[Media-watch] FW: [Bristol_NUJ] Sacked CNN boss claimed journalists assassinated

[Tim Gopsill]

CNN news chief resigns amid row 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4259469.stm


CNN Executive Resigns Post Over Remarks
By JACQUES STEINBERG and KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
NEW YORK TIMES
Published: February 12, 2005

Jason 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 four 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. Mr. Jordan 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 National Review's Web site. 
Ann Cooper, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, 
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 the 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 last fall between CBS News and the Bush 
administration, as well as its conservative supporters.

After broadcasting a report in early September that was critical of 
President Bush's Vietnam-era National Guard service, 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. Dan Rather, the CBS anchor, 
subsequently announced that he would step down as of March 9, and CBS later 
announced its had fired one producer and was seeking the resignations of 
three others after an outside report it had commissioned found serious 
fault with the reporting process behind the Guard broadcast.

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 the decision had been his. 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, saying he thought the reports could have jeopardized 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."

When reports of Mr. Jordan's more recent remarks began reaching the United 
States via the Internet, some of his colleagues, citing the previous 
controversy, responded with palpable irritation and mystification, though 
not with comments they would permit to be attributed to them by name, given 
the sensitivity of the situation.
For CNN, the online reports - as well as the only interview Mr. Jordan has 
given on the subject, for an article in The Washington Post - have come at 
an especially inopportune time. In November, the network named Jonathan 
Klein, a former CBS news executive, as president of its domestic network. 
(His predecessor had been appointed only a little over a year earlier.)

It also gave him an ambitious assignment: to reclaim the ratings lead it 
yielded years ago to the Fox News Channel, whose commentators, at least, 
tend to tilt to the right.
Bret Stephens, a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board who 
attended the session in Davos, wrote in Thursday's Journal that Mr. Jordan 
had "made a defamatory innuendo" but added: "Mr. Jordan deserves some 
credit for retracting the substance of his remark, and some forgiveness for 
trying to weasel his way out of a bad situation of his own making." But he 
questioned whether CNN's news division should be headed by someone "who 
can't be trusted to sit on a panel and field softball questions."