CNN chief goes after saying troops targeting reporters

Brand Republic 14-Feb-05, 08:30

LONDON – The head of news at CNN, Eason Jordan, has been forced to resign after appearing to suggest that US forces were actively targeting journalists in Iraq, where more than 30 reporters and support staff have died.

He made the comments last month at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, saying the US and its coalition allies had deliberately targeted journalists, leading to the deaths of some.

Jordan attempted to backtrack at the weekend, when he explained to CNN staff his decision to stand down after 20 years. He told colleagues he had never intended to suggest that US forces had killed reporters intentionally.

"I never meant to imply US forces acted with ill intent when US forces accidentally killed journalists," he said.

"While my CNN colleagues and my friends in the US military know me well enough to know I have never stated, believed, or suspected that US 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," he said.

He went on to explain that he was resigning to stop the Time Warner-owned cable news network being "unfairly tarnished".

Last year a TV journalist for Arab satellite station al-Arabiya was shot dead by US troops as he filmed a report in Baghdad.

Mazen al-Tumeizi was killed in a crossfire when a US helicopter began firing on a cheering crowd that had gathered by the burning wreckage of an American Bradley armoured personnel carrier.

Last week Abdul-Hussein Khazal, a correspondent for US-funded Arabic TV station al-Hurra, was killed by gunmen in the British controlled city of Basra.

His death brought the death toll of journalists and other media workers to 36 since coalition forces moves into Iraq in March 2003.

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