Say Anything Blog

NEW YORK - 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.

Of course, there is a record of Jordan's comments, its just been buried. More than one source has been adamant about the fact that the statement was recorded on video tape. Had this story not had the potential to be yet another embarrassment for the media that footage would have been on the air hours after the story broke.

As it is now, the footage will likely never surface (if it hasn't already been destroyed) and Jordan will sink into obscurity.

Update:

The Oliver Willis take: "Great. He's gone. Now lets forget that there was a reporter trying to smear our troops by lying and focus on the allegedly gay and admittedly partisan reporter that nobody has ever heard about. Becuase that story fits my political agenda much nicer."