As we learned on Wednesday, Jeff Zucker, who was fired resigned as President of the Cable News Network and the chairman of WarnerMedia’s news and sports division over a “romantic relationship with another senior executive at CNN”, said:
As part of the investigation into Chris Cuomo’s tenure at CNN, I was asked about a consensual relationship with my closest colleague, someone I have worked with for more than 20 years. I acknowledged the relationship evolved in recent years. I was required to disclose it when it began but I didn’t. I was wrong.
CNN, of course, wanted to hold Donald Trump’s feet to the fire, and had now-disgraced attorney Michael Avenetti on the boob tube at least 122 times when he was representing Stormy Daniels, to attack our 45th President. As Robert Stacy McCain noted, MSNBC had Mr Avenetti on at least 108 times as well.
Mr McCain also noted the New York Post’s story:
Rumors about Zucker, 56, and (CNN’s Executive Vice President and chief marketing officer Allison) Gollust’s affair have been circulating in the media world for years, but the pair have repeatedly, and vehemently, denied they were in a relationship when asked numerous times by Page Six.
Zucker was allegedly so brazen about his relationship with Gollust, he moved her into the same Upper East Side building where he lived with his then-wife of 21 years Caryn Zucker before the two divorced, sources said.
So, the President of CNN, and an Executive Vice President, who had the whole network incessantly pounding on President Trump over his honesty, were themselves dishonest about a relationship they were required to report. Mr Zucker, who should have been canned years ago over CNN’s lousy ratings, was finally shown the door over an affair.
But what about other people at CNN?
Female employees at CNN are furious that chief spokesperson Allison Gollust is keeping her job after “lying” about her affair with newly resigned CEO Jeff Zucker “for years,” sources told The Post.
“Why is she allowed to keep her job?” a CNN insider railed.
“CNN is supposed to be a transparent news network. How does she get away with lying about their affair for so long?”
Early Wednesday, Zucker sent a memo to colleagues announcing he’d be retiring after his relationship with Gollust came to light during CNN’s probe into Chris Cuomo. He called the relationship “consensual” and told staff that he wished he’d disclosed it sooner.
Gollust released a statement shortly after saying that she and Zucker had been professional colleagues for over 20 years but their relationship “changed during COVID.”
One insider called the comments “a total lie.”
“They’ve been together for years,” the source dished.
Katie Couric in her memoir Going There, had said that Mr Zucker and Mrs Gollust “were joined at the hip,” while Mr Zucker was at NBC, which he left nine years ago.
If this was such a widely-known ‘secret,’ why didn’t anyone say anything? For Mr Zucker and Mrs Gollust to have been required to report the relationship when it began, there had to have been human resources regulations on the subject. Did no one in human resources know about this, or did no one in human resources care about this? How many people were in on this “open secret”, and why did no one say anything until an outside party investigation of Chris Cuomo lead to the discovery of Mr Zucker’s and Mrs Gollust’s relationship?
If Mr Zucker and Mrs Gollust had reported the relationship, as they were required to do, what would have happened? CNN would have had to set up certain restrictions on responsibility, presumably taking Mrs Gollust out of a direct reporting line to Mr Zucker. Since we cannot assume that neither Mr Zucker nor Mrs Gollust was unaware that the relationship needed to be reported, the only reasonable consideration for not doing so was that it could have changed the professional relationship between the two, and neither wanted for Mrs Gollust to cease being Mr Zucker’s closest business confidant.
Remember NBC’s Matt Lauer, and the infamous ‘secret button’ which locked the door to his office so the targets of his affection couldn’t escape? If it existed — Mr Lauer claims that it didn’t — who installed it? Did Mr Lauer have the technical skills to do it himself? Ronan Farrow, who discovered and reported Harvey Weinstein’s sexual misconduct, claimed that Mr Lauer’s behavior toward women was an “open secret” at NBC.
At some point it has to be asked: if all of these people knew about the behavior of these media big wigs, why did no one ever report it? And why should the public trust the reporting of people who have not been honest themselves?
The New York Post reported, “Three top CNN executives will form an interim leadership team at the network and assume Zucker’s duties until WarnerMedia’s pending merger with Discovery is complete,” but that ignores the obvious question: who among those three were aware of the affair, of this supposed ‘open secret,’ and tolerated it anyway?
If CNN cannot be trusted to follow and enforce its own rules, and this only came to light, allegedly, after Chris Cuomo’s lawyer went scorched earth on the network, just how can news consumers trust anything CNN reports, ever? As Mary McCarthy famously said about writer Lillian Hellman, “Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.” That is how we should regard CNN.