Monday, February 7: Kerry Spot readers, please see the Easongate category for the complete background on the developing Eason Jordan story.
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If you’re following this story, make sure you’re checking the updates at the end of this post. The latest news: The videotape of the forum has surfaced.
An interesting question about the videotape was raised at Free Republic. See update below.
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Read the original post and The Eason Jordan Repository I for background on this subject.
This is Day Two or Three of the Eason Jordan blog swarm, and the controversy finally made the papers. Is the Washington Times considered Big Media? So far they’re the only newspaper that picked up on the Eason Jordan fiasco, CNN’s line of fire.
The only blog mentioned is Forumblog.org, which is a good thing, but there’s no reference to Captain’s Quarters, who is in the lead on this and largely responsible for the blog swarm, the reason the story is still alive, or any other blogs (except for Carol Liebau, but they don’t link to her blog.) or the blogosphere in general.
Now that a newspaper has covered this story, I anticipate more media outlets will pick it up. Watch this post for updates throughout the day.
(Hat tip: Captain’s Quarters)
Related links: John Burns: ‘There Is Corruption in Our Business’, Roger Simon, KerrySpot, Michael J. Totten, Day By Day, Sensible Mom (”Where’s David Gergen?”)
Speaking of newspapers not linking to blogs, see this post by Patrick Ruffini. A new editorial policy for media: If you cite blogs, you must include hyperlinks.
Read Virginia Postrel’s The Cost of Blogging. As you can tell, I like blogging/writing about blogging. 
In fact, it’s probably my niche. See The Blogosphere’s Smaller Stars. I plan to write a non-Rathergate but related follow-up to this piece.
Update: Hugh Hewitt interviews Rony Abovitz of Forumblog.org, the man who heard Eason Jordan say that U.S. troops were targeting and killing journalists.
Power Line: “Jordan appears to be more or less in hiding. Where is the videotape? What this story shows, I think, is how badly the left-wing media have damaged the United States with their incessant accusations and over-the-top coverage of stories like Abu Ghraib.”
Agreed.
Update II: Should bloggers boycott CNN? (Via Captain’s Quarters) More information at Slublog, KerrySpot and Uncorrelated, who’s coined “Easongate.”
Interesting article by blogger and writer, Paul Geary.
Update III (around 1:30 p.m.): “UPDATE V, 2/4 12:25 PM CT: Every single search listed above still comes back empty. Every single major media outlet has ignored this story. How much longer can they hold out?” — Captain’s Quarters
How much longer? Anyone? Anyone? The blog swarm surrounding Trent Lott/Strom Thurmond (before my blog-time), along with pressure from other Republicans, forced Lott to step down from his leadership post. Bloggers and posters at Free Republic, along with MSM finally covering Dan Rather’s forged documents story, brought down CBS’s house of cards.
(I blogged on the double standard regarding Lott’s remarks about Thurmond and Sen. Chris Dodd’s remarks about Robert Byrd in Two Old Men, Two Different Standards.)
What will it take to get CNN to react, and more importantly, for MSM to cover this story? Granted, things move quickly in the blogosphere compared to MSM. That’s the “power of the blog,” the reason why blog swarms develop in the first place. Other bloggers are tracking the story and I recommend you follow the links; this post is only a place for links, updates and light analysis. It’s Friday and I can’t wait to get home.
Update IV (around 3:00 p.m.): CNN speaks! But not about Eason Jordan. Check it out. (Via Power Line)
Update V (6:24 p.m.): The Eason Jordan story goes mainstream. The latest from Captain’s Quarters:
Hugh Hewitt has a notice on his blog that he will appear on the Chris Matthews show Sunday evening — and he intends on making Eason’s Fables part of the discussion. Be sure to tune in to CNBC at 6:30 PM CT. Hugh also alerts his readers that Chris Wallace at Fox things that Eason’s Fables will make an excellent topic for his own Fox show at 4 pm CT Sunday, so tune in there as well. By Monday, the mainstream media may have Eason’s Fables forced down their throats.
I don’t get this. Every day the media tell us how bad things are in Iraq. Every day they warn us that we’re losing allies and that the whole world is against the war in Iraq. Yet when a top CNN executive accuses the United States military of assassinating journalists, it merits no media attention. Why? Don’t they want to know if it’s true? Don’t they want to know why Jordan made the accusation in the first place if it’s false? What is going ???
Blogger Sisyphus is about to get a ton of traffic. In a few days he’ll have the video (wish I’d thought of that) of the forum where Jordan Eason said…well, you know what he said.
My fellow Conservative Brotherhood member Michael Bowen comments on Eason Jordan. Check this out: “In the steady disintermediation presaging a major shift in the way industries do business, Eason Jordon is being hoisted on the petard of disclosure. Blogs do it better than major media, and as others in the blogswarm have noted correctly, we are going to hound down and parse the question of journalistic privilege during wartime.”
Too cool.
Here’s another link-worthy post: I Don’t Just Happen To Be Republican. Except for the part about open borders, I like it.
Rathergate.com offers a military perspective on “Eason’s Fables.”
Update VI (9:44 p.m.): The tireless captain updates again, commenting on the videotape we’ll see next week:
The blog Sisyphean Musings has contacted the head of media for the World Economic Forum at Davos, Mark Adams. Sisyphus got Adams to confirm Forumblog’s testimony that videotape was taken of the forum where Eason Jordan spoke, and agree to send a copy to Sisyphus….CNN has until Wednesday at the latest to come clean about Jordan. If they allow the blogosphere to get to the finish line first, they’re toast.
Update VII (11:16 p.m.): I was about to crash when I received an e-mail from a reader. He’s been in touch with the op-ed editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, who says Jack Kelly, their national security correspondent, will touch on the Eason Jordan debacle on Sunday.
Update VIII (2/5): A poster at Free Republic raises an interesting point:
The video has not yet surfaced…they just got a commitment that it WILL surface in the middle of next week. What I find interesting is the the WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM, who can manage to get an internet livestream of some forums, is copying a VHS tape and dropping it in the snailmail to a blogger. Without a doubt the ‘media director’ of the WEF has the capability to digitize and post it to the WEF site. The question becomes why isn’t he.
Press critic Jay Rosen speaks:
I can think of no good reason for the major news media not to investigate what Jordan said, and what he meant by it. It is somewhat surprising to me that we haven’t seen a story from either a journalist who was in Davos, or a media beat reporter like Mark Jurkowitz of the Boston Globe, Jacques Steinberg of the New York Times, or Howard Kurtz, who of course works for CNN. The event was on-the-record, and a tape was made. There are no obvious obstacles to investigating further….CNN made sure many bloggers who were posting about Jordan’s comments had copies of his statements. That in itself is significant. Someone there is watching the blogs on this one.
True. I finally received my CNN form-letter e-mail.
Update IX (6:21 p.m.): This post will no longer be updated. Please see Media Blackout for the latest information.
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Go to the La Shawn Barber’s web blog, she is the one directing traffic on this Blogswarm. She is on it like Micheal Moore on a hamburger, or Anna Coulter on a straw ma [...]
I sent an email to CNN and here is their response to me.
“Eason was attempting to speak out on an issue that is important to news organizations all over the world. Unfortunately, he was not clear enough in explaining his assertion. He was responding to an assertion that all 63 journalists killed in Iraq were “collateral damage.” While the majority of the 63 journalists killed in Iraq have been killed by insurgents, the Pentagon has acknowledged that the U.S. military on occasion has killed people who turned out to be journalists. Mr. Jordan emphatically does not believe that the U.S. Military intended to kill journalists and believes these accidents to be cases of “mistaken identity.” ”
It is getting to the point where it feels as though the words in the English language do not mean what we all have learned that they mean. If the words their reporters say do not really mean what they appear to say, what is the point of listening to these guys at all?
La Shawn,
I like your blog.
Keep pounding away at Eason Jordan.
Post more pictures of yourself, you are cute.
Eason should have made a blog and then linked to someone else saying it. Ta-Da! no responsibility!
If U.S. troops were targeting journalists, how many journalists would make it to payday?
Glen Reynolds asked today “Why isn’t David Gergen talking? Good question. So I emailed DG which is very easy to do:
http://www.davidgergen.com/index.php?page=contact
Go to it blogswarm!
CNN = Cover-up No-No
It seems to me that war journalists, who risk their lives on the battlefield covering the war, should be able to hang out in war zones without having to worry about being shot. This thing falls squarely on Rumfeld’s shoulders. If our troops were properly trained, they’d hold their fire when a strange person comes out of nowhere, pointing a metallic object at them. They wouldn’t shoot into a hotel known to be housing journalists and enemy snipers.
Liberal Larry, I hope that talent isn’t going to waste just blogging. Somebody needs to hire you to write for them.
That was funny.
Following the advice of Michael above, I wrote to David Gergen: Please provide your feedback regarding what you heard in Davos from Eason Jordan. Do you think that this is a serious issue? Did he use the word “targeting”, as in the military is “targeting” journalists? If so, then that is not referring to unintentional, accidental deaths of journalists. “Targeting” by definition refers to intent. Please do everything in your power to have the video footage of this conference released to the public. Thank you.
La Shawn,
Now why would bloggers want to boycott CNN? Where would they get all the juicy news to advance their “liberal media” theory???
You all can’t stop watching CNN. It’s what keeps your blogs so fresh!!!
Tongue firmly in cheek, of course.
Mike, I can’t remember the last time I watched CNN. Oh, wait a minute. I remember. I blocked it out. It was blaring from every television in the airport. Why do they do that? Not a FOX-tuned set in the whole joint.
I can’t help but wonder why David Gergen is silent on this. Perhaps he was asked by CNN to clam up, or the video will cast him in a poor light.
Should the title of the article be “The Eason Jordan Suppository II”
Just a thought?
I really don’t get the outrage that you’re trying to cook up here.
If I understand the story straight, Eason said that 12 killed journalists were ‘targeted’ by US soldiers. He later clarified that what he meant was that out of the 63 killed jounalists 12 were directly shot at by US soldiers in cases of mistaken identity. When he used the word ‘targeted’ he was trying to use it in opposition to the phrase ‘collateral damage’, which in my mind connotates something like an explosion with civilian bystanders getting killed. Getting directly shot at seems qualitatively different.
What is it that you object to in what he said? Do you deny that 63 reporters have been killed? If so, on what basis? Do you not believe that US soldiers have killed non-combatants? If so, you are naive.
As a boss whose employees and coworkers are being killed, Eason urging the US military to be more careful seems more than reasonable. What exactly is the ‘liberal bias’ here? If you bloggers were actually in Iraq and were getting shot at, I’m sure you’d feel the same way CNN does.
To me, the real story here is the horribleness of war and how conservatives are so intent on avoiding it. War is the worst possible human endeavour, whether justified or not. If 63 journalists have been killed, how many Iraqi civilians have suffered at the hands of ‘collateral damage’?
Remember the tsunami? I would guess that about the same number of civilians have been killed in this war. And I’m sure that there are as just as many heart-breaking stories, but you don’t want to hear about it. Anyone that even slightly reminds you of this fact is accused of being part of the ‘anti-US crowd’, a ‘traitor’, a ‘terrorist sympathizer’, on and on.
Why do you want to keep your head in the sand about civilian deaths? Is it because you don’t want even the slightest tarnish on Saint W?
This is partisanship at it’s worst.
RE: EASON JORDON/DAVOS WEF
I understand that at least two representatives of the U.S. senate were present at this forum. Don’t they have a moral (if not legal) responsibility to speak up on behalf of our military. This has the potential to damage the credibility of the US. I understand Sen Frank did publically question the allegations but Dodd remained silence. It would seem to me pressure should be put on the two senators to make a public comment on the incident. I called Dodd’s office and the staffer seemed unaware but concerned about the nature of the charges. She nervously asked if I was a member of the press (which i am not). I told her I was just a concerned citizen from CA. She said she would check into it. Is there a way to bring public pressure on Dodd and Frank? If so I think they have a responsibility to investigate the charges and publically denounce Jordan if proven untrue. If true then disiplinary action should be taken against anyone who has executed a journalist.
Thomas P. Brady
Miguel, your rant is based on a falsehood. Eason Jordan knows that “targeting” means aiming at them because they are journalists. It is how he has used the phrase before as Cap’n Ed has documented in the links LaShawn has above. Jordan intended to imply – as he has before – that the journalists were not killed by accident or mistaken identity.
Others have also – as found in the links above – cast doubt on even the count of 12.
So Miguel, the partisanship here is all yours.
Miguel, Until we see the video we can’t be sure, but it does appear he specifically said “targeting journalists”, clearly that infers that targeting decisions were taken based on them being journalists.I find it ludicrous for anyone to suggest that Jordan would not have known how those words would be taken.
Think, just for a second, how you would have phrased it if you were trying to say that journalists had been mistakenly targeted as enemy combatants, not just killed by accident, if you think there is even the slightest possibility you may have been so naive to say it in such inflammatory way, add in the environment he was in, surely someone in his position would be worldly enough to know EXACTLY how his words would be taken by those amongst his audience.
If after all that you still come to the unbelievably conclusion that you would have been careless enough to say it in such a manner, when confronted by those rushing to congratulate you after the show in the mistaken impression that you were bravely exposing the murderous nature of the US military, wouldn’t you have been desperate to set these people straight? Surely you wouldn’t have waited until a blogswarm threatened to bring your apparent treachery to the public’s attention to explain what you really meant?
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