Sunday, February 13, 2005
Gergen:"He made a mistake. I did not think he deserved to lose his job over it."
CNN's Reliable Sources focused on Eason Jordan's resignation. On the program were David Gergen with US News and World Report, Bill Press a former talk show host at CNN and MSNBC and blogger Jeff Jarvis with BuzzMachine.com.
Gergen was also at the conference when Eason Jordan made the remarks that eventually came back to haunt him. Here's a transcript of Gergen's account of what Jordan said at the conference:
A little context is important. He had just come back from Baghdad, 16th trip. We were on the eve of the elections there. He was extremely tense, because he thought a CNN journalist as well as other journalists were in great danger there, and he was -- he praised U.S. troops for protecting CNN journalists and others, but he said, look, this is a place where we lost 63 journalists on all sides, and journalists on all sides are being -- are getting killed often carelessly -- and he used the word targeting. And certainly left the impression that U.S. troops were targeting journalists on the other side -- Al Jazeera, for example -- just as insurgents were clearly targeting American journalists.
And it was a startling charge, and I think everybody in the room sort of, you know, their head swerved. But as soon as he said it, it was clear he knew he had made a mistake. He had gone too far. Used -- he'd been -- his emotions I think just got the better of him. And he tried to walk it back. And he tried to be -- clarify it. But soon it was on the blog, and frankly, the -- it just -- the story just built up.
# posted by ATN @ 4:43 PM 
