Vodka Pundit seconds the Wall St. Journal’s opinion on the Eason Jordan story that maybe it’s not such a big deal.

Jordan is Executive VP of CNN and if you who don’t know the story, you shouldn’t feel uninformed. The Mainstream Media (MSM) outlets have once again circled the wagons and decided that nothing is a story until they say it’s a story. So chalk up another one to talk radio and the blogosphere. Honestly, this is just like shooting fish in a barrel sometimes.

Here is WSJ’s synopsis of the facts:

Jordan initially claimed [at a January 27 panel discussion at the World Economic Conference in Switzerland] 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.

In other words, his totally inflammatory statements were false. But who in the world would believe such incredible accusations?

Well, other reporters apparently, judging from the fact that the UK Guardian reported it without question. Is the Guardian going to report the follow-up — that CNN is scrambling to do damage control and Jordan has abruptly resigned? Not bloody likely. So those who only want to hear the worst about the war and our troops will never receive the message that they’ve been lied to once again.

I don’t think this story is overhyped. How can I when the same people keep making the same mistakes over and over and over? But I think the bigger and better moral to the story is that the times are changing. There’s nothing new to the MSM’s antagonism to the armed forces. What’s new is that more and more, there are pinholes of light appearing in the suffocating shroud of opinion passed off as objective fact that has been woven for decades. To the mainstream media, I think it must feel like the end of the world. To me, it seems like a very, very good thing. I don’t think it would’ve been possible even ten years ago for this story to be told. There simply wouldn’t have been anybody to report on it, because the news media held the monopoly and they would’ve believed the story implicitly. The truth — that our soldiers are apparently not responding to the media’s criticism by torturing and killing them — is apparently harder for them to swallow.

The truth is always hard. Lies are easy. It won’t be easy for the coming generation to do away with all of the lies. In the darkened perceptions of the old-style journalist, paranoia is reasonable and cynicism is inescapable. But God willing, the children growing up now won’t have reason to be either paranoid or cynical and will have more balanced and fair sources to give them a truer picture of the events of the world than is possible for us today.