This one’s been a real bugaboo of mine and I’ve contended since pretty much my first post that the WEF couldn’t claim the discussion was off the record while a blogger on the Forums official blog and two reporters considered it very much ont he record. Jay Rosen finally picks up that ball and runs down the field a little ways with it.

On Feb. 7th, Mark Adams told blogger Tim Schmoyer that the discussion was held under the Chatham House Rule. It says: “Participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.” No affiliations. The means you can’t say, “a BBC official on the panel claimed…”

Those were the rules, says the WEF. But the original report from the panel discussion in Davos–which did attribute comments to participants, identifying Jordan and others–appeared on a Forum sanctioned site, the exact title of which is: “Forumblog.org – The World Economic Forum Weblog.” It was a place where participants in the meeting could post reports and reflections. Rony Abovitz did that…

That’s a point I made earlier. Abovitz attributed statements all over his post and it passed apparently unnoticed by the WEF. But Rosen goes a little further.

We could say, “that’s one of the dangers of having amateurs who think they’re journalists, they get the rules wrong,” but for two things. First, the Wall Street Journal, in its Political Diary newsletter, got the rules even more wrong. Bret Stephens of the Journal’s editorial page quoted people at the meeting; Rony Abovitz of Forumblog did not. This went unmentioned in today’s piece from the Journal Editorial Page, which was partly about being a grown-up. (They’re not that grown up, I guess.)

Rosen misses Rebecca MacKinnon in this, but his point is still sound.

What he doesn’t note explicitly is that the issue of the “Chatham House” rules didn’t even enter the discussion until the day after Tim Schmoyer asked for a copy of the videotape. That’s when Adams told him of the off the record rule and that’s when this part of the story began to take hold as a real, but disputed, meme. If you recall, Schmoyer’s first post about the videotape on February 4 said that Adams was going to send it to him as soon as they unpacked it. There was no mention of any sort of holdup from Adams or anyone.

Then, on February 7, The Chatham House Rule raised its ugly head.

How did that happen? I don’t think we know for sure. But this is the crux of the issue, I think. This is the part of the story that matters in the long run.

And we won’t know until the Davos folks tell us what happened and why there’s still a dispute about the reportable nature of the panel.

How could you not feel just the teensiest bit triumphant when, last night, media outlets everywhere had to report on the Eason Jordan resignation without ever having covered the reason he resigned? That’s worth a couple “Woo Hoo”s, I think.

And, of course, there are the after-action autopsy reports. Two of the best you’ll ever read come from The Anchoress. First, she goes a-hunting some hyperbole and bags a real doozy. Then she tries to get a spatula under the truly heroic waffling of David Gergen and finds it just way too big to flip. But she does play whack-a-mole a little with Howard Kurtz which, all by itself, is worth reading.

And for something that’ll truly make you smile through your tears, please visit Ace-O-Spades. Ace has been holding a vigil for Jeff Gannon, the truly ginormously-well-know blogger brought down by the lefty-blogers for having the temerity to 1) ask right-slanted questions at a White House press briefing, and 2) registering some porn sites for his clients while working his day job at a web-development company. Start with this post and keep scrolling up and up. For an extra bonus treat, read the comments, too. You will laugh, even as you mourn our fallen comrade.

Oh, and there’s a haiku contest there, too. Look through the comments for my entry. I think I did pretty well.

Here’s his statement.

“After 23 years at CNN, I have decided to resign in an effort to prevent CNN from being unfairly tarnished by the controversy over conflicting accounts of my recent remarks regarding the alarming number of journalists killed in Iraq,” Jordan said in a letter to colleagues.

“I have devoted my professional life to helping make CNN the most trusted and respected news outlet in the world, and I would never do anything to compromise my work or that of the thousands of talented people it is my honor to work alongside.

“While my CNN colleagues and my friends in the U.S. military know me well enough to know I have never stated, believed, or suspected that U.S. military forces intended to kill people they knew to be journalists, my comments on this subject in a World Economic Forum panel discussion were not as clear as they should have been.”

Am I happy? Well, yes and no.

Jordan’s gone, which is a good thing because he’s not running CNN. But his apology is pretty weak and self-serving and he’s still not authorized the release of the Davos videotape, which would tell us for sure what he said and under what context.

What I really want to know is this: what the hell did he mean to say in Davos? He made a specific accusation, then backed off of it, then backed off a little more. Now he’s backed away from it completely. So what does he actually believe and what was he actually trying to say? The only way he could make it “clear” is by actually telling us what he meant instead of what would play well in front of an international audience.

And I still want the videotape.

Am I being cruel and petty. Nope. Jordan made an unfounded accusation about our soldiers while we’re fighting a war in front of people whom he had to know would be able to make good propagandistic use of his statements. He got busted for it hard and now he wants us to believe that it was all a misstatement and not what he really believes. Well, maybe this is what he believes and maybe it isn’t. I’m not inclined to be so charitable. AFter so many days of veritable silence from Jordan, I don’t exactly believe what he’s saying now. His explanation is insufficient and I’m not letting him off the hook.

But that’s just me.

And don’t even get me started on what I see as the MSM’s absolute incompetence or outright negligence in letting this story pass largely unreported.

Am I happy about this? Well, again, yes and now. I’m happy that the blogosphere kept this story in front of people – especially several elected officials – and got the attention of a few choice media outlets who were willingto actually cover the story. I’m also happy the blogosphere caught the public’s attention, especially in the form of Easongate’s online petition.

But I’m not happy that this is no doubt going to cost someone completely unrelated to this their professional reputation. The Jeff Gannon dogpile run by Kos and Atrios was, I believe, a direct response to Memogate. After Jordan’s reputation, the lefty-blogs are going to want a big scalp and, given the money they have available to them (thanks to George Soros’ paid mercenaries at Media Matters), I have no doubt that they’ll get it. The folks at Fox News had better watch themselves carefully for the next few weeks.

I’m also not happy that this story had to end this way. None of this had to happen. Had Jordan been equivocal at any point before today about what he now says he believes, this storywould ahve withered on the vine. The righty-blogosphere may be tenacious, but we’re also largely forgiving. We know that people are capable of saying really stupid things at times. Had Jordan come out, apologized, and been as firm as he past part of his apology is tonight, there wold have been no story. The comments back and forth between blogs would have run hot for a couple days, but that’s it. There would have been no talking to Senators or Congressmen and getting them on the record about what they heard. There would have been no online petition. There would have been no reason to press CNN on this at all. Noone of that would have happened had Jordan acted like a responsible professional. But he didn’t and now there’s media blood on the floor.

Goodbye, Mr. Jordan. Please don’t try to latch on with another news service. I, for one, won’t forget this past week.

As usual, LaShawn Barber has all the linkage you’ll need on this latest development.

(ht: Ramesh Ponnuru at The Corner)

But Stephens pretty much downplays the whole thing, blaming the furor on a ravenous pack of bloggers out for blood.

There’s a reason the hounds are baying. Already they have feasted on the juicy entrails of Dan Rather. Mr. Jordan, whose previous offenses (other than the general tenor of CNN coverage) include a New York Times op-ed explaining why access is a more important news value than truth, was bound to be their next target. And if Mr. Jordan has now made a defamatory and unsubstantiated allegation against U.S. forces, well then . . . open the gates.

Well, sure there was that editorial. But more germane to the discussion was that he’s done this before, last November – same accusation in front of an international audience. And moreso (as you’ll read at the bottom of that link), Jordan wasn’t the only CNN employee there in November who made that accusation.

Once may be chance, but two or three times is definitely a pattern.

Did I mention three times? Jordan also said the same thing in 2002, only instead of US soldiers being the killers, it was the Israelis.

Stephens could have mentioned any of these. He mentioned the Easongate blog, which brings up each of these instances. So that information was right in front of him. Instead, he downplays Jordan’s other accusations and instead brings up an editorial he wrote that has nothing to do with the charges he made at Davos.

Do you think Stephens’ editorial would have had a different tone had he mentioned that Jordan had made this same accusation two other times? I do.

Stephens recounts the incident, but tosses in something I’d not read before. After Congressman Frank confronted him on the charges, Jordan said, “there are people who believe there are people in the military” who have some antipathy for journalists. His specific example was of a soldier who sent a reporter to the back of the line at the Green Zone because he didn’t like some of the reporters stories from Iraq.

We may read that and think “bad soldier” (though, to be honest, I don’t), but that’s a far cry from “targeting” journalists for death or torturing them.

Here’s where Stephens goes wrong. He takes the last thing Jordan says as the definitive thing Jordan said.

I’ll leave it others to draw their own verdicts, but here’s mine: Whether with malice aforethought or not, Mr. Jordan made a defamatory innuendo. Defamatory innuendo–rather than outright allegation–is the vehicle of mainstream media bias. Had Mr. Jordan’s innuendo gone unchallenged, it would have served as further proof to the Davos elite of the depths of American perfidy. Mr. Jordan deserves some credit for retracting the substance of his remark, and some forgiveness for trying to weasel his way out of a bad situation of his own making.

No, that’s not what happened. By Stephens own account, Jordan made a direct accusation that he drew back to the level of innuendo only because he was confronted about it. It was not Mr. Jordan’s innuendo that was challenged but his allegation.

I seriously doubt that the quite liberal Barney Frank, no friend of the Bush administration, would have gotten so exercised about Jordan’s comments had they been of the “I know some people who think this” sort. Mr. Stephens makes pretty plain that his initial comments weren’t of that nature.

What Jordan did wasn’t merely a display of liberal bias. It was a direct accusation of a crime in front of an audience that contained people kindly disposed to believe that the US would commit such a crime. It was accusation of evidence and incitement in the middle of a war.

Jonah Goldberg also commented on the Stephens editorial today and comes to prety much the same conclusion. But he said something at the end that made me think for a moment.

As Stephens says, Eason was spreading an innuendo not an allegation. He was playing to his audience and he said something that they — and no doubt he — thought was perfectly plausible on its face. Of course, he didn’t really think it was true. For if he did, he would have put a reporter on it.

It may be true that Jordan thinks his charges are true, and it may not. We don’t know and he won’t tell us. .What we do know is that he repeats the same charge as if he believes it is true. He states it as fact as if he believes it is true.

I’d prefer to believe that he thinks the allegation is true. Goldberg believes that it’s not. And if he’s right, then what Jordan has done is far worse than making a reckless allegation without proof. If Jordan really doesn’t believe that journalists are targeted by US soldiers, that means that he’s been intentionally feeding a lie to hs audiences. His audiences have contained people who mean us ill and have the means at their disposal to damage our war effort. That’s very, very close to sedition, if not outright treason.

That’s why I want the Davos videotape released. We’re not going to know what was said for sure and under what context until we see it. We need to see it to fairly judge what Jordan was actually doing in that discussion and how seriously to weigh the affects his comments could have had on the audience members.

Oh, and did you notice that Stephens quoted Jordan and paraphrase both Jordan and Frank? It sure doesn’t look like that discussion was very “off the record”, does it?

That brings down the indispensable blogs on Easongate down to three (along with Hugh Hewitt and Captain’s Quarters) and makes Easongate the go-to blog for all things Eason.

Speaking of…

Get over there now (to LaShawn’s first, then to Easongate) and read up on all the developments.

In fact, Kurtz could have done an even better job than this, considering that he had access to Eason Jordan – something no one else appears to have.

Excellent job of hitting the basic facts (though the “on the record” controversy and the videotape didn’t quite get in there) and at least giving us a taste of the public-relations effect the comments had on members of the audience.

Kudos to Roderick Boyd who, according to his byline, is a mere “Staff Reporter”.

How many other stories do you believe he had on his plate when he was given this assignment?

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.

Don’t get all excited. He missed a goodly part of the story.

What CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan said, or didn’t say, in Davos, Switzerland, last month has become a burgeoning controversy among bloggers and media critics.

If by “media critics” he means Jay Rosen, then he’s at least one critic short. You need two to make it a plural. Unless of course, he is also including bloggers as media critics. Who can say?

Here’s the “he said, he said” on the story, as Kurtz recounts it.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who attended the World Economic Forum panel at which Jordan spoke, recalled yesterday that Jordan said he knew of 12 journalists who were killed by coalition forces in Iraq. At first, said Frank, “it sounded like he was saying it was official military policy to take out journalists.” But Jordan later “modified” his remarks to say some U.S. soldiers did this “maybe knowing they were killing journalists, out of anger. . . . He did say he was talking about cases of deliberate killing,” Frank said.

Jordan denied that last night, saying he had been responding to Frank’s comment that the 63 journalists who have been killed in Iraq were “collateral damage” in the war. “I was trying to make a distinction between ‘collateral damage’ and people who got killed in other ways,” Jordan said last night. “I have never once in my life thought anyone from the U.S. military tried to kill a journalist. Never meant to suggest that. Obviously I wasn’t as clear as I should have been on that panel.”

In some of the cases, “with the benefit of hindsight, had more care been taken, maybe this could have been avoided,” Jordan said, referring to shootings that involved mistaken identity. But, he said, “it’s a war zone. Terrible things happen.”

That appears to be Jordan’s story. Even though he said “targeted” he didn’t quite mean that. He meant that they weren’t “collateral damage”. Unfortunately, I think that Jordan’s definition of that term is different from just about any person you’d choose to ask. If we got twenty people together in a group and asked them what “collateral damage” meant, you’d probably get an agreement that anyone killed or anything damaged who’s not directly involved in a conflict would be considered “collateral damage”. Jordan seems to be slicing that definition pretty thin, to include only deaths caused by indirect fire: bombs, artillery, mortars and such. Maybe that’s how he’s defining it, but that’s not how most of us see it, I’d wager.

Here’s a real point of dispute, and this is where Kurtz has missed a couple facts.

No transcript exists of the Jan. 27 session, which was supposed to be off the record, and a videotape of the event has not been made public. The dispute erupted when Rony Abovitz, co-founder of the technology company Z-Kat, posted an account on the forum’s Web site of what Jordan said, while also noting that he had backpedaled when challenged.

Well, no, it wasn’t necessarily supposed to be off the record. Kurtz might have found that out had he spoken to Rebecca MacKinnon, who was also there and who reported the comments just as Mr. Abovitz did. In fact, MacKinnon, based on the rules of the Forum, believed the discussion was on the record ecause it was held in a place that was specifically listed as a place where all the discussions would be on the record.

That belief had to have been further reinforced by Mr. Abovitz being able to attribute the remarks to Jordan on the official forum blog. Had that discussion been off the record, I don’t doubt that the forum officials would have corrected the blog in very short order. Now Mr. Gergen believed the discussion was off the record, but the rules i place as well as Mr. Abovitz’ blogging put that question very much in doubt.

That’s something Kurtz might have found out simply by reading any one of the blogs following the story. MacKinnon was on the record in her blog last week and she’s ben linked by any number of other bloggers. Just follow the links, Mr. Kurtz. It’s not difficult. For instance, since Kurtz mentioned Ed Morrisey’s Captain’s Quarters blog, it’s obvious that he at least read the post where he calls for people to write their Congressmen and ask for an investigation into Jordan’s allegations. How could he have missed Jordan’s other similar statements, the post knocking down Jordan’s quoted number of at least 12 “targeted” journalists, or MacKinnon’s account? I’d have to conclude that this was a “this will shut them up” story so he could say that at least he covered Easongate.

That dog won’t hunt, not with me. Kurtz’ story is shoddy and poorly-researched. It missed a couple very important points and states at least one fact that isn’t a fact. He ought to be ashamed of this article and for the nearly one week’s delay in filing this piece of journalistic tripe.

I’ll tell you what, Mr Kurtz. If you don’t really want to report on the story, then hook me up with the principals. Get me a recommendation to Jordan, Congressman Frank, and Senator Dodd and get them to talk to me. I’ll handle the reporting from there. I’m sure that Ms. MacKinnon and Mr. Abovitz will talk to me, as would Mr. Morrissey. I’ll file the story in a day. What do you say?