Weird times at CNN.
In 2020, as I'm sure you remember, they had Andrew Cuomo on repeatedly regarding COVID, and kept propping him up as an amazing governor who was doing the best job regarding handling COVID.
Much of the coverage of Andrew Cuomo was done by his brother Chris. CNN amazingly had no problem with the lack of objectivity, and the obvious bias in the coverage led by the governor's fucking brother.
Then the story of the New York nursing home deaths started appearing in right wing media, and somehow CNN had zero curiosity about it. They avoided the issue despite Andrew Cuomo's highly frequent appearances, to the point where many thought the story was just far right nonsense.
After the 2020 election, when Andrew Cuomo was no longer useful to Democrats, he was discarded. At that point, a sexual harassment scandal suddenly appeared, and at that point everyone suddenly woke up to the 9-month-old story about the thousands of extra nursing home deaths Cuomo caused. Then it came out that Chris Cuomo used his connections to help his brother attempt to cover up and dodge consequences from the sexual harassment scandal, and he was booted from CNN.
With the Cuomo brothers both disgraced and discredited, Chris decided to go after CNN. He sued them, and demanded all kinds of info in discovery. From that, it came out that CNN head Jeff Zucker was having a romantic relationship with an underling name Allison Gollust. He was then pressured to resign (and quickly did so), for "not revealing the relationship" to CNN.
What?
While WarnerMedia, CNN's parent company, has strict rules about the matter, there seemed to be something more. Apparently it was a very open secret that Gollust and Zucker were dating for years. There was no power differential dynamic, as they were both were high level executives. There wasn't even a significant age difference -- Zucker was 56, Gollust was 49. So why was it a big deal if these two were quietly dating?
Some pointed to the very weird arrangement where Zucker and Gollust lived right above one another in the same building -- while both were married at the time. Others pointed to the fact that, for the past 2 decades, it seemed Zucke often took Gollust along with him in his career, and she probably got unfair promotions as a result of the relationship.
However, it seems more likely Zucker's departure is more related to the Cuomos.
Gollust was a former communications director for Andrew Cuomo, and there are now reports that the 2020 Andrew/Chris Cuomo COVID segments were a ratings gimmick engineered by Zucker. It has been alleged that Zucker himself coached Andrew Cuomo what to talk about during his segments, and also advised him to criticize Trump during the segments, in order to make for better TV. It is also being alleged that Zucker purposely avoided covering the budding controversy about the nursing homes at the time, because it didn't fit into the narrative they were crafting for these segments.
But Zucker wasn't always anti-Trump -- at least not as far as CNN content was concerned. It's now alleged that Zucker gave orders in 2015 to give constant coverage to Trump, who was then trying to get the Republican nomination, because it made compelling TV. In fact, I visited Atlanta in 2015, and dropped by CNN headquarters. There were tons of left-wing demonstrators there, holding up signs that CNN was giving Trump the equivalent of free campaign ads, and that it was unfair. I remember thinking about this at the time, and realizing these protesters were correct! Indeed, Trump didn't have to spend much on his primary run, as he got so much free coverage.
This was all Zucker's doing, apparently. At the time Zucker assured Democrats that this was a good thing, as he felt Trump would be an incredibly easy opponent to defeat in 2016. However, when it appeared he had a chance against Hillary, CNN did an about-face, and did almost 24/7 negative coverage of him.
There are rumors that Zucker was ousted not for the relationship with Gollust, but because the messy lawsuit from Chris Cuomo would bring out all of the above facts, and they'd be pressured to fire him at that point anyway. This way, they're getting ahead of it, and letting him go now.
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Originally Posted by mickeycrimm
