Eason Jordan

In 1982, Jordan joined CNN as an assistant assignment editor and rose through the ranks to become chief news executive, also serving as president of newsgathering and international networks, responsible for CNN’s news coverage, reporting teams, and the expansion and external relations of its international networks.⁠[1][2][3]

On April 11, 2003, two days after the fall of Baghdad, Jordan published an op-ed in The New York Times titled “The News We Kept to Ourselves,” disclosing that for years he had not reported on the Saddam Hussein regime’s intimidation and abuse of Iraqis who had helped CNN. He wrote that over the previous twelve years he had traveled to Baghdad 13 times to lobby the authorities to keep CNN’s Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders, and that many things he saw and heard could not be reported because doing so might have endangered the lives of Iraqis, particularly the bureau’s Iraqi staff. That day, he was interviewed by NPR host Robert Siegel.⁠[4][4][4][5][5]

On April 15, he wrote in a memo to CNN staff that, faced with these stories, he had only three options: never tell them, tell them early and get innocent people killed, or tell them after the fall of Saddam’s regime; he chose the third.⁠[4][4]

The article sparked a debate in journalism about the trade-offs news organizations should make to maintain access. Bill Kovach, former curator of the Nieman Foundation, argued that the practice put other considerations above journalistic ethics; Alex Jones, director of HarvardHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry’s Shorenstein Center, said that Jordan may have conceded too much for access, but that in such an environment everyone makes compromises.⁠[4][4][4][4][4]

On January 27, 2005, during a discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jordan spoke about journalists killed in the Iraq War. Several attendees said he told the audience that U.S. forces had deliberately targeted journalists; Jordan denied this, explaining that some journalists had died because they were hit by bombs while in the wrong place at the wrong time, while others had been mistaken by U.S. forces for enemy personnel. Democratic Representative Barney Frank and Senator Christopher Dodd, who were present, criticized his remarks, with Frank saying it sounded as if he were saying that eliminating journalists was military policy.⁠[6][1][1][6][6]

Like most sessions at the forum, the discussion was off the record, the organizers declined to release a transcript, and no authoritative version of Jordan’s exact words was ever made public. Bloggers subsequently published attendees’ accounts of what had happened, and the controversy intensified.⁠[1][6][1]

On the evening of February 11, 2005, Jordan, then 44, resigned as CNN’s chief news executive. In a letter to colleagues, he said he had decided to resign after 23 years at CNN to prevent CNN from being unfairly tarnished by conflicting accounts of his remarks about journalists killed in Iraq; he acknowledged that his remarks at Davos were “not as clear as they should have been,” said he had never meant to imply that U.S. forces acted with ill intent when they accidentally killed journalists, and apologized to those who had misunderstood him.⁠[6][6][1][1][6]

Jay Rosen, chair of the journalism department at New York University, argued that Jordan’s remarks were not grounds for dismissal, while noting that bloggers, beyond building momentum, had also done the basic reporting work of tracking down people who were present and comparing their accounts.⁠[6][6]

In December 2006, IraqSlogger, an Iraq War news website co-founded by Jordan, went live. The site both aggregated and analyzed news, blogs and videos from various sources and produced its own reporting; Jordan said the site had about 50 correspondents across Iraq, all of them Iraqis.⁠[7][7][7][7]

On April 11, 2024, The Rockefeller Foundation announced the appointment of Jordan as senior vice president of Connected Leaders, responsible for expanding and activating the foundation’s network of convenings and fellows and fostering collaboration and alliances. The role serves the foundation’s five-year climate strategy, leading the building of global convening capacity, designing high-level gatherings and deepening ties with key leaders, companies, governments and nonprofit organizations. The foundation’s chief operating officer, Natalye Paquin, said Jordan would draw on the experience and connections he had built in 70 countries to advance the platform.⁠[3][3][3][3][3]

As of October 2026, Jordan serves on the foundation’s leadership team as a senior vice president, leading the Connected Leaders team and expanding the foundation’s impact through convenings, fellowship programs and alliances.⁠[8][2]

After leaving CNN, Jordan served as founding general manager of the digital news service NowThis, and was also the first head of the Malala Fund, which is dedicated to girls’ education, during which time he was the closest adviser to Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai. He also founded Oryx Strategies, a strategic planning, communications and media consulting firm in New York, and helped found and lead Poll Position and Praedict.⁠[3][2][2][9][3][9]

Jordan’s honors include four Emmy Awards, two Peabody Awards, the DuPont-Columbia Award and Edward R. Murrow Awards.⁠[3][2]

He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the U.S. advisory board of Women for Women International, a member of the advisory board of Stanford University’s Human Perception Lab, and a trustee of Fugees Family.⁠[2][9][3]

The Rockefeller Foundation: Official website: https://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[2]