The Eason Jordan story
: Still, there’s no coverage in big media of the Eason Jordan story to ask whether the CNN exec said that journalists were targeted by soldiers in Iraq — and whether they were, indeed, targeted. Either way, there should be coverage. If he said it and believes any part of it, then that is a vital story that must be reported. If he didn’t say it or doesn’t believe it, then he needs to clarify with the questioning of reporters and/or bloggers. Either way, this is news.
: Sisyphus did what any reporter and/or blogger should do and got on the horn to Davos to ask for a tape of the session. It’s on the way, they say. Then we’ll have what Jordan in fact said and then he can clarify in the context of the source material that started this story.
: Hugh Hewitt writes a memo to Jay Rosen and me telling us to cover this. I wrote about it three days before Hugh’s memo. Jay has written about it, too:
* 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.
* Possibly the reason we haven’t seen the coverage is that they’re waiting for the tape, as bloggers are. But it is also possible that Eason Jordan’s comments tipped the press off to a bigger story involving the deaths of journalists, and the protests from news organizations.
* CNN made sure many bloggers who were posting about Jordan’s comments had copies of a statement the network put out. (Many of the bloggers were startled to receive the communique out of the blue. See this.) That in itself is significant. Someone there is watching the blogs on this one.
: Rebecca MacKinnon is tracking this story about her former boss.
: LATER: Jay Rosen has more on Jordan’s job as the diplomat for the state of CNN.
