A Wall Street Journal editorial effectively argues the case that CNN’s news chief Eason Jordan shouldn’t have resigned — and in the process takes another swipe at “amateur” journalists.
There are really two issues here:
1)Should Jordan have resigned? If you read our posts (see chain link below), the outrage was that if he had said what he was alleged to have said it would have been an outrageous generalization that would have had to be backed up by some confirmation. And if he didn’t say it, he needed to clarify that fast. Whatever he did, he needed to either stand by it with evidence or to apologize and move on quickly.
But Jordan made a mistake by dithering. He needed a quick, strong response. Yes, CNN reportedly sent out an email to bloggers containing a pro forma denial. Yet, there was reportedly a tape out there — that was not released. So on one hand the Journal is correct: he could have stayed on.
But without the tape being released and without the kind of forceful, eloquent comment he made in his resignation statement, he became a CNN liability. Why? Because it’s locked in a battle for ratings with Fox News. CNN is trying to stem the exodus of conservative viewers to Fox because they feel it is “fair and balanced,” a slogan implying CNN is not.
From a corporate standpoint, Jordan either had to have the tape released or put the controversy forcefully behind him — or leave. It is still inexplicable why these allegations were allowed to linger — and fester — out there for as long as they did without anything but stock denials having been issued.
So the “on the other hand” is: Jordan became a corporate liability due to the way in which he handled the controversy and he became an issue himself.
2)The Journal editorial’s attitude towards bloggers. There clearly is some resentment. Is it justified? Read these passages:
By now, everyone on the Good Ship Earth knows that this particular story ended Friday with Mr. Jordan’s abrupt resignation from CNN. This has certain pundits chirping delightedly. It has been a particular satisfaction to the right wing of the so-called “blogosphere,” the community of writers on the Web that has pushed the Eason story relentlessly and sees it as the natural sequel to the Dan Rather fiasco of last year.
But Easongate is not Rathergate. Mr. Rather and his CBS team perpetrated a fraud during a prime-time news broadcast; stood by it as it became obvious that the key document upon which their story was based was a forgery, and accused the whistleblowers of the very partisanship they themselves were guilty of. Mr. Rather still hasn’t really apologized….
…Yet the worst that can reasonably be said about (Jordan’s) performance is that he made an indefensible remark from which he ineptly tried to climb down at first prompting. This may have been dumb but it wasn’t a journalistic felony…More troubling to us is that Mr. Jordan seems to have “resigned,” if in fact he wasn’t forced out, for what hardly looks like a hanging offense.
And then:
That may be old-fashioned damage control. But it does not speak well of CNN that it apparently allowed itself to be stampeded by this Internet and talk-show crew. Of course the network must be responsive to its audience and ratings. But it has other obligations, too, chief among them to show the good judgment and sense of proportion that distinguishes professional journalism from the enthusiasms and vendettas of amateurs.
No doubt this point of view will get us described as part of the “mainstream media.” But we’ll take that as a compliment since we’ve long believed that these columns do in fact represent the American mainstream. We hope readers buy our newspaper because we make grown-up decisions about what is newsworthy, and what isn’t.
Indeed, there is a point to be made that professional news outlets are not passe in what they provide just because blogs are now available as an increasingly popular news source. Blogs rely on the news providers as their source for their comments, analysis, etc. Very few blogs (there are a few) do original reporting or re-report the source material on which they base their posts. Most blogs (like this one) actually resemble independently owned and operated op-ed pages.
So blogs RELY on the mainstream media many of them denounce so easily to give them fodder for their blogs.
How many could attract readers if they didn’t use any news stories or editorials for a day?
Still, the Journal errs in throwing around adjectives such as “amateurs” (some bloggers are journalists or have been journalists and some are fine writers). And the suggestion that only newspapers or broadcast outlets owned by big corporations can make “grown-up decisions” on what’s newsworthy and what isn’t is not correct. Papers for YEARS have done readership surveys to see if they’re making good decisions in their readers’ eyes — and news judgements on a given day can be superlative or flawed.
A jacket-and-tie news organization can make as poor a news judgement as an individual sitting at a computer in his pajamas.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.