Investors Business Daily: Eason Must Go

Eason Must Go.

Now Jordan’s in the stew again. 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.

That’s when the bloggers stepped in, including some who were actually there. Then master blogger Hugh Hewitt took up the case. Soon the blogosphere was electric with outrage over Jordan’s irresponsible charge. Now there’s an easongate.com, tracking the scandal’s every fact, every claim, every angle, and demanding CNN come clean.

Why “scandal”? Jordan was spouting outrageous charges with no basis in fact. In journalism, even in High Church Journalism, that is a cardinal sin. Rising to the topmost reaches of media power does not exempt one from the first rules learned in journalism class.

The bloggers, who’ve done so much recently to correct the elite media’s misbehavior — including sending CBS’s Dan Rather to newsman’s purgatory — now have Eason Jordan as quarry.

Deservedly so. It’s time for him to go.

Quite so. Journalists rely on our capacity to trust what they have to say. When journalists abuse that trust and make outrageous statements that have no basis in fact, lie, and even propagate materials to support their position that are questionable as to their origins (aka a hoax), the public that relies on these journalists for their news and information has a responsibility to hold journalists accountable for their words and deeds.

Jordan must go.