanship, this<br \/>\nseems, shall we say, a little over the top?<\/p>\n<p>Nobody should want journalists ever to fear attacking the behavior<br \/>\nof the U.S. military when they have actual evidence that it is wrong.<br \/>\nMilitaries are dangerous and terrible things, and a free press is a<br \/>\nvital means of keeping them in check.  It is right and proper that<br \/>\nwe make heroes of those who speak damning truths to power.<\/p>\n<p>But it makes all the difference in the world when a journalist does<br \/>\n<em>not<\/em> have actual evidence of wrongdoing.  Especially when<br \/>\nthe journalist is a U.S. citizen and the claim gives aid and comfort<br \/>\nto the declared enemies of the U.S. in wartime.  Under <em>those<\/em><br \/>\ncircumstances, such an attack is not heroic but traitorous.<\/p>\n<p>I hope this is a teachable moment.  Oliver Wendell Holmes observed<br \/>\nthat shouting &#8220;fire&#8221; in a crowded theater is not protected speech; if<br \/>\nthe speaker has no evidence of actual fire, the consequences to that<br \/>\nspeaker should be as dire as the risk of death by trampling he created<br \/>\nfor others.  The Holmes test should be applied in politics as well.<\/p>\n<p>And yes, I agree that test should be applied to the Bush<br \/>\nadministration &mdash; but, unlike the &#8220;Bush Lied, People Died&#8221;<br \/>\ncrowd, I haven&#8217;t forgotten that the warnings about Iraqi WMD were not<br \/>\nonly backed by British and French intelligence reports, but echoed<br \/>\nassessments made by the Clinton administration and endorsed to this<br \/>\nday by Clinton himself.  Whatever errors Bush &amp; Co. may have made<br \/>\non this score, they believed they had evidence to back them.<\/p>\n<p>Assuming Eason Jordan said what the witnesses say he did, his<br \/>\nbehavior was far worse &mdash; because his own account of his remarks<br \/>\nmakes clear that does not believe he has evidence for any claim of<br \/>\ndeliberate targeting.  It is good that he has been forced out over<br \/>\nthis.  It will be better if his disgrace frightens other journalists<br \/>\ninto paying more attention to details like having some evidence up<br \/>\nfront.  The best outcome, though probably too much to hope for, would<br \/>\nbe the end of reflexive oppositionalism in American media.<\/p>\n<p>After Vietnam and Watergate, a lot of journalists (and other<br \/>\npeople) lost the distinction between speaking truth to power and<br \/>\nsimply attacking whoever is in charge (especially any Republican in<br \/>\ncharge) on any grounds, no matter how factually baseless.  Mere<br \/>\noppositionalism was increasingly confused with heroism even as the<br \/>\ncultural climate made it ever less risky. Eventually we arrived at the<br \/>\nludicrous spectacle of multimillionaire media personalities posing as<br \/>\npersecuted victims and wailing about the supposed crushing of dissent<br \/>\non national news and talk shows.<\/p>\n<p>But now, for the first time in decades, irresponsible<br \/>\noppositionalism just cost a major media figure his career. Better yet,<br \/>\nthe campaign that forced him out was a grass-roots effort by people<br \/>\nwho take seriously their responsibility to hold the media to account<br \/>\nfor its truthfulness.  These are both grounds for celebration, and for<br \/>\nhope that the horribly dysfunctional culture of American newsrooms<br \/>\nwill improve in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eason Jordan has resigned as CNN&#8217;s chief news executive following rumors that he said at a conference in Davos that the U.S. military had deliberately targeted journalists for death. Jordan denied making this allegation, but two U.S. legislators who were present agree that he did, and the Davos organizers have denied repeated requests to release&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=185\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Lies and Consequences<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}