Normally, I read the OpinionJournal every day, although I rarely link to it; I agree with most of what they write and don't have much to add. Imagine my surprise, then, this morning when they not only clearly demonstrate that they learned nothing from the Eason Jordan debacle, but also attack the bloggers who participated in holding him accountable for his actions. In their unsigned editorial, the WSJ lashes out at CQ and the rest of the blogosphere for driving Jordan out of his job:

By now, everyone on the Good Ship Earth knows that this particular story ended Friday with Mr. Jordan's abrupt resignation from CNN. This has certain pundits chirping delightedly. It has been a particular satisfaction to the right wing of the so-called "blogosphere," the community of writers on the Web that has pushed the Eason story relentlessly and sees it as the natural sequel to the Dan Rather fiasco of last year.

As for Mr. Jordan, he initially claimed that U.S. forces in Iraq had targeted and killed 12 journalists. Perhaps he intended to offer no further specifics in order to leave an impression of American malfeasance in the minds of his audience, but there is no way of knowing for sure. What we do know is that when fellow panelist Representative Barney Frank pressed Mr. Jordan to be specific, the CNN executive said he did not believe it was deliberate U.S. government policy to target journalists. Pressed further, Mr. Jordan could only offer that "there are people who believe there are people in the military who have it out" for journalists, and cite two examples of non-lethal abuse of journalists by ordinary GIs.

None of this does Mr. Jordan credit. Yet the worst that can reasonably be said about his performance is that he made an indefensible remark from which he ineptly tried to climb down at first prompting. This may have been dumb but it wasn't a journalistic felony.

The editors at the WSJ, once again following Bret Stephens' lead, only tell the part of the story that advances their opinion. Nowhere yet in the OpinionJournal forum has the writers or editors addressed the fact that Davos was not an isolated incident. I find this distressingly odd, since the WSJ obviously knows of the earlier incidents. In fact, they reported on them today, in an article by Jack Flint on page B1 of the WSJ:

Mr. Jordan's new appointment as chief news executive came only months after he penned an opinion piece for The New York Times in which he said CNN had held back on reporting some of the brutalities of Saddam Hussein to protect the network's Iraqi staffers. Some commentators accused the network of considering access to Iraqi officials to be more important than accurate coverage.

In his new post, described by some as CNN's "secretary of state," Mr. Jordan still traveled the globe but in a more diplomatic role. It was also around then that the exuberant Mr. Jordan, who had been good at putting out fires, began setting them, much to chagrin of CNN brass. Prior to his remarks at the World Economic Forum, Mr. Jordan had made similar comments about journalists killed in Iraq at a conference in Portugal late last year.

Opinionjournal's editors cannot claim ignorance of the Portugal comments, which demolishes the notion of the entire hubbub resulting from one "indefensible remark". Why don't they mention that earlier comment, or even the one made by Jordan in October 2002 about the Israeli military that turned out to be just as false? Perhaps they got too steamed over my assertion that Stephens failed to disclose a connection to Eason Jordan to think rationally:

It is for this reason that we were not inclined to write further about the episode after our first report. For this we have since been accused of conspiring on Mr. Jordan's behalf. One Web accusation is that Mr. Stephens is--with 2,000 others--a fellow of the World Economic Forum, thereby implying a collusive relationship with Mr. Jordan, who sits on one of the WEF's boards. If this is a "conflict of interest," the phrase has ceased to mean anything at all.

I assume that the OJ editors read my objection or that of the Dinocrat, and they have mischaracterized the conflict in any case. Stephens belongs to the Forum of Young Global Leaders, which has exactly 1,111 members and is closely affiliated with the World Economic Forum, which means Stephens has an interest to protect with the WEF that he did not disclose. The YGL forum appears to fall under the purview of none other than Eason Jordan, whose bio describes him as a member of the WEF's Global Leaders of Tomorrow programme. Whether or not that influenced Stephens' reporting is only known by Stephens, but that connection should have been disclosed to WSJ/OJ readers, and the OJ's defense of his silence speaks volumes about their editorial standards. (They also made my mistake of calling Jordan a "board member" of WEF, which I retracted here, so I'm fairly sure that the OJ has my blog in mind.)

The poor response of the OJ to repeated, unsubstantiated allegations of American military atrocities by the chief news executive of a global media outlet was bad enough. This attempt at shifting blame to the people who did the work they should have been doing all along shows that the WSJ/OJ operate under the same blinders as their counterparts in the more mainstream media outlets, and as a result, risk the same irrelevancy.

UPDATE and BUMP, 4:12 PM: Hugh Hewitt reports that Bret Stephens wrote the editorial. Now, look at this section of the passage:

It is for this reason that we were not inclined to write further about the episode after our first report. For this we have since been accused of conspiring on Mr. Jordan's behalf. One Web accusation is that Mr. Stephens is--with 2,000 others--a fellow of the World Economic Forum, thereby implying a collusive relationship with Mr. Jordan, who sits on one of the WEF's boards. If this is a "conflict of interest," the phrase has ceased to mean anything at all.

So now Bret Stephens has fallen to defending his own work and dismissing his own conflict of interest under the imprimatur of an unsigned editorial -- and the WSJ wants us to understand that they see no conflict on this? No wonder the OpinionJournal.com response page has yet to be updated.

More from the Dinocrat, which first noted this conflict.

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