YOU MUST HAVE SEEN THIS: Anyone surfing the web today must have seen this New York Times op-ed by Eason Jordan, CNN’s chief news executive. In the piece, Mr. Jordan confesses the atrocities CNN has hidden about Iraq for years. If you missed it, it’s a must-read. Mr. Jordan details long-withheld information about torture and murder by Saddam (pulling out teeth with pliers is one of the kinder tortures described) that CNN decided not to tell people about until now.

In attempting to justify CNN’s years-long suppression of the most basic facts about Saddam’s regime, Mr. Jordan emphasizes the need for protecting Iraqis, whom he says might have been tortured if the reports had been made public while Saddam was still in power. What Mr. Jordan neglects to mention is that the main reason for keeping the truth suppressed was so that CNN could stay in Baghdad — and continue broadcasting the “truth” about Saddam’s regime — minus all the bad parts that they were suppressing. So you see, they needed to suppress the truth, so they could stay there, so they could give their sanitized reports from right there in Baghdad!

What you may have missed, however, was this interview with Mr. Jordan from October in which he denied that CNN would ever compromise its principles. Mr. Jordan said, “we work very hard to report forthrightly, to report fairly and to report accurately and if we ever determine we cannot do that, then we would not want to be there . . . We’d very much like to be there if there’s a second war; but — we are not going to make journalistic compromises in an effort to make that happen.” (Emphasis is, obviously, mine.)

This is not failing to report certain things to protect people. This is what you call a “bald-faced lie.”