CNN Executive Resigns Post Over Remarks

Eason Jordan, a senior executive at CNN who was responsible for coordinating the cable network's Iraq coverage, resigned abruptly last night, citing a journalistic tempest he touched off during a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, late last month in which he appeared to suggest that United States troops were targeting and killing journalists.

Though no transcript of Mr. Jordan's remarks at Davos on Jan. 27 has been released, the panel's moderator, David Gergen, editor at large of U.S. News & World Report, said in an interview last night that Mr. Jordan had initially spoken of soldiers, "on both sides," who he believed had been "targeting" some of the more than five dozen journalists killed in Iraq.

But almost immediately after making that assertion, Mr. Jordan, whose title at CNN had been executive vice president and chief news executive, "quickly walked that back to make it clear that there was no policy on the part of the U.S. government to target or injure journalists," Mr. Gergen said.

Mr. Jordan was then challenged by Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, who was in the audience, and then said that he had intended to say only that some journalists had been killed by American troops who did not know they were aiming their weapons at journalists.

Nonetheless, accounts of Mr. Jordan's remarks were soon being reported on Web logs as well as in an article on Feb. 3 on the National Review's Web site. Ann Cooper, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalist, said that 54 journalists were killed in 2003 and 2004 . At least nine died as a result of American fire, she said.

In a memorandum released to his colleagues last night, Mr. Jordan, 44, who had worked at the network for more than two decades, said he had "decided to resign in an effort to prevent CNN from being unfairly tarnished by the controversy over conflicting accounts of my most recent remarks regarding the alarming number of journalists killed in Iraq."

In a separate e-mail message to the staff, Jim Walton, president of CNN News Group, a division of Time Warner, announced Mr. Jordan's resignation, which took effect immediately, before praising his 23 years of service at the network. "CNN's global newsgathering infrastructure is largely his vision and achievement," Mr. Walton said.

In accepting Mr. Jordan's resignation, CNN appeared intent on putting the episode behind it as quickly as possible, perhaps in an effort to avoid repeating the drawn-out tensions between CBS News and the Bush administration last fall. After broadcasting a report critical of President Bush's Vietnam-era National Guard service in early September, CBS defended the report, in the face of criticism on Web logs, for more than a week before announcing that it could not substantiate it.

Asked last night if CNN had had any contact with the Bush administration over the fallout from Mr. Jordan's remarks, a network spokeswoman, Christa Robinson, said, "Not that I'm aware of."

Asked if Mr. Jordan had been under any pressure from the network to resign, Ms. Robinson said he had not. She said Mr. Walton, the CNN president, was unavailable for further comment. Mr. Jordan did not return a message left on his cellphone seeking comment. Mr. Jordan, who once had day-to-day responsibility for CNN's international coverage, is no stranger to controversy.

In April 2003, he wrote an Op-Ed article in The New York Times saying that CNN had essentially suppressed news of brutalities in Saddam Hussein's Iraq that he thought could jeopardize the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on CNN's Baghdad staff.

"I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me," he wrote. "Now that Saddam Hussein's regime is gone, I suspect we will hear many, many more gut-wrenching tales from Iraqis about the decades of torment. At last, these stories can be told freely."

The head of one of the largest world known cable systems says that the "coalition" (if that is what he said, I thought he said U.S. military at first) is targeting journalist during a war and Howie thinks it would have just "fizzled" out?

Not too long ago, it would have fizzled out. Howie and his pals would have made sure of it by clamping down hard on it, and smearing anyone who dared to leak any details that might make one of their own look bad. We don't allow them that luxury any more, and they are literally beside themselves about it.

I just love how Kurtz, after denouncing the bloggers for unfairly (in his mind) taking down Jordan, then tries to give some of the credit for it to his buddies at the liberal blogs. His statement that the leftist blogs were after Jordan as well is pure BS - just like their Dinosaur Media soulmates, the liberal blogs tried their best to spike the whole story.

As far as Gergen goes, every time I think I can't gin up any more loathing and contempt for him, he opens his mouth and makes it so easy.

Jordan is a total sleaze.....this is old, but not forgotten:

Cross-Examining Jordan
Eason Jordan's admission of complicity with Saddam's regime raises a host of questions that must be answered by CNN.
by Hugh Hewitt
04/15/2003 11:30:00 AM
https://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/552eflru.asp
Hugh Hewitt, contributing writer

Last Friday, CNN's Eason Jordan published an op-ed in the New York Times that contained some admissions that cannot be considered as anything other than astonishing. CNN's "chief news executive" confessed that, among other things, Saddam's crazy son Uday had told Eason in 1995 that he, Uday, intended to assassinate two of his brothers-in-law. The two men were not warned by CNN and were eventually lured back into Iraq where they were murdered.

Jordan said in his Times essay that he felt awful having these stories "bottled up inside me." Not as bad as the brothers-in-law felt, of course, but pretty bad. Jordan went on to confess that during his watch CNN also failed to report other tales of the Hussein regime's towering brutality.

Some observers exploded in outrage at CNN's complicity in the crimes of Saddam Inc. Still others asked why Jordan chose to make his confession now. In fact, there are a series of questions that need answering in short order. CNN is, after all, part of a publicly traded company with obligations to its investors. Jordan's decisions have tainted CNN's reputation, undermining the key asset of a news gathering organization--credibility. (Last October Jordan even misled the New Republic's Franklin Foer on the very subject of CNN's reporting on Baghdad, as Foer recounted in yesterday's Wall Street Journal.) CNN's credibility may be beyond salvage, but any serious effort at holding itself out as a reliable news source will have to follow full disclosure of key questions,
some of which the SEC might also be interested in. These questions include:

Did Jordan disclose his decision not to disclose the threat to Hussein's sons-in-law to anyone above him in the CNN/Time-Warner chain of command? If so, when did he do so?

Did the board of directors of Time-Warner approve the policy of non-disclosure? Did they receive a legal opinion on whether such a non-disclosure constituted a breach of reporting duties for a publicly-traded company? Was there ever a discussion on whether such a policy could endanger shareholder value by putting at risk the central asset of a news-gathering and news-reporting company, specifically, its credibility?

Once Jordan was aware of the threats to employees of CNN, who were Iraqi nationals, did he inform prospective employees of those threats before hiring them? Was the policy of exposing Iraqi nationals to risk of torture and death discussed with senior CNN management and Time-Warner management?

Once Uday informed Jordan of his threat to his brothers-in-law, did he ever again mention the subject to Jordan? Did it occur to Jordan that, having secured his acquiescence in their deaths, Uday would consider CNN compromised and thus easily manipulated?

Has Jordan failed to reveal other non-disclosures that reasonable people would consider material?

Did Jordan previously disclose any or all of these revelations to any official from the United States government?

Will CNN be appointing a special counsel to conduct an internal review of the handling of this matter? Will Time-Warner's board be appointing such a special counsel?

Will Jordan appear before any committee of Congress which investigates this matter? Will members of CNN staff and Time-Warner management appear?

Are there any similar non-disclosure deals at work in Cuba, Syria, the Palestinian territories, Burma, or any other country in which CNN maintains a presence?
Will Jordan make himself available for interviews by competing networks and major newspapers?
Those will do for starters.
Hugh Hewitt is the host of The Hugh Hewitt Show, a nationally syndicated radio talkshow, and a contributing writer to The Daily Standard.
https://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/552eflru.asp

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