CNN news chief resigns in flap

ATLANTA, Feb. 12 (UPI) -- CNN's chief news executive has resigned amid growing controversy over his apparent claim that U.S. troops in Iraq intentionally tried to kill reporters.

Eason Jordan made the remarks, for which no transcript has been released, during a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, late last month, the New York Times reported Saturday.

The panel's moderator, U.S. News & World Report Editor David Gergen, said Jordan spoke of soldiers "on both sides" whom he believed had been "targeting" some of the more than four dozen journalists killed in Iraq.

Jordan said Friday he decided to resign "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."

CNN, which immediately accepted Jordan's resignation, appeared intent on putting the episode behind it as quickly as possible, perhaps to try to avoid repeating the drawn-out tensions last fall over CBS News' discredited claims about President Bush's National Guard service, the Times said.