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February 11, 2005

Eason Jordan Resigns

He was silent and CNN wouldn't report it, but he couldn't run away from his comments alleging that the U.S. military was deliberately killing journalists in Iraq. Eason Jordan resigns:

NEW YORK (AP) - CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan quit Friday amid a furor over remarks he made in Switzerland last month about journalists killed by the U.S. military in Iraq. Jordan said he was quitting to avoid CNN being "unfairly tarnished" by the controversy.

During a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum last month, Jordan said he believed that several journalists who were killed by coalition forces in Iraq had been targeted.

He quickly backed off the remarks, explaining that he meant to distinguish between journalists killed because they were in the wrong place when a bomb fell, for example, and those killed because they were shot at by American forces who mistook them for the enemy.

"I never meant to imply U.S. forces acted with ill intent when U.S. forces accidentally killed journalists, and I apologize to anyone who thought I said or believed otherwise," Jordan said in a memo to fellow staff members at CNN.

But the damage had been done, compounded by the fact that no transcript of his actual remarks has turned up. He was the target of an Internet and Web site campaign that was beginning to rival the one launched against CBS's Dan Rather following the network's ill-fated story last fall about President Bush's military service.

A Web site, Easongate.com, was created and distributed a petition this week calling on CNN to find a transcript and fire Jordan if he said the military had intentionally killed journalists.

The Web site had been preparing Friday to post information to help its supporters contact CNN's advertisers. A message posted on the site after Jordan's resignation said its authors were pleased with the outcome but still want a videotape of the economic forum released.

"To every reader, commentator, e-mailer and blogger that committed to this cause, thank you," a message on the Web site read. "This is a victory for every soldier who has honorably served this nation. To you we devote this victory."

After several management restructurings at CNN, Jordan actually had no current operational responsibility over network programming. But he was CNN's chief fix-it man overseas, arranging coverage in dangerous or hard-to-reach parts of the world.

"I have decided to resign 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," Jordan said.

"I have devoted my professional life to helping make CNN the most trusted and respected news outlet in the world, and I would never do anything to compromise my work or that of the thousands of talented people it is my honor to work alongside," he said.

Jordan joined CNN in 1982 as an assistant assignment editor on the national news desk. He has won the Emmy, duPont and Peabody journalism awards.

CNN's global newsgathering infrastructure is chiefly the result of Jordan's work, said Jim Walton, chief of the CNN News Group.

"Eason's service to CNN and support of the people at every level of our organization is legend," Walton said. "He leaves us with our gratitude, respect and best wishes."

Jeff Jarvis:

He could have called his muckety-buddies at Davos and gotten the tape and released a transcript and admitted his error and apologized for it. But he didn't. I repeat: I don't get it. Could it be that he watched the tape and saw that it was a killer? But how could it have been worse than what was reported already?

Or could it be that this was a final straw with his bosses, who said that he'd marched on his tongue once too often? If that is the case, then the bosses sure took a long time to decide that.

Oh, yeah, I used to work at Time Warner. They do take a long time to decide anything. It's not easy getting task forces to meet.

Here's what has always amazed me about my business: News people, who are used by PR people, are the worst at figuring out their own PR.

Captain Ed:

The moral of the story: the media can't just cover up the truth and expect to get away with it -- and journalists can't just toss around allegations without substantiation and expect people to believe them anymore.

Jay Rosen has Jordan's statement:

While my CNN colleagues and my friends in the U.S. military know me well enough to know I have never stated, believed, or suspected that U.S. military forces intended to kill people they knew to be journalists, my comments on this subject in a World Economic Forum panel discussion were not as clear as they should have been.

I never meant to imply U.S. forces acted with ill intent when U.S. forces accidentally killed journalists, and I apologize to anyone who thought I said or believed otherwise. I have great admiration and respect for the men and women of the U.S. armed forces, with whom I have worked closely and been embedded in Baghdad, Tikrit, and Mosul, in addition to my time with American soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen in Afghanistan, former Yugoslavia, Somalia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the Arabian Gulf.

The problem here is that many present at the session believed that he did mean it, and that he backed off not from a sincere sense of regret over a poor choice of words, but rather he sensed he was getting himself in a lot of potential hot water.

Also, Jordan fails to acknowledge that he had accused the U.S. military on a prior occasion of targeting journalists for torture, as has been well documented. This does not lend credence to Jordan's assertion that he never meant to imply that the U.S. military had not deliberately targeted journalists, killing twelve of them.

More from Easongate.

Hindrocket:

You may not have heard it here first, but you did hear it here. On February 7, I wrote: "This story is playing out in excruciatingly slow motion, but the ending has already been written: Eason Jordan is finished."

Betsy's Page:

I hate to contribute to the blogosphere's triumphalism, but I don't see how this can be viewed as anything else but a victory for the blogs. It was a blogger, Rony Abovitz, who first posted the story and it grew from there. After Trent Lott, Christmas in Cambodia, and Dan Rather and I can't remember what other stories, it starts to seem like a pretty strong trend. The Internet really is changing how news is covered. It's exciting to be witness to this Revolution. I have a feeling that history textbooks 50 years from now will cover the effect of blogs much the same way they cover the advent of the radio or television and how they influenced culture in the 20s and 50s

Eugene Volokh:

This looks like a classic example of the power of blogging: Though many of Jordan's critics have been politicians and journalists, as best I can tell the mainstream media initially paid little attention to the story. In an earlier era, it may have died from lack of attention, if it weren't for the bloggers' talking about the story, and making it hard for people to ignore.

Wizbang appropriately points out that Jordan's statement "does not jibe with the notes of those who attended the World Economic Forum panel. Perhaps the WEF gave him notice that it intended to release the tape? Jordan ignored the Lott/Reins/Rather rule of dealing with blog swarms: It's the stonewalling and coverups that do you in..."

UPDATE at 7:50 PM, Pacific

More here. (Hat tip to Bogus Gold)

And, of course. He would have been first, but he just posted a bit ago. He has been the prime mover on this story since it became public.

UPDATE at 12:55 AM Pacific

Captain Ed has more updates.

Michelle Malkin provides a timeline.

Indeed. Jordan should have read this.

Instapundit notes:

I think we know what the video would have shown, now. It wasn't a case of the video not turning up, but of it not being released. I think that Jordan could have quickly defused this by just saying "I screwed up," but -- as with Trent Lott -- he waited days while hiding behind a lame and unpersuasive explanation.

Posted at 07:04 PM Pacific