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February 8, 2005
IBD: Time For Jordan To Eason Down The Road, And Other Quick Links

Investor's Business Daily has an editorial in their issue tomorrow which calls for the firing of Eason Jordan, CNN's embattled chief. As the new blog Easongate notes, this appears to show that the momentum continues to build for a day of reckoning for Jordan, rather than the free pass he got after his 2003 admission of selling out to Saddam:

Speaking last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jordan made an arresting charge. He claimed the U.S. military, while pacifying Iraq, had targeted both American and foreign journalists. ...

That's when the bloggers stepped in, including some who were actually there. Then master blogger Hugh Hewitt took up the case. Soon the blogosphere was electric with outrage over Jordan's irresponsible charge. Now there's an easongate.com, tracking the scandal's every fact, every claim, every angle, and demanding CNN come clean.

Why "scandal"? Jordan was spouting outrageous charges with no basis in fact. In journalism, even in High Church Journalism, that is a cardinal sin. Rising to the topmost reaches of media power does not exempt one from the first rules learned in journalism class.

The bloggers, who've done so much recently to correct the elite media's misbehavior — including sending CBS's Dan Rather to newsman's purgatory — now have Eason Jordan as quarry.

Deservedly so. It's time for him to go.

The IBD editorial reaches that conclusion without even discussing Jordan's other unsubstantiated allegations, the torture of journalists by American soldiers or other deliberate assassinations of reporters by the Israeli military. Not too many have yet noted that Jordan's likely successor, Chris Cramer, has made almost as many such allegations as Jordan -- and with those omissions, miss the greater issues of CNN's credibility and the question of what message that CNN spreads in its international editions in order to pander to the anti-American biases of its global audiences. After all, their executives certainly show no compunction against doing exactly that same thing.

I'm happy to see IBD continue the call for Jordan's ouster, however, as the more voices that start weighing in on Eason's Fables, the more difficult it will be for the MSM to continue its blackout. The momentum also puts pressure for CNN to request that the WEF videotape of the forum in which Jordan made these allegations be released for general viewing. The longer they wait, the more certain it is that they know the tape will not exonerate Jordan but convict him instead.

Here are some other cracks tonight in the media blackout:

Scott Sala at Slantpoint notes the discussion at Hannity and Colmes tonight. I could only catch a small part of this discussion, and I came to the same conclusion as Scott: no one on the show had actually researched the issue, including the two hosts.

Larry Kudlow writes a scathing column in National Review, and then has Hugh Hewitt on Kudlow and Cramer to discuss the story; Radioblogger transcribes it.

Glenn Reynolds writes it all up -- again -- at MS-NBC. Too bad the entire network ignored the story yet another day.

The Tennessean picked this up on Sunday and gave it a brief but harsh mention.

Michelle Malkin recaps for the National Ledger.

Keep an eye on the New York Sun for a follow-up, which may come tomorrow.

New blog links:

Molten Thought fisks Kurtz, and becomes a believer.

Slublog notes an interesting link between Nik Gowing and the Chatham House Rules that the WEF used to refuse the release of the videotape.

Sphere It Digg! View blog reactions
Posted by Ed Morrissey at February 8, 2005 9:39 PM

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Listed below are links to weblogs that reference IBD: Time For Jordan To Eason Down The Road, And Other Quick Links:

» Weekly Jackass Number Ten: Eason Jordan from Decision '08
Among the higher traffic sites that have kept the heat on are TKS (part of the National Review's website), Captain's Quarters, the Instapundit, Michelle Malkin, Power Line, Hugh Hewitt, and others too numerous to mention. To the surprise of precisely... [Read More]

Tracked on February 9, 2005 1:08 AM

» Easongate: the Gowing connection from This isn’t writing, it’s typing.
The slander on the U. S. military that Eason Jordan made at Davos, as every blogger knows by now, wasn't a first-time offense. But what's less appreciated is that the thinking behind it didn't originate with Jordan either. I've been looking through th... [Read More]

Tracked on February 9, 2005 10:33 AM



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