BROOKE GLADSTONE: From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. "Blog swarm" is the term now applied to the phenomenon whereby a critical mass of blogosphere chatter forces a story into the mainstream media. It happened on the Dan Rather story, it happened to Jeff (James D. Guckert)Gannon, and it is precisely what happened to CNN executive Eason Jordan who, if eyewitness accounts are accurate, suggested that US forces in Iraq had deliberately targeted journalists Jordan was speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in front of an audience that included Wall Street Journal editorial board member Bret Stevens, who was first among the mainstream media to write about the remarks. Bret, welcome to On the Media.

BRET STEVENS: Thanks for having me.

BOB GARFIELD: Bret, Eason Jordan has since resigned his position at CNN, where he worked for more than 20 years. A tape of his speech at Davos exists, but it hasn't been made public. You were there that day. What did he say?

BRET STEVENS: Basically, Jordan came out with a remark in which he seemed to suggest that US forces have not only killed, but actually targeted journalists operating in Iraq. And then he sort of let that statement hang, and Barney Frank, the congressman from Massachusetts who was on the panel, jumped in and asked him two questions - first, was it really the case that American soldiers were targeting journalists, and secondly, had CNN done a story about it. Mr. Jordan replied that CNN had not done a story on that specifically, and no, he didn't want to say that it was government policy to target journalists. Well, instead, he offered a series of other anecdotes, none of which seemed to involve the actual killing of journalists. Now, my impression, sitting in the audience, is that Mr. Jordan made a comment, and the moment he was challenged on it was trying very hard to walk it back.

BOB GARFIELD: When speculation grew over the following week, the, the Wall Street Journal seemed willing to cede the story to the bloggers. I mean you were there, you took notes, but you waited nearly two weeks before publishing your account in the daily newspaper.

BRET STEVENS: January 30th, Iraq held an election. February 3rd, I think, the president delivered a, a state of the union address. There were other large stories out there in the world, and it wasn't, in our view, the biggest story of the day. By the time I then wrote an op-ed for the Journal under my own name on February 10th, it had taken on a kind of life of its own. And so, once the blogosphere, in a sense, along with a few other newspapers, had sort of insisted on this issue, it seemed that it was appropriate, as I had been there from the beginning, to offer a comment about it.

BOB GARFIELD: There have been a number of analogies employed to describe this phenomenon of the blogosphere grabbing on to a story. One is white blood cells rushing to the site of, of an infection, and then there's always, of course, the, the French Revolution, where the mob simply started killing and burning, willy-nilly. What are we witnessing here? Is it - are we witnessing the French Revolution? Are we witnessing Lupus? What is it?

BRET STEVENS: First of all, I, I don't have a metaphor of my own, and I would be very reluctant to employ any of those metaphors, particularly the last one. Look - the blog world has, in fact, served I think a very useful and important civic function in driving attention to issues that other normal news outlets aren't covering for some reason. Now, in the case of Eason Jordan, I'm not sure that the blog world maintained the right sense of proportion, and this is why. Here, Mr. Jordan made a remark, and it seems that pretty quickly he realized it was a stupid remark. Now, I wonder how many of us haven't, in our lives, made some kind of comment and said to ourselves - Gee, I shouldn't have said that, and tried to un-say it. This was a story kind of driven on the right, to get a news executive who is seen as a liberal news executive, pushing a liberal agenda. Well, guess what? There's also a left wing blogosphere, and one day they're going to go after a right wing news executive. I'm worried about where that leads, especially when organizations like CNN seem to have allowed themselves to sort of be stampeded.

BOB GARFIELD: All right. Well, Bret, thanks so much.

BRET STEVENS: My pleasure.

BOB GARFIELD: Bret Stevens is on the editorial board at the Wall Street Journal.