Secondly, Ed Morrissey at Captain’s Quarters directly contacted the WEF about the tape. You can read their rationalizations there.

Why is Jordan out so fast?

Why was there almost no circling of the wagons?

Is Marianne Pearl & the marital breakup the problem?

How much of the problem?

OK, well, I’m just going to go ahead and jump in with a wounded pride response on this one.

It is a great craft and presents its own problems. But they are on a different level. There is a reason David E. Kelley makes a gazillion dollars and you never heard of Steve Lovelady until he attacked blogs.

There is a reason David E. Kelley makes a gazillion dollars and you never heard of Steve Lovelady, but it’s not because David E. Kelley is a TV producer and Steve Lovelady is a journalist.

I feel a need to point this out because just the other night I went to pick up my son at his friend’s house, and I got to talking & drinking wine with his parents, both of whom are attorneys.

They’ve just started to be unhappy with our school district’s newly adopted fuzzy math curriculum.

As some of you may have noticed, I’m way ahead of them on that one. I can now recite a complete oral history of the Math Wars on demand, and I have a track record on the Home Intervention front to boot. In the 6 months I’ve been home-tutoring my son in Saxon Math he has gone from flunking the last two-of-six unit tests in fourth grade to getting As on his first two Unit tests in 5th grade, to, just three weeks ago, being moved up to the accelerated ‘Phase 4′ math class–a unique event in the annals of our school’s history, it appears, where the normal movement mid-year is down, not up. So far he has 2 Bs in the new class, and he says today’s test was easy, which is a good sign.

So there I was, wowing everyone with my homeschooling prowess, when the other mom said, “You should teach all of our kids. We’ll send them to you.”

I was nodding and beaming and agreeing it would be a lot of fun to tutor their kids in math when she added, “You’d make a lot more money than you do in publishing.”

What happened next was that I just sat there staring blankly at her, not saying, Excuse me! I am a NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR! THAT DOES NOT MAKE ME DAVID E. KELLEY, BUT IT DOES MAKE ME, AT A MINIMUM, A PERSON WHO WILL NOT MAKE MORE MONEY TUTORING YOUR CHILDREN IN MATH THAN I WILL ‘IN PUBLISHING.’

After I didn’t say that, I went on to not add that, until now, my main stock in trade has been persuading publishing companies to pay me more than I am worth; i.e., there has been no time throughout my work life in publishing when I would have made more money tutoring other people’s children than I did (and will) writing books and magazine articles.

I realize I have just confirmed Roger’s point that journalists are not David E. Kelley. David E. Kelley, I think we can all safely assume, probably does not sit around thinking ‘It would be wrong to brag‘ when he has been severely dissed.

David E. Kelley probably does not get severely dissed in the normal course of affairs.

But seeing as how I blew my lines so egregiously the other night I’m taking advantage of Roger’s post to point out that there is a whole big, huge range of nonfiction journalistic writing that, if not remotely David Kelley-like in financial return, is more than adequate to pay the bills. And you don’t have to deal with TV actors and 30-year old network executives to do it.

I’m sorry.

I had to say that.

Here’s my point.

I’m reading MONEYBALL today, which is pure gold (and highly motivating on the math front, that’s for sure). If I got to choose between David E. Kelley’s life and Michael Lewis’s, my pick would be Michael Lewis, hands down.

I’d bet the ranch Steve Lovelady feels the same way.

Precisely because it does not involve special knowledge or estoteric skills, people in journalism will be highly protective of their special professional status.

Schonfeld also repeats the discredited narrative of the Palestine Hotel incident. I believe that Eason Jordan’s indiscretion in Amman has been previously reported.

Let 1000 Deep Throats bloom.

Eason Jordan Now Has Blood on His Hands

Eason Jordan may have gotten U.S. spies/informants killed according to Reese Schoenfeld, CNN co-founder.

Jordan has been breaking new ground in journalistic ethics over the past few years for CNN. First, we discovered through him a few years ago that CNN sat on stories of Saddam’s treaty violations for over ten years to position itself favorably with his government. Then we just heard his outrageous claim that the U.S. military was intentionally targeting journalists.

So this morning, on Fox & Friends, Reese Schonfeld tells Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade that Jordan leaked the names of two CIA-recruited operatives while he was in Amman. Knowing that Amman was a “sieve” to Baghdad as Schonfeld claimed, Jordan led Saddam’s government to these informants and got them killed. Schonfeld was not clear as to whether these were U.S.-recruited Iraqi informants or actual American operatives out of Langley, but it really makes no difference.

The funny thing is that there is no reason to leak such people’s names other than to expose them. Which raises another question of journalistic ethics: were these guys sources of his? And did he, against the canons of journalism, reveal their identities because he didn’t like the nature of the help they were giving the U.S.?

This is no longer a case of journalistic bias, but rather treason. This man may have gotten American human intelligence assets killed. Knowing that CNN was complicit in Saddam’s illegal activities to get scoops, this report leaves the impression that Jordan may have done this to prevent the government from undercutting Saddam’s Iraq and/or to retain CNN’s favored position with that government.

CORRECTION:

It wasn’t Iraq’s treaty violations (although we don’t know what CNN knew), but rather the human rights abuses of Saddam upon which they sat. My pre-coffee mistake.

I think they have every reason to feel both jealous and threatened, because the caliber of writing of many in the blogosphere (including, naturally, our esteemed host!) so often surpasses that in the MSM. The caliber of thinking and of research, particularly among some of the lawyer-bloggers such as Powerline, often surpasses anything usually seen in the MSM, who feel the hot breath of the bloggers on their necks.

As with many other news stories, the interesting (and often telling) part is the silences.

Jordan & CNN could have said something like, “the tape backs up my story, but we do not have authority to release it.” Instead, Jordan & CNN were silent here.

They could have acknowledged the fact that Jordan had made similar remarks in the past, already reported in the press. Instead, they were silent here.

Or they could have said that there was truth to Jordan’s claims, but that he didn’t have the evidence to back it up on the spot. Silence here too.

They could have said they were working on a story and that Jordan got ahead of himself and/or exaggerated. Nope. Silence.

I think the bloggers & their audiences reacted to these silences at least as much as to what CNN & Jordan were willing to say.