Easongate and the Davos Men

Well, the WEF isn’t going to release the videotape from last Thursday’s panel discussion. They’re going to use the “off the record” defense to not release it.

You already know where I stand on that.

Also interesting in Sisyphean Musings’ contact with Mr. Adams is his account of who has asked for the videotape. According to Adams, “[t]he Wall Street Journal contacted me -as did at least one other person – Rony Rabovitz who I believe was in the original session”. That’s it. No other news outlets, not Howard Kurtz, not CNN.

Still don’t think this whole story is being embargoed by the MSM?

If Sisyphean Musings happens to read this, and still has contact with Adams, I do have two more questions I wouldn’t mind his asking.

1. If the panel was “off the record”, then why do the forum rules specifically say that discussions held in that particular room were “on the record” – a belief apparently held by Rebecca MacKinnon and by the Forum’s official blog?
2. Why, if the discussion was off the record, has the forum, and your office, allowed Abovitz to continue to blog openly on the subject (keeping the controversy very much alive), and allowed him to attribute statements to specific discussion attendees?

That’s the sticking point as far as the forum goes. There is a legitimate question as to whether the discussion was on or off the record and I’d say right now that since as much specific comment information has come out, it makes a lot more sense (and is a lot more conducive to that “robust democracy” the panel apparently wants) to release the videotape and end the controversy once and for all.

But that isn’t going to happen, as it stands now.

Second up today is that Rony Abovitz has more comments on Easongate and he’s not happy at all. Abovitz is no crazy conservative blogger, but it looks like the MSM has lost another consumer.

The big part (about the discussion itself, at any rate) of Abovitz’ post is that he is unequivocal about what was said.

If the WEF suppresses the video, the chaff thrown out by CNN and Eason supporters may obscure and cloud all of this to a lack of contextual understanding by audience members. Let’s be clear: that is a load of bull. What was said was clearly understood, and no amount of reverse engineering can undo that. If you shout fire in a crowded theatre and then try to say that what you really meant was for someone to just turn down the air conditioning, it just does not fly.

Exactly. Jordan said what he said and as Abovitz notes, he didn’t “backtrack” as David Gergen says, he was pushed back by Barney Frank, hard.

But Abovitz hits the bigger picture shown by Easongate on the head.

There are a multitude of related issues that stem from what happened, but as I watch Easongate unfold, a line in the sand issue has emerged for me. Over dinner with a friend tonight a thought crystallized: the media is either for the right or for the left, and the lying, the twisting, and the skewing of the truth – these aberrations are just ok with us. We the public, the audience, have been accustomed to this way of living, and we are supposedly fine with it. Reporters can throw out half-baked ideas, partial truths, anything they want, as long as this plays into the political mindset of their core audience. We want to hear what they say, true or not, so long as it fits our particular system of thought. The American right is up in arms about Eason Jordan, but will a single Arabic, or European, or even Asian voice sing anything but his praise, or nod in quiet approval?

Exactly. Right now, only the righty bloggers have taken up this story in any serious way. I dare say that most of us have done this for one or more of three reasons: 1) because Jordan’s comments appear to be a direct slander against the military, 2) because this is yet another example of a high-profile American being derogatory about the United States in front of an international audience, or 3) because the story, whatever it is, has been completely ignored by the MSM while “lesser” stories like the James Dobson Spongebob story or the General Mattis story has gotten tons of immediate coverage.

But none of these reasons have to be the sole provenance of righty-bloggers. Each of these reasons should be the provenance of every blogger and even of every American. No one should be able to slander the US Armed Forces, no matter who holds the position of Commander-in-Chief. No one should run down the United States in front of an international audience. Valid criticisms are fine, but wild-eyed accusations without evidence isn’t. That stuff’s best kept in the house where we work out our own differences, especially while we’re still fighting a war. No one should accept that some minor stories get conflated far beyond their actual impact on the country while other stories get little to no coverage at all. No one should accept that the MSM slants to either side as long as it maintains that it provides an objective view of the news.

Abovitz comes at that with an international point of view in his final paragraph (all of which are very much worth reading!).

A lone blogger named Zed has posted his collected findings on the journalists killed in Iraq. The quality of Zed’s work, in its very limited scope (put together with what looks like a hacker’s ethic of just finding things out), overshadows the quality of anything that CNN, or most anyone for that matter, has done to defend CNN’s chief, in over a week. This is not a comment on the accuracy of what Zed has found, but at least he has tried to pull together some semblance of data, given the lack of verified facts. A random, stray blogger seems to care more about the truth than the MSM. It does not matter if he is coming at this issue from the right or the left – at least he is trying. Zed and I are specks in the scheme of things compared to MSM – where are they on any of this? Easongate is not a good topic for MSM’s audience, because it is pointing out the darker underbelly inside of MSM – not a great move for building profits. What we are seeing here is the blogging world practically dragging and forcing MSM to deal with this issue, perhaps even against their will.

The outrage of Senator Dodd is well taken, but will Easongate end here, or will it ultimately target the source? Will anyone join me in saying “Enough!”?

We’re out here. Mr. Abovitz. We’re out here.

And, last but never least, get all the good links and none of the bad from the best sources on all things Easongate: La Shawn Barber and the Easongate blog.

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Category: Easongate