Reactions are rolling in from around the blogosphere. First, the obligatory excerpt from the big news:

CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan quit Friday amid 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.

Definitely wouldn’t want to tarnish the objective image of “the most trusted name in news.”

But Rogg over on Easongate.com says:

However we are still not fully satisfied with the outcome. The tape should be released for public review, and Mr. Jordan should apologize for his remarks.

To every reader, commentor, emailer and blogger that committed to this cause, thank you. This is a victory for every soldier who has honorably served this nation. To you we devote this victory.

Jeff Blogworth observes how fast the news travels.

Interesting observation from Kevin at Wizbang about the quote, and a concurrence with Easongate about the release of the tape:

“While my CNN colleagues and my friends in the U.S. military know me well enough to know I have never stated, believed, or suspected that U.S. military forces intended to kill people they knew to be journalists, my comments on this subject in a World Economic Forum panel discussion were not as clear as they should have been.”

I think the record reflects that the last quoted paragraph does not jibe with the notes of those who attended the World Economic Forum panel. Perhaps the WEF gave him notice that it intended to release the tape? Jordan ignored the Lott/Reins/Rather rule of dealing with blog swarms: It’s the stonewalling and coverups that do you in…

Regardless… Now is the time for the World Economic Forum to release the tape!!!

LaShawn says:

Readers speculate that there’s more to this story, too. CNN decided to cut its losses for a reason. Another reader notes that Jordan announced his resignation after the news cycle, but there’s no such thing in the blogosphere. Bloggers were the momentum behind this story, and don’t ever let anybody convince you they (we) weren’t.

Scott Ott, amidst his satire, makes the poignant observation:

the blogosphere took less than two weeks to turn rumors from Davos, Switzerland, into a pink slip for the 23-year veteran of CNN.

Captain Ed says the moral of Eason’s Fables is:

the media can’t just cover up the truth and expect to get away with it — and journalists can’t just toss around allegations without substantiation and expect people to believe them anymore.

Hindrocket at Powerline suggests:

The AP can’t resist getting this part of the story wrong:

But the damage had been done, compounded by the fact that no transcript of his actual remarks has turned up.

Actually, of course, the videotape “turned up,” but the Davos folks decided to keep it under wraps, apparently in an effort to help Jordan. Jordan’s problem wasn’t confusion about what he said; his problem was CNN’s inability to create confusion about what he said.

He also suggests that maybe it was Kudlow’s interview (which we noted yesterday here) with three influential senators, including Senator Coleman who is Chairman of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, that may have tipped the balance here.

Red State Rant cautions the bloggers:

I hope people, especially in the blogosphere understand and respect what they can accomplish. I also hope it doesnt inflate their egos and drive them into the the things we seem to cherish attacking. We did the right thing, its nothing to gloat about. We should be doing the right things every day of our lives. This is not victory, or vindication, our honor and integrity were not called into question. We only defended those that spend their days thousands of miles away fighting for freedom so that we can hammer away on our blogs.

Hugh Hewitt:

The MSM missed this story, and whether it is out of sympathy for one of their own, agreement with all or part of the implied charge, or simple laziness, the assessment of their incompetence should be thorough as well.

Thirty Second Thoughts waxes a bit philosophical here.

Freedom of the press wasn’t supposed to mean that a few large corporations could control public perception by their slant on the story. Until now, however, there was no way to effectively communicate without going through the distribution channels controlled by the major media organizations. The Internet has changed all that. The genie is out of the bottle. The revolution is happening. It may not be televised, but it will be on the Internet, told by thousands of people in thousands of different ways.

Michelle Malkin points out that CNN filed this story in the “Entertainment News” section. Funny. And she says that Ramesh Ponnuru is the one that originally got the scoop.

UPDATE (2/12 6:42 am): Michelle Malkin has a superb roundup of the Easongate timeline and players. Check it out.

Decision ‘08 says:

It probably began with Trent Lott; it picked up steam with Rathergate; now the Eason Jordan saga has moved it beyond the realm of the disputable. “It” is the power of blogs to influence events on a national and international scale. The idea that blogs can force a new level of accountability on those previously considered ‘untouchable’ is not new; many have commented eloquently and at length. I find Easongate unique in one revolutionary respect: this time, the MSM never even got off the sidelines.

UPDATE (2/12 2:52 pm): Deacon at Powerline wonders if he conceded too much in his radio interview from a few weeks ago.

Several weeks ago, I appeared on a radio show to discuss the influence that blogs like Power Line have. The liberal host suggested that blogs don’t have any real influence until they push a story into the MSM. I demurred, stating that by virtue of being read by 100,000 people or more, some of whom are themselves quite influential, a blog like Power Line has influence. But I agreed that, in the case of something like Rathergate, blogs cannot make a difference without MSM coverage.

After the Eason Jordan affair, I wonder whether I conceded too much. Most of the MSM never touched the story, yet Jordan is out. It can be argued that he’s out because CNN realized that the MSM was on the verge of covering the story. But one can also make the case that he’s out largely because some U.S. Senators learned about the story from blogs and expressed concern about it to Larry Kudlow. In that scenario, the fall of CNN’s news chief can be explained entirely without reference to the MSM.

By now we’ve all seen the picture of this newborn who was tossed out of a car when he was just hours old.

It is, of course, shocking and sickening.

What has struck me in this though is that only a day before, this baby could have been killed under the guise of “choice” quite legally in many states. And rather than a national leading headline, there would have been silence.

Life Steward had the same idea, calling it a “post term abortion.”

UPDATE: This appears to be the case of a lie that spun way out of control.

A woman who claimed to have rescued a newborn boy after he was thrown from a moving car was actually the child’s mother, fabricating the story to conceal her pregnancy, officials said Friday.

The woman, who kept her pregnancy a secret from her family and others, had planned to take the baby to authorities, Broward County Sheriff Ken Jenne said. She then built her story after seeing two people argue inside their car, he said; the baby was never thrown.

“It’s not as horrible as we first thought,” Jenne said. “The baby was never thrown out of a moving car. This is the case of a disturbed woman who gave birth and did not want to keep her child.”

The woman gave birth Thursday afternoon, and an hour later dropped him off at a Broward sheriff’s substation, telling authorities her tale of seeing the boy tossed out of the car, Jenne said.

The 38-year-old woman has not been charged.

“She has indicated that she does not want the child,” Jenne said.

The original point of this post is still completely intact. The news media splashed the story hard, people’s hearts were broken for this little baby, and even though the story turns out to be false, the reaction to this apparent-atrocity, compared to the reaction to the every day real killings that are done just hours on the other side of the birth canal, is sobering and telling.

I wonder if these will be implantable soon.