Everything I Know About Eason Jordan I Learned In The Blogosphere

Steve Green writes that Howard Kurtz finally has an article in the Washington Post about Eason Jordan, the man whose network also employs Kurtz as a host. Unfortunately, it sounds like it’s too little too late, if you’ve been a regular reader of the various Weblogs who have been all over this story since early last week (scroll down for links to several of them):

Thanks to a heads-up from reader Fred Manzo, I’ve read Kurtz’s piece — and there’s not one damn thing in it I hadn’t already read in the last week. There’s no “additional reporting” here that I can see. There’s nothing new in Kurtz’s news.

Kurtz is getting big bucks and WaPo-level prestige for giving us what the blogosphere had a week ago for free?

Hey, at least the story is starting to escape the Blogosphere; that’s something at least. But it wouldn’t be the first time where the members of the Blogosphere know more collectively than a single superstar columnist.

It’s the long tail at work!

Update: Via Captain Ed (still no relation, but now permalinked on my links page), here’s a link to Kurtz’s article. And like Steve, the Captain is none too happy with it:

It took Kurtz over a week to finally get around to publishing this article on Eason’s Fables. In that time, it appears that Kurtz did as little investigation as possible on Jordan. My readers and I found all of Jordan’s earlier commentary within 24 hours, and we only have very limited access to Nexis and full-time jobs doing other things than media analysis. Worse than that, all of this information has been repeatedly presented on my blog — in fact, it was all presented on my blog today, and we know Howard Kurtz read my blog sometime this afternoon. Why didn’t Kurtz ask about his remarks in Portugal from three months ago, or about his identical accusations against Israel two years ago? Why didn’t Kurtz press Jordan on the entire story? Only Kurtz can answer that, and I doubt he will have much more to say to anyone about Eason’s Fables from this point onward.

Kurtz took the most superficial look at Eason’s Fables possible, allowing both Kurtz and Jordan to reclaim some credibility while effectively closing the door on the story. We all know that Kurtz does better work than this. It’s enough to make his readers — myself an enthusiastic one up to now — wonder if Mickey Kaus didn’t get it right earlier today.

Captain Ed has owned this story since last week. If you’re not up to speed on Jordan’s transgressions just click on over and start scrolling.