Morton Condrake discussed the Eason Jordan controversy with Brit Hume, info here. Not a lot of depth or substance in the discussion, but it’s a start.

Eason Jordan doesn’t have tenure, the way our friend from the University of Colorado does. Why this is–he’s the news director of CNN. If he knows of 12 journalists who have been specifically targeted by coalition forces, that is one whale of a story that ought to be on CNN. And the people, his higher ups on CNN, ought to be demanding to know why this, why he’s revealing this off the record in public.

(Hindrocket at Powerline agrees, “not much light was shed.”)

The issue is mentioned in IBD on 2/8/2005 per LaShawn Barber, though the link goes to the current article. Ah, found the text via Easongate.com. Here is a brief excerpt, full text here.

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.

Panel chairman David Gergen, according to insider accounts, gasped. The man who’d worked in administrations from Nixon’s to Clinton’s demanded evidence. Liberal Congressman Barney Frank, who was there, also demanded proof.

Jordan backed off — slightly. But afterward he accepted congratulations from Arab reporters who called him heroic.

Interesting discussion from the Jim Geraghty in National Review Online at TKS.

I was exchanging emails with another blogger, Paul, who asked the good question, “Aside from “forcing” the resignation of Jordan, what is there to accomplish? Can CNN be shamed into behaving better?”

The question deserves some thought. What has the goal of the blogs in this case been? In the case of the CBS memos, it was pretty clear – to confirm suspicions that the memos were fake, and then squeeze a retraction out of a stubborn network digging in its heels.

Kevin over at Wizbang thinks there is one thing in that article that missed the mark, and makes an interesting point.

I tend to to agree with his assessment, though I think he’s missed the mark on one line.

Let’s be honest about the power of the blogs - it is great and was unimaginable in an earlier era, but it is limited.

Clearly Geraghty has not been paying attention to the public dismemberment of Talon News “reporter” Jeff Gannon. The Markos “I’ve Got Howard’s Back” Moulitas Zuniga’s Daily Kos community has succeeded in ending the career of the journalist who worked for Talon News because he had the temerity to ask softball questions at White House news conferences and write under a pseudonym. Moulitas has proclaimed that Gannon (real name James D. “JD” Guckert) is gay based on three domain registrations (none of which lead to working sites).

Gannon/Guckert, who originally laughed off the swarming net detectives, isn’t laughing anymore.

The Wall Street Journal has Easongate on the editorial page today.

By chance, I was in the audience of the World Economic Forum’s panel discussion where Mr. Jordan spoke. What happened was this: Mr. Jordan observed that of the 60-odd journalists killed in Iraq, 12 had been targeted and killed by coalition forces. He then offered a story of an unnamed Al-Jazeera journalist who had been “tortured for weeks” at Abu Ghraib, made to eat his shoes, and called “Al-Jazeera boy” by his American captors.
Here Rep. Barney Frank, also a member of the panel, interjected: Had American troops actually targeted journalists? And had CNN done a story about it? Well no, Mr. Jordan replied, CNN hadn’t done a story on this, specifically. And no, he didn’t believe the Bush administration had a policy of targeting journalists. Besides, he said, “the [American] generals and colonels have their heart in the right place.”

By this point, one could almost see the wheels of Mr. Jordan’s mind spinning, slowly: “How am I going to get out of this one?” But Mr. Frank and others kept demanding specifics. Mr. Jordan replied that “there are people who believe there are people in the military” who have it out for journalists. He also recounted a story of a reporter who’d been sent to the back of the line at a checkpoint outside of Baghdad’s Green Zone, apparently because the soldier had been unhappy with the reporter’s dispatches.

And that was it–the discussion moved on

LaShawn Barber has started contributing to easongate.com.

I’m way late in posting this, but figured better late than never. The Easongate petition referenced in the above-mentioned story is online.

UPDATE: The list of news outlets covering this story or editorializing on it is growing. Michelle Malkin has a good roundup today.