The Atlanta Journal Constitution has published a fascinating article about Eason Jordan’s resignation. It contains statements by several current and former CNN employees defending Jordan and denouncing bloggers who called attention to his remarks in Davos. To read it you have to register or use bugmenot to get log in information.

Here are some excerpts, along with my reactions:

Bloggers pushed CNN to ask the World Economic Forum for a transcript of the discussion. The network did not do so, spokeswoman Christa Robinson said, because there’s no dispute over what Jordan said and because he tried to clarify his comments.

No dispute?!?? What planet is she on? In a statement Jordan himself sent to his staff Friday, Jordan cited “conflicting accounts” over his remarks as a threat to CNN’s credibility. Is Robinson disputing Jordan’s statement?

Some suggest that Jordan got a bum rap. Former CNN News Group Chairman Walter Isaacson wrote in an e-mail to the AJC that Jordan was dedicated to “the value of hard reporting by real journalists who braved going out into the field, like he so often did, rather than merely opining. It’s ironic that he was brought down partly by talk-show and blogging folks who represent the opposite approach and have seldom . . . ventured out to do . . . frontline reporting.”

So: Those who tried to bury the story and who refused to ask for the release of the videotape are “real journalists” who do “hard reporting” whereas bloggers who were there or who gathered information from people who were there were “merely opining.” Got that?

Former CNN News Group Chairman Tom Johnson, who had been Jordan’s mentor, decried what he called “unjustified and almost irrational attacks on Eason’s character.”

“He may have misspoken at Davos, for which he apologized and clarified his comments. But he does not deserve the severe condemnations, which have led to his resignation.”

Jordan has not apologized for deliberately sliming the U.S. military, only for lack of clarity. In his resignation statement, he said that he “never meant to imply U.S. forces acted with ill intent.” But there is reason to doubt his sincerity:

-The comments he is alleged to have made in Davos sounds an awful lot like comments he made in Portugal last fall. He hasn’t apologized for the comments in Portugal.

-After Davos, Rep. Barney Frank told me that in the course of clarifying his comments, Jordan “left open the question” of whether there were individual cases in which American troops targeted journalists. He hasn’t apologized for that.

-As I discussed here, Jordan seemed to sympathize last week with those who have criticized U.S. soldiers’ conduct in the killing of Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana. He hasn’t apologized for that either.

-Most damning of all, he declined to ask for the release of a videotape that would have resolved once and for all what he said.

As for “unjustified and almost irrational attacks on Eason’s character,” go back and re-read the posts of the bloggers who brought this matter to the public’s attention, in particular Rony Abovitz, Rebecca McKinnon, Hugh Hewitt, Ed Morrissey, Jim Geraghty, Glenn Reynolds, LaShawn Barber, Easongate, and this site. Do you see even one unjustified or irrational attack on Eason’s character? Or do you see careful gathering of facts, calls for release of the videotape, and questioning of the MSM blackout?

The only unjustified attacks I’ve seen are those made by CNN’s defenders (see, for starters, Isaacson’s comment above).

Update: Speaking of unjustified attacks by CNN defenders, check out the remarks of French journalist Bertrand Pecquerie and Steve Lovelady of Columbia Journalism Review.

Update II: Ed Morrissey weighs in on the AJC piece:

If this is any indication, the mainstream media appears likely to hoist the dead reputation of Eason Jordan on its secular cross and march to war against the blogs as its answer to our calls for accountability. The more we see of the reaction from so-called journalists, the more they reveal themselves as partisans and provocateurs, and their attacks on bloggers as such — the ones who actually researched and reported on the facts of Eason Jordan’s career of slandering the military — amount to nothing more than projection.