Eason Jordan
Eason T. Jordan is an entrepreneur who launched and leads several small companies. He previously worked for 23 years at CNN, where he served as the network's chief news executive and president of newsgathering and international networks. He is the recipient of four Emmy Awards, two Peabody Awards and the DuPont-Columbia Award. At the age of 31, he received the Livingston Award's (previously only given posthumously) "Special Citation For Outstanding Achievement" for coverage of the Gulf War, the Soviet crisis, and the African famine. The Livingston Awards for excellence by professionals under the age of 35 are the largest all-media, general reporting prizes in American journalism. He studied journalism at Georgia State University.
Jordan serves on the leadership council of the Committee to Protect Journalists, the North America board of the International News Safety Institute, and the advisory board of Peacetree Productions. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the ONE Campaign.
He was portrayed by the actor Clark Gregg in "Live From Baghdad" (2002), a film about the team of CNN journalists who covered the first Gulf War. As CNN was the only news organization broadcasting live first hand reports of the war, this is widely considered the event that "put CNN on the map".
Jordan's latest start-up is called Poll Position, a non-partisan polling company that conducts scientific polls on trending topics in several domains. Poll Position is an oft-cited source for major media organizations[1] and blogs[2] that consider the company's polls to be impartial and sound. Poll Position also aims to engage the public by encourage individuals to vote in the latest polls on the company's website.
[edit] Controversy
On April 11, 2003, Jordan revealed that CNN knew about human rights abuses committed in Iraq by Saddam Hussein since 1990 in a New York Times story called "The News We Kept to Ourselves".[1]
On January 27, 2005, during the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Jordan was reported to have said that American troops were targeting journalists. Although there is no transcript of Jordan's statement, Barney Frank claimed Jordan seemed to be suggesting "it was official military policy to take out journalists", and later added that some U.S. soldiers targeted reporters "maybe knowing they were killing journalists, out of anger" – claims that Jordan denied.[3]
On February 11, 2005, Jordan resigned 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." [2] In his press release Jordan also stated that "I have great admiration and respect for the men and women of the U.S. armed forces, with whom I have worked closely and been embedded in Baghdad, Tikrit, and Mosul."[4]
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Eason Jordan's web site
- Eason Jordan's bio at WEF
- Eason Jordan's bio at CNN CNN 1996
- The News We Kept to Ourselves
- CNN executive: Iraq targeted network's journalists CNN April 11, 2003
- Do US Troops Target Journalists in Iraq?
- CNN News Executive Eason Jordan Quits AP Reuters February 11, 2005
- Jordan's latest company, Poll Position
