Eason Jordan

Eason Jordan was chief news executive for CNN prior to his February 14, 2005, resignation, which followed "more than a week of controversy over his remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on January 27, in which Jordan allegedly suggested that American forces in Iraq had deliberately killed journalists."

In the February 14, 2005, edition of the Boston Globe, Kathy Young wrote that "One oddity is that, so far, no one knows exactly what Jordan said. No videotape or transcript of his remarks has been made public, apparently because the forum's rules forbid it -- though pressure to release the video was mounting when Jordan quit."

When he attempted to clarify his remarks, according to Young, "Jordan replied that what he meant was that some journalists were killed intentionally rather than accidentally -- but because of 'mistaken identity' (i.e. being mistaken for insurgents), not because they were journalists. A CNN statement issued before Jordan's resignation reiterated this explanation and asserted that his widely criticized remarks were misunderstood."

It can be assumed that Jordan was knowledgable on events in Iraq. Nearly two years earlier, on April 11, 2003, Jordan's article "The News We Kept to Ourselves" was published by The New York Times:


 * "Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard — awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff."

At the time, Jordan was referring to the actions promoted by Saddam Hussein. He resigned due to actions promoted or, at the very least, which occurred following the much touted regime change in Iraq.

SourceWatch Resources

 * Hiawatha Bray
 * Jeff Gannon
 * Jeff Gannon/External Links
 * manufactured journalism
 * manufactured journalism/External Links
 * media
 * mucky media
 * war in Iraq