The Eason Jordan Flap

Fact: Eason Jordan, CNN’s senior executive in charge of coordinating the network’s Iraq coverage, resigned suddenly last night. He said remarks he’d made at the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland this past January 27th seemed to suggest he thought US troops had deliberately tried to kill journalists. Those remarks had ignited a storm of protest. Fact: The MSM is saying bloggers caused Jordan’s downfall. Fact: The recent tempest re Jordan started with a post from Rony Abovitz’s blog, ForumBlog, on January 28 after the Davos Forum, asking, “Do US Troops Target Journalists in Iraq?” Fact: This isn’t the first time Eason Jordan has brought attention to himself. In an interview in the spring of 2002, Sara Sullivan, managing editor of TBS (Transnational Broadcast Studies) interviewed Jordan about the hardships of covering news around the world as a global broadcaster who is not from an American news service. In that interview Jordan said that in both Afghanistan and Iraq journalists were being killed and targeted. In an interview in April 2004 with PBS’s Terence Smith, Jordan disputed journalist John Burns, saying, ”But I do have to take issue with John's point in the beginning. He believes that journalists are not targeted. I do believe that journalists are targeted. There are very specific examples of that. And then beyond what's actually happened on the ground, you have Osama bin Laden in his most recent statement saying that he intends to target big media institutions because he views them as evil propagandists for the U.S. government. And so we take all these threats -- and there are real examples we can cite very specifically -- we take them very specifically and we do consider ourselves targeted.” Fact: David Gergen editor at large of U.S. News & World Report was at the January 27th forum in Davos and he said Jordan had initially said that “soldiers on both sides” targeted more than four dozen journalists killed in Iraq. But Gergen said that Jordan had “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.” Fact: Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank was also in the Davos audience. Frank said Jordan had intended to say only that some journalists had been killed by Americans. Fact: Although the Davos Forum was video-taped, no copy has been made available as yet. Fact: The New York Times reported this morning, “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.” Fact: The New York Times reported this morning, "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.'" So...looks to me like CNN thinks Eason Jordan went beyond his scope. The Times said, “Among Mr. Jordan's responsibilities at CNN was to be an advocate - often a forceful one - in discussions with the Pentagon on issues concerning the security of journalists in Iraq.” Isn’t the whole point whether journalists are targeted by Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq, not whether a CNN flack spoke out of turn? Or is that just me?