Eason Jordan

Eason Jordan was Chief News Executive for CNN, and had been with the news network from 1982 until his resignation in 2005. He studied Journalism at Georgia State University.

Jordan played a key role in planning CNN coverage of world events and conflicts.

He is the recipient of two Emmy Awards, two Peabody Awards and the DuPont-Columbia Award.

Controversy

On August 16, 1997, Eason Jordan gave gifts to Secretary Kim Jong-il of North Korea to nurture a relationship with CNN.[1] (Jordan had been credited in 1996 with gaining exclusive access to North Korea for CNN reporters.[2])

On March 10, 1999, while speaking at Harvard, Eason Jordan thanked Fidel Castro for inspiring the creation of CNN International.[3]

On April 11, 2003, Eason Jordan admitted that CNN knew about atrocities commited in Iraq by Saddam Hussein since 1990, but the company refused to tell the public so that it could gain better access to the government.[4] This situation is similar to Walter Duranty's cover up of the Ukraine famine and other atrocities that he saw in the USSR but never reported.

In November 2004 at the News Xchange conference in Portugal, Jordan claimed that United States armed forces arresting and torturing journalists in Iraq. He also claimed that American troops were intentionally killing journalists.[5]

On January 27, 2005, Jordan claimed that American troops are targeting journalists in Iraq. The charges were said to have been made during the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. He has since backtracked from the statement. Tapes of the event are being withheld from the public.

On February 11, 2005, Eason Jordan resigned 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." The right wing of the blogosphere played a crucial part in achieving his resignation, keeping the story going despite the mainstream media's refusal to run the story at the outset of the scandal.

External links

• Eason Jordan's bio at WEF
• Eason Jordan's bio at CNN CNN 1996
• "CNN executive: Iraq targeted network's journalists" CNN April 11, 2003
• "CNN News Executive Eason Jordan Quits" AP Reuters February 11 2005
• CNN Exec Quits Amid Furor Washington Post news report, February 11, 2005.