CNN’s news chief Eason Jordan has issued a clarification that also sounds a bit like a retraction, although no one will know for certain the exact wording of what he actually said and how he said it unless a tape that exists of this incident is released.
Will this end the controversy? Probably not, unless the tape comes out. But although blogs can devote space to it until the day Alan Keyes is inaugrated as President (in other words, infinity or when a certain place freezes over) this could start to wither as a thriving media issue despite blog posts and petitions by bloggers. Unless Jordon’s clumsiness/bias (choose the one you believe it was) means consequences at his next corporate job review.
Here’s the latest indication that Jordan and CNN are trying to defuse this controversy:
NEW YORK (AP) — Despite comments that may have left a different impression, CNN’s chief news executive said Thursday that he does not believe the U.S. military intended to kill journalists in the Iraq war.
CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan is involved in a controversy over comments he made at the World Economic Forum last month. One Web logger has already called it “Easongate,” and an online petition is circulating calling on CNN to release a full transcript of what Jordan said.
Jordan, speaking at the Jan. 27 panel in Davos, Switzerland, said he believed that 12 journalists who were killed by coalition forces in Iraq had been targeted.
CNN said that Jordan was responding to a comment made by another panelist that journalists killed in Iraq were collateral damage. He had intended to draw a distinction between reporters killed because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when a bomb fell, for example, and those killed because someone mistook them for the enemy, CNN spokeswoman Christa Robinson said on Thursday.
However, Jordan did a poor job saying so, she said. He deeply regrets that he left the wrong impression, she said.
Jordan would not speak about the issue to The Associated Press, but issued a statement: “I never in my life thought or meant to suggest that the military was trying to deliberately kill journalists.”
MUST READING on this subject: Jay Rosen who asks whether this controversy represents “blog storm troopers or pack journalism at its best?”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.