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."

And another one bites the dust.

February 11, 2005
Crossing The Jordan: What Comes Next After Eason Gets Eased Out?
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/003811.php

Now that CNN has solved its Eason Jordan problem, at least for the moment, the next question we must ask is who takes his place. One of the candidates for Jordan's job, especially considering the importance of its international service, has to be Chris Cramer, currently president of CNN International. Jordan lured Cramer away from the BBC several years ago, and judging from Cramer's public statements, a shared revulsion of Western militaries formed part of the mutual attraction. Cramer may receive less scrutiny than Jordan, but his track record looks remarkably similar.

Several instances appear in my CNN category. For instance, Cramer gave this speech to the International News Safety Institute in November 2003, recommending in emotional terms a book by Nik Gowing called Dying To Tell The Story, a book which alleges a deliberate policy of assassinating journalists by the US military as a means of removing accountability from the battlefield. Cramer said this:

I want to commend to you the very sad, very traumatic and very important book which INSI has backed from the start.
It’s a first of its kind.

A detailed tribute to each and every one of our colleagues who died or went missing.

Important contributions from the freelance community.

From the security industry.

From Nik Gowing on the worrying trend of journalists who died at the hands of the coalition - in the crossfire - through screw ups - however you want to portray it.

"However you want to portray it" appears to be Cramer's motto for news management. Last September, in an interview with Businessworld India, Cramer continued his strange and completely unsupported allegations:

But the profession is in trouble. Around the world, there is scepticism about journalists. Some even want them killed. This year more than 60 journalists have died in Iraq and we are just into August. ...
There is no alchemy involved in accessing news. People can find it themselves. So what you offer them is your version. Plus, the Hutton Enquiry and some incidents in the US show bad journalism. So trust is down.

Cramer has a long and strange relationship with the British military as well. In 1980, a group of purportedly Iranian terrorists took over the Iranian embassy in London, capturing 23 hostages -- including BBC reporter Chris Cramer and his partner, soundman Sim Harris. Cramer faked a heart attack to get the terrorists to throw him out of the embassy the next day, but five days later the terrorists killed one of the remaining hostages. After the British commando team SAS debriefed Cramer, they stormed the embassy and killed all but one of the terrorists while saving 19 of the remaining 21 hostages. Operation Nimrod is widely considered one of the most successful counterterrorism operations in recent history.

Instead of being grateful for the SAS rescuing his partner -- who pointed out the sixth terrorist to the SAS as the Iranian/Iraqi attempted to hide among the freed hostages -- Cramer described the SAS in terms that sounds unsettlingly familiar to those who monitor radical leftists:

And I was released after 27 hours into the hands of the Metropolitan Police in London and two days later into a dreadful bunch of terrorists called the SAS, who were probably worse than the terrorists inside the Iranian embassy.
And four and a half days later, Maggie Thatcher, in one of her rare moments of triumph, deployed the SAS in broad daylight to storm the embassy and they rescued all but maybe one or two of the hostages. Two were murdered. The SAS conveniently took out five members of the terrorist group and forgot to take out the sixth. So that was my brief, humbling experience

Chris Cramer has just as much antipathy towards Western military organizations as Eason Jordan, and his public statements also show the same lack of restraint and substantiation as the erstwhile news chief. If CNN selects Cramer to succeed Jordan as president, then we have gained nothing. CNN needs to clean house at the highest levels and ask Cramer to follow Jordan out of CNN's executive offices.

We will watch their next move. We will not allow yet another serial slanderer to take charge of a major news organization without setting the record straight.

Posted by Captain Ed at February 11, 2005 10:17 PM

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