Eason Jordan Resigns

Earlier this week, the Lord of Truth sent me the WSJ editorial on Eason Jordan's comments, authored by Bret Stephens, who attended the Davos conference of the World Economic Forum and reported on Jordan's comments for Opinion Journal's Political Diary. As noted previously, most of the mainstream media had ignored the story, so it was important that at least a few outlets were focusing in on Jordan's comments, other than bloggers like yours truly.

Before I had a chance to spend any more time commenting on the story, Jordan resigned....

CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan quit Friday amidst a furor over remarks he made in Switzerland last month about journalists killed by the U.S. military in Iraq.

Jordan said he was quitting to avoid CNN being "unfairly tarnished" by the controversy.

During a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum last month, Jordan said he believed that several journalists who were killed by coalition forces in Iraq had been targeted.

He quickly backed off the remarks, explaining that he meant to distinguish between journalists killed because they were in the wrong place where a bomb fell, for example, and those killed because they were shot at by American forces who mistook them for the enemy.

Now, there's plenty of conflicting reports as to what Jordan said or didn't say, since the WEF has refused to release the video of the proceeding. But the fact that Jordan chose to resign rather than face the heat from the story -- which heretofore had received less attention than a Brad Pitt date -- could lead one to conclude that the words on the tape would not help him.

Instapundit has a pretty good rundown of the comments around the blogosphere, and TKS has a reaction that mirrors mine. And Scrappleface has a pretty good joke up, although Ace of Spades might have hit the jackpot with this story...

Eason Jordan, a Chief News Executive at CNN, raised eyebrows and hackles during a panel discussion in which he suggested that bloggers "deliberately target" members of the mainstream media.

"I know of at least twelve journalists who have been targeted by bloggers," Mr. Eason is reported to have claimed. "And I know several journalists who say they've been tortured. They've had all sorts of mean things said about them, and let me tell you, that isn't anyone's idea of fun."

Asked precisely which journalists have been "targeted" by bloggers, Mr. Jordan seemed to backpedal, explaining, "I'm not saying this is necessarily part of blogger policy, coming down from the high command of Instapundit and Powerline and Hugh Hewitt. But there are definitely some bloggers -- individual bloggers, to be sure -- who are targeting journalists."

If Mr. Jordan thought that would end the matter, he soon found himself to be mistaken. Further acts of "torture" at the hands of bloggers quickly ensued, with entire pages dedicated to criticizing Mr. Jordan's remarks.

"It was inhuman," said a high-ranking CNN producer. "It makes Abu Ghraib look like the Bear Jamboree at Disneyland."

Before Dan Rather takes it and runs with it, that story's a joke. But the sad part of the whole affair is that some people think that Jordan's resignation is the result of the barbarian bloggers, and that his comments meant little. Check out the response from Steve Lovelady, the managing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review's CJR Daily, over at Jay Rosen's blog...

"The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail. (Where is Jimmy Stewart when we need him ?) This convinces me more than ever that Eason Jordan is guilty of one thing, and one thing only -- caring for the reporters he sent into battle, and haunted by the fact that not all of them came back. Like Gulliver, he was consumed by Lilliputians."

VodkaPundit responds here, with an essay that's well worth reading, especially the ending...

We see you beind the curtain, Lovelady and company, and we're not impressed by either your bluster or your insults. You aren't higher beings, and everybody out here has the right--and ability--to fact-check your asses, and call you on it when you screw up and/or say something stupid. You, and Eason Jordan, and Dan Rather, and anybody else in print or on television don't get free passes because you call yourself "journalists."

You obviously don't like that reality, but it is reality, and you'd better start learning to live with it instead of tossing ad hominen insults at your critics.

We're not going away. Deal with it.

He's right about the last point. In the end, Jordan made a big mistake with his comments, but the bigger mistake was expecting the furor over them to disappear. Perhaps that would have happened ten years ago. Not anymore. And we're better off for it.