In case you were stuck in the remotest corner of the Himalayas over the weekend, CNN exec Eason Jordan resigned Friday night. Which can mean only one thing…time for a bitter MSM backlash against the blogosphere!

Here’s my column for the N.Y. Post today tackling the “lynch mob/bloodhounds/fill-in-the-ad-hominem-here” meme that started spreading over the weekend.

As I note in the column:

The ad hominem hysterics of Jordan’s defenders stand in stark contract to the way the vast majority of bloggers approached the search for truth in this matter. Veteran journalist and blogger Jeff Jarvis got it right when he said on CNN’s Reliable Sources on Sunday: “We didn’t want his head — most of us didn’t. We wanted the truth.”

We’re still waiting…

…a network of bloggers — connected only by their modems — pressed the story. Minnesota-based blogger Ed Morrissey (captainsquartersblog.com), southern California blogger/talk show host/author Hugh Hewitt (hughhewitt.com), Washington, D.C.-based blogger La Shawn Barber (lashawnbarber.com), Tennessee-based blogging giant/law professor Glenn Reynolds (instapundit.com), Jarvis, Rosen and the ad hoc group blog at Easongate.com were among those who provided context for Jordan’s remarks, carefully assembled facts, requested release of the videotape/transcript and forcefully challenged the mainstream media blackout of the story.

For their fine efforts, these citizen bloggers are being attacked as “morons” and “bible-thumping knuckledraggers” and “hounds” by nervous media nellies aghast at the sight of unwashed amateurs beating down effete journalism’s gates.

This lynch mob meme continues today.

The New York Times leads the way, casting bloggers as “news media trophy hunters.” In trying to frame the furor over Jordan’s remarks as a conservative-driven attack, however, the Times conveniently omits Sen. Chris Dodd’s (D–that’s D as in Democrat, Conn.) own description of his reaction to Jordan as “outrage.” Sen. Dodd stated that both Rep. Barney Frank and moderator David Gergen were also “outraged.” Neither Frank nor Gergen has yet publicly disputed Sen. Dodd’s characterization.

The article also fails to mention that blogger Rony Abovitz, who first exposed the controversy, is no right-winger. In his immediate eyewitness account of the forum, he described the debate as “fiery,” “a real nightmare,” and “a real sh–storm.”

All this before a single conservative blogger typed a single word about the controversy.

(Ed Morrissey has a more forgiving view of the article here.)

On the other side of the MSM aisle, the Wall Street Journal editorial board weighs in with another huffy piece dubbed “The Jordan Kerfuffle.” Echoing WSJ editorial writer Bret Stephens’ snotty op-ed last week and WSJ editorial page editor Paul Gigot’s comments on Fox News Sunday, today’s editorial derides “certain pundits chirping delightedly” (oh, how positively fourth-grade–why not name names and face the music?) and also pooh-poohs the “right wing of the so-called “blogosphere” (never mind the likes of Jarvis or Gillmor) for pushing Jordan to be accountable for his words and actions. The WSJ’s hand-wringers write:

More troubling to us is that Mr. Jordan seems to have “resigned,” if in fact he wasn’t forced out, for what hardly looks like a hanging offense. It is true that Mr. Jordan has a knack for indefensible remarks, including a 2003 New York Times op-ed in which he admitted that CNN had remained silent about Saddam’s atrocities in order to maintain its access in Baghdad. That really was a firing offense. But CNN stood by Mr. Jordan back then–in part, one suspects, because his confession implicated the whole news organization. Now CNN is throwing Mr. Jordan overboard for this much slighter transgression, despite faithful service through his entire adult career.

That may be old-fashioned damage control. But it does not speak well of CNN that it apparently allowed itself to be stampeded by this Internet and talk-show crew. Of course the network must be responsive to its audience and ratings. But it has other obligations, too, chief among them to show the good judgment and sense of proportion that distinguishes professional journalism from the enthusiasms and vendettas of amateurs.

No doubt this point of view will get us described as part of the “mainstream media.” But we’ll take that as a compliment since we’ve long believed that these columns do in fact represent the American mainstream. We hope readers buy our newspaper because we make grown-up decisions about what is newsworthy, and what isn’t.

The “amateurs” at Lucianne.com aren’t taking too kindly to the WSJ’s derision. Commenter Morris Wanchuk writes:

The Journal has puked all over themselves on this one. They say, ”the worst that can reasonably be said about his [Eason Jordan's] performance is that he made an indefensible remark from which he ineptly tried to climb down at first prompting.” If that’s true then Jordan should have moved heaven and earth to get the video tape released and then apologized publicly.

In trying to excuse Jordan’s comments at Davos they knowingly overlook that Jordan had previously made similar comments. There is a pattern here. I reasonably conclude that Jordan meant what he initially said, but can’t provide any proof.

And where the heck was James Taranto on this story? The headline of this editorial uses his signature word ‘kerfuffle’, but over two weeks his misleadingly named Best of the Web didn’t touch this story. A major news executive repeatedly makes a serious charge, the blogosphere calls him on it and Taranto doesn’t think it merits coverage in his column. He should be more embarassed than Howard Kurtz.

At the risk of sounding like a bloghound/mobster: Yup.

Now, what about that tape? Bill Roggio has much more.

***

Last thought for now on the lynch mob meme comes from Slate.com media critic Jack Shafer (no right-winger he), quoted in Glenn Garvin’s Miami Herald article last week:

Media critic Shafer said the sheer immensity of the blog response forced the story onto newspaper front pages. ”What they were practicing was virtuous pack journalism,” he said. “Everybody thinks pack journalism is bad, but sometimes, like on 9/11, you want a pack. This was pack journalism at its best.”

Update: Jeff Jarvis takes on the New York Times. Sez Jarvis:

The New York Times media beat reporters got beaten badly on the Eason Jordan story — by [gasp] weblogs and cable news — and so how do they react? By catching up their readers on what they missed? Of course not. They react by lashing out at weblogs…The Times has blog issues.

Read the whole thing.

Update II: Andy McCarthy thwacks the WSJ with a clue-by-four. Captain Ed is disappointed. More on MSNBC.com and Joe Gandelman.

Beautiful Atrocities stages a smackdown.

Another Lucianne.com reader has a dead-on response to the WSJ editorial (Boston Tea Party, Reply 31):

This is not an editorial, it’s a hissy fit.

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