Unlike the Wall Street Journal, where an editor witnessed Eason Jordan's Davos commentary and waited two weeks to issue a dismissive report, Townhall remains on top of all developments in the Eason's Fables scandal. Today, Marvin Olasky contrasts the wan efforts of Bret Stephens by checking Lexis-Nexis instead of Google and discovering a strange imbalance in media response to journalistic scandal:

In January and early February, four American journalists came under fire to various degrees, as indicated by the number of Lexis-Nexis mentions during the month beginning Jan. 8: Armstrong Williams, 1,133; Maggie Gallagher, 238; Michael McManus, 43; Eason Jordan, 12. ...

Bloggers have reported the story extensively, often accusing Jordan of giving aid and comfort to terrorists and their appeasers. This is the type of story that's harder to cover than one in which dollars clearly change hands, but it may be a more subtle form of bribery. Fox is beating CNN in the United States, but CNN is No. 1 around the world and wants to stay that way. What better way than to kiss up to Europeans and Middle Easterners than by telling them what they want to believe about those awful Americans?

Olasky gives too much credit to Armstrong Williams, in my opinion; Williams actually sold his column out for propaganda purposes, and I have no desire to see him return to commentary. That unfortunately dilutes his defense of Maggie Gallagher, who just did some ghost-writing and pamphlet development for HHS, not at all the same. I'm less familiar with McManus' work, but his supposed sins wound up amounting to the same thing as Gallagher.

But Olasky hits the nail on the head with Eason Jordan, and so far as I've seen, uniquely so in any media treatment of the story. Jordan routinely makes these allegations overseas (as does Chris Cramer), where their global audiences have much more of a taste for anti-American rhetoric. Jordan understands that CNN needs to compete with the BBC for market share, and he's willing to sell out the US and our military to prop up CNNi's global credentials to keep the money flowing back to CNN and Time Warner. Unlike Armstrong Williams, Jordan is even willing to make slanderous allegations without even attempting to show any proof in order to suck up and perpetuate the virulent America-hatred in the international marketplace.

Mark Tapscott contributes to Townhall's C-Log, their own blog, and he stays on top of the story (Mark also reads CQ and comments frequently here). Yesterday, Mark noted several developments in the story, and promised to keep on top of breaking news. Keep C-Log in your list of resources as Eason's Fables gathers steam.

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