Jordan's revelations, contained in an op-ed piece in the New York Times last week, have attracted strong criticism amid concerns that CNN had watered down reports on Saddam's Baathist regime in exchange for access and a continued presence in Baghdad.

In his Times piece, Jordan had described how, over the course of a dozen trips in as many years to Baghdad, he had witnessed or heard of "awful things" that could not be reported because they would have jeopardized Iraqi lives, paticularly those of CNN's local staff.

Jordan highlighted the case of one Iraqi CNN cameraman who was abducted by secret police and subjected to weeks of beatings and electroshock torture.

"CNN had been in Baghdad long enough to know that telling the world about the torture of one of its employees would almost certainly have gotten him killed and put his family and co-workers at grave risk," he wrote.

Jordan also described an aide to Saddam's son, Uday Hussein, who had his front teeth ripped out with pliers for upsetting his boss, and a foreign ministry official who was forced to send Saddam a congratulatory letter after the execution of his brother.

"Again, we could not broadcast anything these men said to us," he wrote.

In an editorial published on Tuesday, the Washington Post raised questions over Jordan's admissions which it described as "especially worrying" given the general global perception of CNN -- especially in the Middle East -- as the voice of the United States.

"If CNN did not fully disclose what it knew about the Baathist regime, and if CNN deliberately kept its coverage bland and inoffensive, that would help explain why the regime was not perceived to be as ruthless as it in fact was, in the Arab world and elsewhere," the Post said.

Other newspapers, including the New York Times and USA Today, cited criticisms of CNN by media commentators from all bands of the political spectrum.

Several accused Jordan of trading truth for permission for CNN to stay in Baghdad, while others suggested that the network could have found ways to report the anecdotes Jordan had collected without jeopardizing any Iraqi lives.

In an internal memo sent to CNN staff and then leaked to the press, Jordan defended his decision to keep a lid on some of the information he had gleaned during his trips.

"Withholding information that would get innocent people killed was the right thing to do, not a journalistic sin," the memo said.

"The only sure thing that would have happened if I told those stories sooner is the regime would have tracked down and killed the innocent people who told me those stories," it added.

Rejecting the charge of cosying up to Baathist officials, Jordan said no news organisation in the world had a more "contentious" relationship with the Iraqi regime than his network, and he cited the expulsion of CNN reporters from Baghdad on six occasions -- including during the current war.

Leading the attacks on Jordan has been CNN's main rival, the Fox News network, and the New York Post -- both owned by media baron Rupert Murdoch.

Fox consistently outgunned CNN in the ratings war during the Iraq conflict.

SPACE.WIRE