February 11, 2005

Eason Jordan Resigns

From Jay Rosen : PressThink: Eason Jordan Resigns

Just got off the phone with Howard Kurtz. It's confirmed. Eason Jordan resigned today about an hour ago.

This is the statement CNN put out:

After 23 years at CNN, 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.

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.


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.

As for my colleagues at CNN, I am enormously proud to have worked with you, risking my life in the trenches with you, and making CNN great with you. For that experience, and for your friendship and support these many years, I thank you.

"We'll always have Davos."

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UPDATE: Crow Eating Carification -- I was WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! and must now steel myself to eating Roger Simon's hat.

Call for recipes.
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UPDATE II: Just guesstimating here, but with 23 years in on CNN and what with taking one for the team, this has got to be worth between 1.5 and 2.5 million to Jordan as he goes out the door. Plus continuing benefits of course.

Posted by Vanderleun at February 11, 2005 4:30 PM
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"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.

Have you checked with Roger's friend Manolo? He may regard conspicuous consumption of Roger's Borsalino to be a fashion crime as well as a culinary misadventure.

Posted by: Connecticut Yankee at February 11, 2005 4:57 PM

1. Chop hat into Fritos-sized strips, pan fry in oil until crispy.

2. Cook up a big ol' bowl of chili.

3. Enjoy your Gut-Busters a'la Simon.

Posted by: ccwbass at February 11, 2005 5:47 PM

...Crow Eating Carification ...

Clarify please. You nailed this from day one. I'm
just glad he had the nuts to do the right thing
without all the extraneous denial bullshit. Kudos
to him for that. If you can give kudos to a @#&%^
POS.

Posted by: Steel Turman at February 11, 2005 7:01 PM

I just came over to check it out after remembering Intapundit's remarks on your take on this affair.

So you gotta eat a hat. I think this has got to be worth that.

Wow.

Posted by: Eric Blair at February 11, 2005 9:53 PM

Yes, I was looking forward to serving you crow, but you've upped and ate it already.

I was surprised, too, by the resignation. I thought they could stonewall it out. I don't really see the blogosphere as being able to apply pressure, but it can discredit and if enough of that goes on, perhaps it can stick and seep out into the MSM.

Heck, even now the White House is geting bold enough to tell the WaPo to change it's tune and challenge it's stories. Who's Next (not Baba O'Reilly)? The NYT's?

Your poem has it right. Bloggers are gunning for targets. The good and ambitious ones are going after people. That's good news indeed.

Posted by: mark butterworth at February 12, 2005 3:20 AM

My thought is that there wasn't enough of a mainstream-media firestorm over this that he couldn't have ridden it out. Not much of one at all, really - the wagons were circled well - and in any case he doesn't have enough name recognition to make it all that damaging.

No, I think the tape is key. I suspect he thought or was told that the release of the tape was imminent, and his resigning would make it a non-issue. The tape was TV. The tape was what ordinary Americans would look at and be unable to react to in a "nuanced" and "sophisticated" fashion. Depending on that reaction, the tape might have made it quite difficult for him to find a gig as a professor, columnist, writer of books, speaker, official in a future Democratic administration, and whatever else he's going to do.

And I wonder whether the tape is now in a dumpster somewhere - whether that was the tradeoff.

Just my paranoid little mind working away....

Posted by: jaed at February 12, 2005 9:13 AM