CNN news executive Eason Jordan (pictured) told participants at the World Economic Forum in Davos that he knew of 12 journalists deliberately targeted and killed by US forces in Iraq. Rony Abovits, blogging from Davos, writes that although Jordan somewhat backed away from the comments, the damage may already be irreversible:
To be fair (and balanced), Eason did backpedal and make a number of statements claiming that he really did not know if what he said was true, and that he did not himself believe it. But when pressed by others, he seemed to waver back and forth between what might have been his beliefs and the realization that he had created a kind of public mess… I am quite sure that somewhere in the Middle East, right now, his remarks are being printed up in Arab language newspapers as proof that the U.S. is an evil and corrupt nation. That is a real nightmare, because the Arab world is taking something said by a credible leader of the media (CNN!) as the gospel, or koranic truth. What is worse is that I am not really sure what Eason really meant to communicate to us, but I do know that he was quite passionate about it. Members of the audience took away what they wanted to hear, and now they will use it in every vile and twisted way imaginable.
HonestReporting readers will recall Jordan confessing that CNN buried stories about the brutality of Saddam Hussein’s regime.
