OOPS! The Los Angeles Times’ story on Eason Jordan’s resignation contains an error that suggests its writer wasn’t very familiar with the blogosphere:

Also, a website called Easongate.com, featuring the executive’s corporate portrait on its home page, offered a clearing-house of criticism related to Jordan’s statements. The website linked to 25 other sites in its “Blogroll,” with mainstream columnists such as Roger L. Simon and more obscure bloggers such as “Red State Rant” and “Winds of Change.”

As Nationals Review (itself likely to be a fertile source of confusion for the LAT at some point) observes:

There are two people named Roger Simon. One is a columnist for U.S. News and World Report. The other is a popular blogger who I read regularly. The latter is more informative, but the LA Times automatically calls him “mainstream” because they assume he’s employed by a mainstream media company. Winds of Change is hardly an obscure blog, but since the LA Times doesn’t keep up with the blogs, they’re well behind.

Indeed. If, as many suspect, this will be spun by some Big Media outfits as a baying mob out for the blood of conscientious journalists, that spin will lose force when it becomes apparent that many of those describing the “mob” have only the vaguest idea of what they’re describing.

WHEN OPPONENTS OF GAY MARRIAGE say that it will lead to incest, I’ve always pooh-poohed them. So imagine my shock when I read this headline on Andrew Sullivan’s site: “A seminary president is fired for marrying his own daughter. Because she’s gay.” Heh. Following the link, however, eased my mind somewhat . . . .

EASON JORDAN HAS RESIGNED:

Jordan said he was quitting to avoid CNN being “unfairly tarnished” by the controversy. . . .

“I never meant to imply U.S. forces acted with ill intent when U.S. forces accidentally killed journalists, and I apologize to anyone who thought I said or believed otherwise,” Jordan said in a memo to fellow staff members at CNN.

But the damage had been done, compounded by the fact that no transcript of his actual remarks has turned up. There was an online petition calling on CNN to find a transcript, and fire Jordan if he said the military had intentionally killed journalists.

I think we know what the video would have shown, now. It wasn’t a case of the video not turning up, but of it not being released. I think that Jordan could have quickly defused this by just saying “I screwed up,” but — as with Trent Lott — he waited days while hiding behind a lame and unpersuasive explanation. He should have read this, and other people who might be in his position should do the same.

UPDATE: Jeff Jarvis:

If he had been upfront about what he said from the start; if he had demanded that Davos release the tape and transcript; if he had admitted to putting his foot in his mouth and apologized and said he was wrong; if he’d done that, he’d still have a job. For a lesson, see: Dan Rather. But he released obfuscating statements and didn’t level with the public he’s supposed to serve and now he’s slinking away like a criminal when he should be apologizing for saying something stupid.

Yes. (Lots of blog posts here)

ANOTHER UPDATE: Sisyphean Musings — who was promised the Davos video, only to see the Davos folks renege — writes: “I can’t understand why Eason Jordan would resign over ‘conflicting accounts’ of his remarks at the WEF, without first asking that the video of those remarks be released to clear up those conflicts.” And EasonGate.com is asking for the tape, too: “”A cloud will hang over this issue until the tape is viewed to confirm what has been reported in this affair.” Actually, I think it’s pretty clear what the tape would have shown, but I’d like to see it released, too, as a matter of historical record if nothing else.

Meanwhile, Jim Geraghty observes:

I still don’t understand why Jordan would resign rather than call for the tape’s release — there was always a chance that the public reaction would be, “oh, it’s not bad as I thought it would be.”

Unless, I guess, it was so bad, that cries of outrage would be inevitable… And the release of the tape would have turned this into a natural television story.

I guess that’s right.

More roundups here and here.

And Hugh Hewitt observes: “The trouble was the cover-up.”

MORE: Here’s Howard Kurtz’s story:

No definitive account of what Jordan said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 27 has been made public, including the forum’s videotape of the off-the-record session. Two Democrats who were there, Rep. Barney Frank (Mass.) and Sen. Christopher Dodd (Conn.), criticized Jordan’s remarks. Others in attendance, including U.S. News & World Report editor at large David Gergen and BBC executive Richard Sambrook, said Jordan had corrected his initial remarks.

Kurtz also notes that some think CNN is happy to lose Jordan because of a variety of iffy behaviors on his part, going beyond the Davos statement. (“Several CNN staffers say Jordan was eased out by top executives who had lost patience with both the controversy and the continuing published gossip about Jordan’s personal life after a marital breakup.”) Joe Gandelman thinks Jordan was a victim of his own stonewalling. And Ed Morrissey notes that the networks are in the position of having to report Jordan’s resignation over a scandal that they never mentioned to their viewers.

Chester:

I was completely flabbergasted by this move. In a way, I see it as a threat, and very skillful damage control (though the best would have been to go public, air the tape, retract, recant, and get it over with). I see it as skillful because I doubt the tape will be released now, though a couple of phone calls could probably make that happen.

And I see it as a threat because without the tape, Jordan is free to play the “victim of the angry bloggers” role. If he doesn’t, someone will transpose that upon him.

That’s probably true. But, you know, if he were a sportscaster who had made a racial remark, nobody would be saying that.

Mickey Kaus observes: “It should also be noted that the controversy was kept alive not just by blogs, but by the refusal of a relatively liberal Democrat, Barney Frank, to sweep it under the rug in gentlemanly fashion.” Which is why my original post on EasonGate just said bravo for Barney Frank. And Chris Dodd deserves a lot of credit, too.

HAD DINNER WITH MIKE GODWIN, who spoke at the law school last night, and elsewhere on campus today. We know a lot of people in common, but this was the first time we’ve met. It’s always nice to meet a Net legend of his stature.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES is up!

ABC NEWS REPORTS ON U.N. SEX CRIMES IN THE CONGO:

Widespread allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse of Congolese women, boys and girls have been made against U.N. personnel who were sent to help and protect them — despite a so-called zero tolerance policy touted by the United Nations toward such behavior.

The range of sexual abuse includes reported rapes of young Congolese girls by U.N. troops; an Internet pedophile ring run from Congo by Didier Bourguet, a senior U.N. official from France; a colonel from South Africa accused of molesting his teenage male translators; and estimates of hundreds of underage girls having babies fathered by U.N. soldiers who have been able to simply leave their children and their crimes behind.

Ravaged by decades of civil war, and one of the poorest countries in the world, Congo has relied on the United Nations for both military protection and humanitarian aid.

There will be a story on 20/20 tonight.

THIS SEEMS LIKE A GREAT IDEA: Give Iraq’s voters the Nobel Peace Prize:

They have already won the world’s peace prize by demonstrating in a single day a commitment not seen in our lifetime to peace, self-determination and human rights–the goals for which the Nobel Peace Prize began in 1901. Formal recognition by the Nobel Committee of what the Iraqi people did on Jan. 30 would do more to ensure the furtherance of these goals, in concrete ways, than any other imaginable recipient this year. Who did more?

The history of the Peace Prize shows as well that Iraq’s voters placed themselves squarely at the center of one of the Nobel Committee’s enduring, seemingly quixotic, goals–peace in the Middle East.

Makes sense to me.

IT’S ALL ABOUT BUSH: Heh. And read the Walt Whitman quotation in this post for more.

HERE’S MORE on those New Jersey killings, from the Coptics.

HERE’S A REPORT FROM IRAQ, via my secretary, a Marine combat engineer reservist:

The elections required a lot of work in this area but went off without any major violence. From what we have seen, nationwide turnout was very good. One of the constant comments here was that in America, people stay home because of the rain; here people vote in spite of mortars. (Mortars are like the worst hail storm you have ever seen, but a little worse).

Recently, we have gone out and operated with the Army. The particular unit we have worked with is a cavalry unit. Even though they now drive tanks, they still wear “riding” boots, large belt buckles and for formal occasions, cowboy hats. Surely, they think many of our customs and traditions (dating back to naval combat of the 18th century) are just as strange.

The Cav is located at a much larger installation which means KBR chow. It is amazing that food that would be sniffed at in most middle school cafeterias seems like dinner and a beer at El Charro over here. Their installation is a former Iraqi army base, so it feels a lot more like a military base than the poultry processing plant in which I live. In fact the cinderblock barracks are almost as nice as Hess Hall (saying something is as nice as Hess is wierd) and are nicer than the barracks that I stayed in at Camp Pendleton.

Army tours are almost twice as long as Marine tours (13 vs. 7 mos.) and these guys were nearing the end. Their morale was high but needless to say they were looking forward to getting home.

An interesting note about tankers, beware of anyone who refers to you as a “crunchy.” That is apparently the sound you make when you get backed over.

The 1/8 Cav were gracious hosts and most professional soldiers. Their Bn. Commander and Sergeant Major presented our sqaud with battalion coins to thank us for a particular weapons cache we found and destroyed with them. We let their medic initiate the explosion; it is never as much fun as the first time.

Out of the ten Marines that deployed out Knoxville with me, two have returned to the States with injuries. While this is not statistically remarkable, consider that they were twin brothers. Further consider that they were both injured, in separate incidents, in the wrist.

Strange. Both of the Gentrys are expected to make full recoveries and as we say of people going home injured, they have a 100% chance of surviving the war.

A note on barracks life. The Jay-Z/ Linkin Park “mash up” album seems to be in constant rotation. This is MTV’s brilliant idea of playing two really horrible artists’ tracks simultaneously. At least you can get it over with that much more quickly. If video killed the radio star, will someone please kill MTV’s head of new program development? Please? Know that if I have nothing worse to complain about than bad rap rock albums that I am doing well.

Indeed.

JAY ROSEN has an Eason Jordan roundup. Can you “break” a story via a private email newsletter? I’d say no. Rand Simberg, meanwhile, looks at the working press’s definition of a blog.

UPDATE: Looks like, as predicted, the story’s broken out:

CNN on Thursday sought to quell the media frenzy enveloping executive Eason Jordan over remarks he made during a conference last month in Davos, Switzerland, suggesting that he believed U.S. troops were deliberately firing on journalists in Iraq. CNN tried to ease the controversy by clarifying Jordan’s remarks. “Unfortunately, he was not clear enough in explaining his assertion,” a CNN spokesman said Thursday.

No, indeed.

MORE DEVELOPMENTS AT COLUMBIA:

A group of professors on campus is releasing a report today that is highly critical of the university’s handling of charges of anti-Semitism and classroom intimidation — and especially of the committee that Bollinger set up to investigate.

What’s more, students who have observed the committee’s proceedings are raising their own troubling questions about the direction the inquiry has taken.

“I don’t understand why a committee investigating such a sensitive issue would be recruited among people with such blatant conflicts of interest,” says Judith Jacobson, an assistant professor of public health and founder of the Columbia chapter of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, the group issuing the report.

As the group’s report details, out of five members on Bollinger’s committee: two signed an anti-Israel divestment petition, one was the thesis adviser for Joseph Massad (a professor prominently accused of wrongdoing), one has written that Israel is responsible for global anti-Semitism and one is a university administrator who ignored student complaints for months. The man who handpicked the committee, Nick Dirks, is married to a professor who co-teaches a class with Massad.

“If the purpose of the committee is to protect . . . faculty, it seems likely to achieve success,” the whistleblowing faculty report concludes. “If its purpose is to conduct a serious investigation, it appears doomed to failure.”

Read the whole thing. (Link to the report here, via Ryan Sager).

WHAT IS KIM JONG IL’S GAME? Thoughts, over at Daniel Drezner’s.

UPDATE: Donald Sensing has a lot of thoughts.

BOOK REPORT: I finished the Tim Powers book I mentioned yesterday, on the plane. It was quite good, though I found the ending a bit abrupt. My mention of Powers produced a lot of other recommendations from readers; I’ve read some of the books they recommend but not all of them. I’ve read The Anubis Gates, which I recall liking pretty well. And I read his Kim Philby sorcerous spy novel Declare, a couple of years back, and found it very good. Lots of other readers recommended Dinner at Deviant’s Palace, which I don’t think I’ve read.

I was wise not to take Charles Stross’s The Family Trade with me, as I was pretty far along — so much so that I finished it last night before going to bed early. It’s good, though not, to my mind at least, in a league with Iron Sunrise or Singularity Sky.

RYAN SAGER WRITES that free speech seems to have no defenders left in Congress.

YESTERDAY, I linked to a Media Matters claim that FDR was being quoted out of context on social security. But Megan McArdle observes:

I see that I am supposed to be outraged by Brit Hume’s allegedly egregious misquotation of FDR, to claim FDR’s mantle for George Bush’s privatisation plan.

But then I actually, y’know, click the link, and find out that FDR’s plan looks a lot like Bush’s, except that it wasn’t nearly so generous.

The Bush Administration: More generous than FDR! Related post here.

IF YOU’VE GOT AN INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION, does that mean you’ve got an industry?

America’s top rivals in the private-sector space race are now on the same side, in a federation newly formed to advance their infant industry’s interests.

The Personal Spaceflight Federation, whose establishment was announced Tuesday, brings together a who’s who of space entrepreneurs, including SpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan, whose team won the $10 million X Prize last October, and video-game genius John Carmack, whose Armadillo Aerospace team was among the leading contenders for the prize.

Cool.

TOM FRIEDMAN:

Here’s the truth: There is no single action we could undertake anywhere in the world to reduce the threat of terrorism that would have a bigger impact today than a decent outcome in Iraq. It is that important. And precisely because it is so important, it should not be left to Donald Rumsfeld.

Democrats need to start thinking seriously about Iraq – the way Joe Biden, Joe Lieberman and Hillary Clinton have. If France – the mother of all blue states – can do it, so, too, can the Democrats. Otherwise, they will be absenting themselves from the most important foreign policy issue of our day.

Democrats do not favor using military force against Iran’s nuclear program or to compel regime change there. That is probably wise. But they don’t really have a diplomatic option. I’ve got one: Iraq. Iraq is our Iran policy.

Indeed.

THE CHARLIE ROSE SHOW, with me, Wonkette, Joe Trippi, and Andrew Sullivan, will air tonight. It’s at 11:30 -12:30 in my area, but you’ll need to check your schedule to be sure when it runs in yours. They say we’ll be the second segment. Blurb here. It’s one of the few places where you’ll see my picture right next to Ted Kennedy’s.

They also sent along this group picture,, though I don’t believe that I’m the standout member of the photo cast.

UPDATE: Now it’s showing Ossie Davis instead of us. Did we get bumped? Beats me. The email telling me it was tonight was just a few hours ago, but with TV who knows?

ANOTHER UPDATE: They just emailed and said it’ll be next week, not tonight. Good — I’m exhausted after the late night / early morning combo and all the travel. I’d rather stay up late some other time, especially as my daughter’s school will make me wake up early tomorrow anyway. Schools, as one of my colleagues says, are an evil conspiracy of morning people.

PATTERICO NOTES AN L.A. TIMES SPONGEBOB CORRECTION. It’s nontrivial.

LARRY KUDLOW on Eason Jordan:

Last night on K&C, I asked three influential US senators about the CNN News scandal regarding Eason Jordan’s traitorous remarks at the Davos economic forum. George Allen, Jeffrey Sessions, and Norman Coleman all agreed with Michelle Malkin’s characterization that Jordan and his CNN defenders have “slimed the military.” They were furious at the whole story, with each expressing anger at Jordan’s liberal anti-US-military bias. Senator Sessions pointed out that episodes like this show why the mainstream media has lost so much credibility in recent years. Senator Coleman was not ready to open up an investigation, but he indicated it was worth looking at. Senator Allen was strong in his defense of both the moral character and the visionary mission of our troops in Iraq.

He notes that the Senators were aware of the story largely because of its blogosphere coverage.

BOOTS ON THE GROUND: Austin Bay looks at the debate in August of 2001.

TARGETING REPORTERS: LT Smash is an eyewitness.

LYNNE STEWART CONVICTED: “Veteran civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart was convicted Thursday of helping terrorists by smuggling messages of violence from one of her imprisoned clients — a radical Egyptian sheik — to his terrorist disciples on the outside.”

UPDATE: A personal angle, from Scott Johnson.

GETTING ON THE NEXT PLANE: Back later.