According to media reports, the crisis marring CNN deepened
Tuesday with the departure of key executive Allison Gollust and a New York
Times report shedding new light on internal turmoil at the network.
Gollust served as Chief Marketing Officer of CNN. She is in
a relationship with Jeff Zucker, who was ousted as the President of the network
on February 02, 2022.
Zucker’s failure to disclose the relationship was the
official reason given for his departure, though there has been plenty of
speculation about other factors that might have been at play.
Gollust’s departure, like Zucker’s, looks like an
involuntary resignation. In a statement, she described it as “deeply
disappointing” that she “would be treated this way” as she leaves.
Meanwhile, the New York Times story provided more detail on
an allegation of sexual assault against former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo. The
allegation — which Cuomo vehemently denies — dates back to his pre-CNN days at
ABC News.
But the Times report included a claim from his
accuser's lawyer that Cuomo, while at CNN, may have sought to
dissuade the woman from coming forward by airing a segment on the
company where she worked as the "Me Too" movement gathered steam. If
true, that would be a clear and grave breach of journalistic ethics.
The new twists ensure that the saga roiling the network
founded in 1980 by Ted Turner will keep on running.
Two weeks ago, when Zucker resigned, both he and Gollust
issued statements acknowledging they should have disclosed their relationship
and did not.
At that time, Gollust appeared set to stay with the network.
Zucker and Gollust have worked together for decades, having first met when
Zucker was the young executive producer of NBC’s “Today” and Gollust was an NBC
publicist.
The status of their relationship has been a subject of
gossip in New York media circles for years. Former “Today” anchor Katie Couric
described the dynamics between the two in eyebrow-arching terms in the memoir
she published last fall.
Zucker and Gollust have asserted that they were close
friends and colleagues until the pandemic, when their relationship became a
romantic one. Both are divorced and there is no suggestion of coercion or abuse
of power.
In a memo announcing Gollust’s departure on Tuesday,
WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar said that an investigation “performed by a
third-party law firm and led by a former federal judge” had begun last
September and concluded this past weekend.
Kilar added that the probe had “found violations of Company
policies, including CNN’s News Standards and Practices, by Jeff Zucker, Allison
Gollust, and Chris Cuomo.”
But the careful phrasing says nothing about whether the
job-ending violation for Gollust was her failure to disclose her relationship
with Zucker. If it was, why did she seem in the clear to stay in her position
just two weeks ago? If it wasn’t, what new infraction has come to light?
Gollust, for her part, says that the claims from WarnerMedia
are “an attempt to retaliate against me and change the media narrative in the
wake of their disastrous handling of the last two weeks.”
The thread that has caused the higher reaches of CNN to
unravel begins with the relationship between Chris Cuomo and his elder brother,
former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, Chris
Cuomo conducted several interviews on his CNN prime-time show with the
then-governor. The interviews were ethically questionable but strongly backed
by Zucker.
Familial banter between the brothers about topics including
which one was favored by their mother made for compelling television even while
critics voiced queasiness.
The situation became more serious when the New York governor
was accused by multiple women of inappropriate behavior. In time, it emerged
that Chris Cuomo had played a role in helping his brother push back against
those allegations.
Zucker defended the CNN anchor when the first details
emerged of those efforts. But the problem deepened in November 2021, when new
documentation released by New York Attorney General Letitia James showed that
Chris Cuomo had sought to get advance warning of damaging stories about his
brother and appeared to be seeking ways to cast doubt on at least one
of his accusers.
Zucker ultimately fired Cuomo, with whom he had been
personally close as well as professionally allied.
For a start, Gollust had worked for Andrew Cuomo, albeit for
a brief period almost a decade ago. Perhaps more pertinently, there are now
suggestions that Zucker crossed journalistic lines in his dealings with Andrew
Cuomo.
Tuesday’s Times report noted that, after Chris Cuomo was
fired, people on his team “soon began whispering to reporters that Zucker had
coached Governor Cuomo on how to use his televised briefings [on the pandemic]
to go after” then-President Trump.
The Times included a denial from a Zucker spokeswoman that
the ousted CNN president had ever given Andrew Cuomo “advice.”
If that denial were to be disproved, it would cause serious
outrage — and would buttress the argument of those who believe the media in
general, and CNN in particular, are too cozy with Democratic politicians.
Beyond the specifics of what exactly happened with Cuomo,
Zucker and Gollust, there are bigger questions facing CNN. Zucker is
widely credited — or blamed, depending on your point of view — for driving CNN
in a more opinionated direction, especially during the Trump presidency.
To his supporters, Zucker understood that the 45th president
— whose career he had previously revitalized while at NBC by making him the
star of “The Apprentice” — required a paradigm shift in journalistic coverage.
The network’s ratings soared as anchors, including Chris Cuomo and others,
aimed daily barbs at Trump.
To his detractors, Zucker pushed a view of
politics-as-reality-show to unhealthy extremes. Zucker’s influence undercut
CNN’s credibility and accelerated a general coarsening of journalistic and
political culture, according to this critique.
CNN and the rest of WarnerMedia is in the process of being
spun off by its corporate owner, AT&T. Assuming that deal goes through,
those properties will then merge with Discovery Inc.
But longtime media mogul and Discovery board member John
Malone caused a stir back in November last year when he told CNBC, “I would
like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with —
and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing.”
CNN is also readying a streaming service, CNN plus, for
launch. Zucker was central to that project, but he had also recruited some
broadcasters who represent a break with the opinionated anti-Trump approach —
notably Chris Wallace, formerly of Fox News, and Kasie Hunt, formerly of
NBC News.
With Zucker gone, and so much else in flux, any shift in the
network’s tone will be closely parsed. The old maxim holds that it is
never good for journalists — or media organizations — to become the news. But
whether it matters to the audience is another matter.
Other networks and big-name shows have endured scandal in
recent years — and endured just fine.
The late Roger Ailes, the driving force behind the rise of
Fox News, faced multiple accusations of sexual harassment, leading to his
ouster from the network in 2016. Despite this, Fox News remains the ratings
leader among all cable networks.
Matt Lauer, the longtime co-anchor of “Today,” was fired in
2017, with NBC citing a report of “inappropriate sexual behavior.” Other
allegations against Lauer followed.
Lauer has acknowledged causing other people “pain” for which
he feels “sorrow and regret” but has denied ever coercing anyone into sex.
There has been no long-standing damage to “Today,” which remains in a close
battle with ABC’s “Good Morning America” for primacy among morning shows.
There is no real reason to think CNN will suffer any worse
fate. That said, the network’s ratings were way off the highs of the
Trump years even before the current furor kicked off.
Multiple media reports have indicated that some of CNN’s
biggest names are dismayed by Zucker’s departure. There have also been
insinuations from the journalistic ranks that Zucker was really pushed out not
for a terminal ethical lapse, but because of a battle for corporate power
between him and Kilar. There are no signs yet of any big names actually
departing the organization. But the prolonged controversy is surely bad
for morale, among rank-and-file staff and on-screen stars alike.
