CNN News Chief Quits

Bloggers bagged a TV-news bigwig when Cable News Network executive vice president and chief news executive Eason Jordan resigned over remarks he made about the U.S. military killing journalists.

Jordan, who has been at the network since its earliest days, quit Friday night in what he called "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. "

In a statement he continued that, "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."

At the World Economic Forum in Switzerland last month Jorda said he believed that 12 journalists who were killed by coalition forces in Iraq had been targeted.

He quickly backtracked, but the comment was picked up by U.S. bloggers who stirred up a frenzy, accusing him of bias.