Was Jordan caught trying to create a new (false) meme?

Jim Geraghty at TKS has the most comprehensive report yet on a story I’ve read about – disjointedly – all over the internet today. Apparently Eason Jordan, yakking away at the Davos conference, went a bit too far…so far that even Barney Frank was having none of it.

And yes, this is the same Eason Jordan who, yakking again, claimed that while with CNN he had witnessed atrocities in Iraq which went unreported, so that CNN could stay in Baghdad. The guy is just shameless.

Eason Jordan, Chief News Executive at CNN, implied that the American military was deliberately killing journalists in Iraq. He even “offered the story of an Al-Jazeera journalist who had been ‘tortured for weeks’ at Abu Ghraib, made to eat his shoes, and called “Al Jazeera boy” by his American captors.”

And then, this liberal Democrat pressed Mr. Jordan to be more specific, putting the CNN Executive on the spot. The newsman rambled on a bit and mumbled some sort of response about how “‘There are people who believe there are people in the military who have it out’ for journalists.” He could provide no evidence to buttress his claims, then “offered another anecdote: A reporter who’d been standing in a long line to get through a checkpoint at Baghdad’s Green Zone had been turned back by the GI on duty. Apparently the soldier had been displeased with the reporter’s dispatches, and sent him to the back of the line.”

Had Mr. Frank not challenged him, the global elites there might have taken Jordan’s words at face value, convinced that Americans were indiscriminately targeting journalists. Thanks to Barney Frank, world leaders assembled in Davos learned that there was no substance to such claims.

UPDATE: Captain Ed gets to the crux of the issue – as to why this is so terribly disturbing.

The question must be asked of Eason Jordan, especially in light of last week’s events in Davos, as to his true motivations of his oddball sense of ethics. He refuses to report real stories of atrocities when they involve genocidal tyrants that just happen to oppose the United States — but has no problem passing along rumors of atrocities that slander the American military. Does the protection of innocent life really lie at the heart of Jordan’s calculations, or is it something more sinister and political? From where I sit, it looks like Jordan has a lot more interest in damaging American security interests than in reporting truth to the world.

He has more, with more concerns based on what Jordan said in 2002, updated here.