The Wall Sreeet Journal has an op-ed saying that CNN was wrong to sack news chief Eason Jordan.

The op-ed points out that while Jordan's remark -- that U.S. soldiers in Iraq were intentionally targetting journalists -- was dumb and indefensible, he immediately backed away from them.

A journalist colleague of mine commented:

Weird. I don't know how I feel about this. His comments were probably inappropriate, as we discussed. Is his resignation necessary? It kind of feels like he's being sacrificed by "yer either with us, er yer against us" fever for questioning the holiness of something the troops did. At least that's the way the comments from the blog sound. Arthur Miller died the other day. Maybe it's time to re-read "The Crucible".

I didn't think they were comments he should have resigned over, either. But the threshold for sacking people for this sort of thing is falling. Nor is it confined to one side of the political debate. You get someone who says an inappropriate thing about gays, or immigrants, or whatever, and you might as well stick a fork in 'em. I would have thought CNN could have released the transcript or video of the remarks, along with a statement from Jordan clarifying what he meant, and apologizing if necessary. Then it would have blown over (unless, of course, his remarks were actually more damning...).

If nothing else, it should be an interesting case study for crisis management. Or mis-management.