Can the MSM stonewall on Eason Jordan's vicious slander?

Of course! I'd say the odds are more likely than not that the MSM will simply refuse to address this story no matter what the blogosphere does.

Think about the lessons the MSM learned from Rathergate and the SwiftVets affair. They learned never to let the camel in the tent from the beginning.

And it is not like they haven't gotten away with stonewalls many times before. Bloggers cannot force the MSM to address an issue any more than talk radio could a decade ago. Talk radio reached tens of millions of Americans during the Clinton administration, but that didn't stop the MSM from stonewalling critical stories.

* Washington insiders said that evidence of Clinton's rape of Jaunita Brodderick was the last straw in convincing hesitant members of Congress to vote for impeachment. NBC and the Wall Street Journal actually covered the story. Tens of millions heard of it. Yet, the MSM closed ranks and stonewalled it. The LA Times even censored mention of Clinton as a rapist from one of George Will's columns.

* In December 1998 (at the height of impeachment), a federal district judge published an opinion outlining a massive effort to obstruct justice in the Commerce Department with evidence that it was directed from the inner circle of the White House. Readers of certain web sites and listeners of some talk radio hosts heard all about it, but the MSM completely stonewalled.

* Talk radio listeners and readers of certain web sites knew that James Carville had admitted that Hillary Clinton had fabricated lies on four different occasions in an effort to try to explain her corrupt cattle futures payoffs. MSM pitched a complete shutout of the admission.

* David Schippers, a Democrat, wrote a book about his investigation for Janet Reno into the INS scandal of 1996. Justice Department investigators determined that over 100,000 serious criminals were turned loose on the streets of the US rather than be deported as required by law because Al Gore wanted an extra million votes. MSM pitched another shutout.

From Year of the Rat to Hillary's admissions of mindnumbing incompetence in the health care task force litigation, the number of other stories successfully stonewalled is huge.

Here's the bottom line -- the MSM has already pulled off a variety of stonewalls of stories even when tens of millions of Americans knew the facts. Given that Fox News may not wish to be perceived as attacking rival CNN, I don't see any reason why they can't do it again for Eason Jordan. Should they be embarrassed? Of course, but when has that ever mattered before?

UPDATE --

Thanks to Deacon at Power Line for the link. I really hope that Deacon is right in his belief (he acknowledges that it may be more of a hope) that the blogosphere can force the hand of the MSM on stories. Commentators today have said that the dam seems to be breaking on this story because Kurtz wrote on it in the WaPo and the NY Sun has a story (also a couple of mentions on cable shows). I don't know that this presages a flood in the MSM. Kurtz has written a puff piece defending Jordan and ignoring the contradictions. I'm not sure how this pressures anyone else in the MSM to address the story. The cable comments and the NY Sun don't qualify and hardly create any pressure.