Important notice (8:08 p.m.): Somebody’s trying to profit from the Eason Jordan scandal by auctioning off easonsfables.com on ebay. The nerve of some people.
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Please see the Easongate category for the complete background (especially useful for Kerry Spot readers) on the developing Eason Jordan story.
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As much as I’d like to do original reporting on this story, as several of my fellow bloggers are doing, I can’t, at least not during the day when people are available. I have a day job.
So I’m doing the next best thing: consolidating links and steering you to what they’re doing. For example, Michelle Malkin just spoke with Rep. Barney Frank, who confirmed that Eason Jordan said the American military had targeted journalists. She writes:
Just got off the phone with Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who spoke with me about Easongate. Rep. Frank was on the panel at Davos.Rep. Frank said Eason Jordan did assert that there was deliberate targeting of journalists by the U.S. military. After Jordan made the statement, Rep. Frank said he immediately “expressed deep skepticism.” Jordan backed off (slightly), Rep. Frank said, “explaining that he wasn’t saying it was the policy of the American military to target journalists, but that there may have been individual cases where they were targeted by younger personnel who were not properly disciplined.”
Rep. Frank said he didn’t pay attention to the audience reaction at the time of the panel, but recalled that Sen. Dodd was “somewhat disturbed” and “somewhat exercised” and that moderator David Gergen also said Jordan’s assertions were “disturbing if true.” I have a call in to Sen. Dodd’s office and sent an e-mail inquiry to Gergen.
(Hat tip: Power Line)
Bill Roggio of Easongate.com comments on Michelle’s and Jay Rosen’s posts.
Jim Geraghty at Kerry Spot wonders if this is a “right wing blogstorm.” If leftist bloggers aren’t touching it, then I guess it is a “right wing blogstorm.” I can live with that. 
Geraghty has more here.
Howard Kurtz’s of the Washington Post is taking questions for his webchat. So far no questions about Eason Jordan. Either that, or he’s not taking any.
Captain’s Quarters says that a mainstream newspaper is working on the Jordan story. Which one?
Director/screenwriter/blogger Roger L. Simon writes:
The blogosphere is effectively being stonewalled, because, so far, the blogosphere has won its duels with mainstream media. They have accused us of being fast and loose with the facts, but it is they who have had to back down. What is at stake here is great — money, jobs, power — and they know it.
Whoever thought just a few short years ago that from the new medium, the Internet, would spawn something as powerful and vibrant as the blogosphere? I’m amazed at the influence wielded by bloggers, some of whom are working journalists, but many tracking Easongate are ordinary people like me.
With day jobs.
Update (2:38 p.m.): Memo to CNN from American Digest — You’re not in Kansas anymore!
Says Sisyphus, the blogger who’s trying to get the World Economic Forum videotape that we can’t wait to see:
Just spoke again with Mr. Adams. He has not yet recovered the tape. They are not done unpacking. He remains confident that he has the tape, just needs to find it.First Curveball: He warned me that the session WAS under “Chatham House Rule.”This means that after finding the tape, he needs to get a policy decision about making it publicly available, as that would violate the Rule.
I have arranged to speak with him again 5:00AM EST tomorrow to check if the tape has been unpacked and if there has been a policy decision.
Side note: Keep those e-mails coming; however, I’m very interested in getting exclusive information. That means news tips you haven’t sent to other bloggers.
Hey, we’re the conservative jihad! Check it out:
Along with the notion of the press being in bed with the resistance, the conservative jihad against the press aims to create enough noise to discredit selected “bad news” from Iraq, as well as whip up some manufactured outrage on their scandal du jour, which, if successful, will take out Eason Jordan of CNN. The noise machine run by the War Party is in full swing on this issue. Here’s a major conservative noisemaker tying it all together, with a little help from conservative propaganda tool Jack Kelly…
Update II (3:40 p.m.): Lots of new stuff. Will Collier at Vodkapundit goes off on Howard Kurtz for not taking “Easongate” questions on his webchat.
Hugh Hewitt speculates on the videotape. Will it be released after all?
Captain Ed calls for congressional hearings on this matter. And he writes his congressman.
Events are moving quickly. Michelle Malkin spoke with David Gergen, a journalist also present when Jordan uttered those infamous words, who also confirms what he said:
Gergen confirmed that Eason Jordan did in fact initially assert that journalists in Iraq had been targeted by military “on both sides.” Gergen, who has known Jordan for some 20 years, told me Jordan “realized as soon as the words had left his mouth that he had gone too far” and “walked himself back.” Gergen said as soon as he heard the assertion that journalists had been deliberately targeted, “I was startled. It’s contrary to history, which is so far the other way. Our troops have gone out of their way to protect and rescue journalists.”
Easongate probably has the same updates I have, but check it out anyway.
Rebecca MacKinnon, the journalist and blogger who corroborated Rony Abovitz’s recollection of Eason Jordan’s remarks, weighs in on the recent developments.
Eason Jordan, serial slanderer? (Hat tip: Jeff Blogworthy)
Got all that? I’m not even doing any reporting, and I’m tired!
About You and Me — Update III (5:27 p.m.): I’ll fill you in on Jordan in a moment. Right now I want to talk about you and me. I appreciate each of you, readers and commenters, and all the bloggers tracking back to my posts. Keeping up with the this story has been actual work, and I didn’t quite expect it to be.
The hardest work of all, I’ve discovered, is staying on the radar screens of high-profile bloggers also following this story. Getting inside the loop is one thing. Staying there is another. I have to constantly make people aware of my quest to be the go-to “Easton Jordan blog swarm background blogger.” I missed Rathergate, so I wanted to be involved in Easongate. Doing things like this is how you build readership and make a name for yourself in the blogosphere so that you’re not dependent on high-profile linkage if you’re trying to be high-profile yourself. Did that make sense?
I want to get called for interviews and appear in the news and magazine stories that will eventually come out about the blogosphere’s role in this story. Somehow, I suspect I won’t be.
If it weren’t for Lucianne Goldberg linking to my blog for two days (the link’s gone now), my efforts probably wouldn’t be as well-known as they are, and I’m grateful for the exposure. Sisters are doing for themselves! I wanted to shout that from the rooftops when she linked to me yesterday.
I’ve had a good time most of the time tracking the latest information, but trying to be one of the oft-mentioned or quoted bloggers working on Easongate has made me realize something: There’s no such thing as “affirmative action” in the blogosphere!
And it’s a good thing. Now on to the updates…
ThoughtsOnline has some thoughts about Jordan.
Sen. Chris Dodd’s staffer responds to Michelle Malkin.
John Hinderaker: “So it’s official: Eason Jordan has been hung out to dry.”
Non-Eason Jordan Update IV (9:06 p.m.): I won something. Want to see what it is? While you’re there, read the post, too.
Kudlow and Cramer talked about Eason Jordan tonight, and Glenn Reynolds has the video, but not the one from the World Economic Forum. Still waiting…
Meanwhile Sisyphus is still on the case:
Michelle Malkin has laid the groundwork to break this wide open by getting David Gergen, Rep. Frank and Sen. Dodd on the record.Here are the panel’s moderator, a member of the panel and a House Representative, and a Senator in the audience teetering on the precipice of calling for the video to be released. If they do, the pressure on Eason Jordan to join the chorus would be…well, a lot more than it is now. (Don’t miss the fact that none of them are known “right-wingers” involved in a blog-mob frenzy.)
Once these four men call for the video to be released, I’m in a VERY strong position to get AT LEAST those portions of the video and even more likely to get the whole thing. It takes the pressure off Mr. Adams.
The story is finally cracking MSM. Hugh Hewitt says the New York Sun will write about the story. He adds that the Baltimore Sun will write about it, too, as well as Howard Kurtz at the Post.
By the way, if you’ve e-mailed me in the past week, I’ll respond before the week is out. Another backlog…
