The Blogosphere Swarm

Hugh Hewitt was the passionate consciousness behind raising the blogosphere's awareness to CNN's Jordan Eason's unbelievable comments at Davos, Switzerland about the US military targeting journalists.  I must confess that I was stunned to see Mr. Eason's resignation from CNN.  For the mainstream media (MSM), that failed to cover this story for most of its life while they chased a hard-fighting marine general's comments to other marines, it is another black eye.

Before proceeding, Michelle Malkin has a wonderful post-game analysis of the history of Easongate.

My main critique today is of how some in the MSM are presenting Mr. Jordan's exit, especially the New York Times.  The NYT was asleep regarding this story prior to today.  Any blog that has been following the story could tell you more about how it came about than the NYT piece today. 

"Eason Jordan, a senior executive at CNN who was responsible for coordinating the cable network's Iraq coverage, resigned abruptly last night, citing a journalistic tempest he touched off during a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, late last month in which he appeared to suggest that United States troops had deliberately aimed at journalists, killing some."

Mr. Jordan's resignation seemed "abrupt" maybe because no one at the New York Times was awake to the story that has been raging at full tempest in the blogosphere and elsewhere (see Fox News) over the past two weeks.  The claim "citing a journalistic tempest" should read "citing a blogosphere swarm", but the NYT is too clueless about this story and the new media to write that.  The Times, in covering the story, further writes:

"David Gergen, editor at large of U.S. News & World Report, said in an interview last night..."

David Gergen was the moderator of the panel in Davos.  So the NYT started looking into this story last night?  Michelle Malkin got to Mr. Gergen for an interview 5 days ago!  Talk about the Times being scooped.   The Times continues:

"Nonetheless, accounts of Mr. Jordan's remarks were soon being reported on Web logs as well as in an article on Feb. 3 on National Review's Web site."

Isn't the Times admitting here that it is 10 days behind the blogosphere in raising this story?  The Times does go on to draw a parallel to the Rathergate story prior to the election that ultimately put an early end to Mr. Rather's career.  Kudos for this comment, but where is the reporting on how the blogosphere researched, reported and drove this story?  The Times goes on:

"It also gave him an ambitious assignment: to reclaim the ratings lead it yielded years ago to the Fox News Channel, whose commentators, at least, tend to tilt to the right."

So ironic that the NYT points out that Fox News "at least" tilts to the right, when the fanatical extremely left-leaning comments of Mr. Jordan, formerly of CNN, tilt to the far fringe left. 

The Times missed this story and so did its readership.  However, those getting their news from the blogosphere were weeks ahead of old Gray Lady.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds has a good post on the LAT missing the story as well. 

Comments

[larwyn]

I must accept that an "exploding head" will be my norm.
"RELIABLE SOURCES"(??)Kurtz has
no dictionary and Gergan has memory loss as he "walks back"
Malkin interview.
The appointment of Bill Clinton
to head the UN Tsunami effort makes sense based on his experience with exploiting sex and
his access to the financial advise
of his buddy Marc Rich, who has
assisted the Oil For Food Program.
And I am estastic that the NYT's
Tom Freidman is being tutored by
Paul Krugman in macroeconomics.As
Tom is a happily married family
man, at least we don't foresee
his turning to Maureen for advise
on his love life. I do look forward to the A to Z booklist replacing the "What's your sign?".
"What's your P book?" "What's your
N book?"

Must stop.