reporters
By John Cook
Tribune staff reporter
Published February 12, 2005
CNN's top news executive resigned Friday following weeks of scrutiny over comments he made that have been interpreted as an accusation that the U.S. military deliberately targeted journalists in Iraq.
Eason Jordan, the cable news channel's executive vice president, told colleagues in a letter that he was stepping down "in an effort to prevent CNN from being unfairly tarnished by the controversy over conflicting accounts of my recent remarks regarding the alarming number of journalists killed in Iraq."
Those remarks, delivered at a panel of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January, ignited a firestorm of controversy stoked in large part by Internet bloggers.
At Davos, Jordan said he knew of at least 12 journalists who had been killed deliberately by U.S. troops in Iraq, according to accounts by observers published in The Wall Street Journal and a Web log devoted to the World Economic Forum. (The session was taped, but no transcript has been released.) Though Jordan quickly backpedaled from the accusation in the face of challenges from others present, including Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), his comments were almost immediately seized on by critics of CNN.
Bloggers, including many who espouse conservative political positions and have accused CNN of harboring a hidden left-wing bias, accused Jordan of making false allegations and demanded his resignation.
Jordan told The Washington Post on Tuesday that his comments had been misinterpreted.
"I was trying to make a distinction between `collateral damage' and people who got killed in other ways," he said. "I have never once in my life thought anyone from the U.S. military tried to kill a journalist. Never meant to suggest that."
In his letter to colleagues, Jordan insisted he never "stated, believed, or suspected that U.S. military forces intended to kill people they knew to be journalists," but acknowledged that his comments "were not as clear as they should have been."
The Committee to Protect Journalists said 36 journalists have been killed in Iraq in the war, 11 by fire from U.S. forces.
Jordan's resignation marks the end of a 23-year career at CNN as one of its most powerful and influential executives; much of his time at CNN was spent building and running the network's global newsgathering operations. But Jordan's power was severely circumscribed in a corporate reorganization in 2003, and insiders said Jordan was unhappy with a job that essentially made him a figurehead.
"It seems like a dumb thing to have said," said a highly placed CNN source who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Mostly he had the role of being the embodiment of CNN's journalism domestically and internationally, and having said the things he apparently said, it would have been difficult to go forward. But in a sense, he'd already been paved over. He was a chief of state, as opposed to an operating officer."
It was not the first time that Jordan generated controversy. In April 2003, he wrote in a New York Times op-ed that CNN had declined to report several instances of torture, murder and other depredations by Saddam Hussein and his sons for fear of endangering CNN employees in Iraq. That led critics to accuse him of abetting Hussein's dictatorship.
"He's developed a reputation for saying provocative things and having to correct himself," said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
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