In more serious news from the Middle East, Eason Jordan, the chief news executive of CNN has made a truly outrageous claim:

he knew of 12 journalists who had not only been killed by U.S. troops in Iraq, but they had in fact been targeted. He repeated the assertion a few times, which seemed to win favor in parts of the audience (the anti-US crowd) and cause great strain on others.

Jim Geraghty thanks Barney Frank(!) for discrediting these claims.

Update: Hugh Hewitt writes:

The other story here is whether big media will cover this incendiary charge by a major American media figure, or just let it pass as an embarassment they will not call attention to because of pofessional courtesy.

When Ra^therGate first broke at CBS, there was quite a bit of coverage from other networks and other legacy media news sources, but they quickly cooled. I hope I'm wrong, but I have a feeling this will yet another "move along; nothing to see here" moment for CNN's competitors.

Update: Charles Johnson notes that this isn't the first time that a representative of CNN has said that US soldiers are targeting reporters.

Update: Welcome Hugh Hewitt readers. For our review of Hugh's new book Blog, click here.

Update (2/2/05): On Wednesday afternoon, I got the same letter that InstaPundit--and apparently everybody on Hugh Hewitt's list of bloggers discussing the story--received from CNN. I'm in agreement with the Professor's response:

Pardon me if I don't fully trust Jordan in light of his past behavior. And it sounds like there's more than just context involved. I'll believe it when I see the video, or a transcript.

It is interesting, however, that CNN is doing damage control so quickly, and emailing blogs directly, unlike CBS back in September.

Oh, and as Power Line notes, Captain Ed (still no relation) is loaded for bear on this story. Just keep scrolling.