THERE’S A ZUCKER BORN EVERY MINUTE: CNN Employees Continue to Push Back on the Fall of Jeff Zucker.
On Wednesday evening, members of CNN’s Washington bureau met with Jason Kilar, CEO of parent company WarnerMedia, who made the decision that Zucker could not remain with the company due to his failure to disclose a romantic relationship with Allison Gollust, CNN’s communications and marketing chief—also Zucker’s long-running colleague and closest confidante. Toward the end of the meeting, in which prominent CNN journalists went hard at Kilar over Zucker’s resignation, special correspondent Jamie Gangel spoke up. “The first calls I got this morning were from four members of the January 6 committee, who felt devastated for our democracy, because Jeff was not going to be around to make sure that CNN is able to do its job,” she said (later clarifying to colleagues that she meant to say four congresspeople, including one member of the committee).
Under Zucker, CNN took the notion of being Democratic Party operatives with bylines seriously: “Zucker ensured that the network spotlighted Andrew Cuomo and his brother during the pandemic and ignored an ever-worsening conflict of interest; he ignored similar allegations of a conflict of interest around Don Lemon informing Jussie Smollett that he was under police investigation; he brought back legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin after the slam-dunk firing offense of masturbating during a Zoom call; he enabled Brian Stelter to turn a show called Reliable Sources into a showcase of spectacularly unreliable reporting and groveling for administration approval; and he allowed prima-donna Acosta to try to turn himself into the story, time and time again.”
More from Ace: “According to a source [close] to Cuomo, ‘Zucker and Gollust even advised Andrew what to say — how to respond and particularly how to hit back at [President Donald] Trump to make it more compelling TV.’”
Janice Dean adds, “Wow. So Zucker and his girlfriend were the ones behind the jokey interviews while thousands of seniors were dying. They thought the Cuomo brothers Comedy hour was better TV than actually reporting news during a once in a lifetime pandemic. They both should be FIRED.“