What with independent journalists being shot at willy-nilly, Eason Jordan, the recently resigned CNN News Chief, naturally comes to mind. As Rep. Barney Franks said of Jordan's speech at Davos—

It sounded like he was saying it was official military policy to take out journalists.

That is not what a journalist is supposed to sound like. And as David Ehrenstein writes, "And thus in a life devoted to mediating spin, a tiny sliver of truth leaks out."

I haven't written about Jordan. If I had, I would have said that his sin was not in the utterance but in his capitulation to the criticism. But Jordan thought he was speaking "off the record" and failed to realize that the "record" is no longer maintained exclusively by the mainstream media.

David Ehrenstein, who has a somewhat cinematic view of reality, drips some acid on a Howard Kurtz commentary on the Jordan controversy that appeared in the pages of the Washington Post.

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