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On the wet morning of March 28, 2020, President Trump addressed a phalanx of journalists outdoors the White House following a name with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. “There’s a possibility that sometime today, we’ll do a quarantine — short-term, two weeks — of New York, probably New Jersey, and certain parts of Connecticut,” he mentioned whereas clutching his umbrella. “This would be an enforceable quarantine. You know, I’d rather not do it, but we may need it.”
Hours later, Cuomo was requested throughout his each day press convention about Trump’s feedback. “From a medical point of view, I don’t know what you’d be accomplishing,” he supplied with a shrug.
But as sundown approached, the governor appeared on CNN with a way more forceful evaluation, predicting {that a} quarantine would unleash “chaos and mayhem” in the tristate space, and homing in on the monetary implications of such a transfer. “I think it would paralyze the economy,” he mentioned. “I think it would shock the economic markets in a way we’ve never seen before.”
CNN anchor Ana Cabrera teed up a seemingly tailored query: “What would this mean for the stock market? Would it have to shut down?”
“Oh, it would drop like a stone,” Cuomo insisted. “That would drop this economy in a way that wouldn’t recover for months, if not years.”
What viewers didn’t know is that in the hours between Cuomo’s Albany press convention and his CNN dinner-hour look, he corresponded instantly with CNN management. Firing off a textual content to the community’s prime advertising and communications govt, Allison Gollust — who had additionally been his personal publicist a couple of years prior — Cuomo wrote, in an obvious reference to CNN President Jeff Zucker, “Ask Jeff to call me plz.” Zucker’s representatives say he has “no record” of chatting with Cuomo that day. Regardless, Cuomo landed on a speaking level positive to seize Trump’s consideration. And Zucker actually knew precisely which levers to tug when it got here to the president, given their lengthy and profitable relationship by way of the actuality present The Apprentice.
About half-hour earlier than Cuomo appeared on CNN by distant feed, Gollust emailed a programing staffer, cc’ing Zucker, and supplied the governor as a last-minute visitor to speak about Trump’s proposed quarantine. She then informed Zucker that the governor wish to converse with him. When the section ended, Gollust texted Cuomo: “Well done . . . Cuomo-W. Trump-L.”
A consultant for the former governor declined to remark. Risa Heller, a spokeswoman for each Zucker and Gollust, says in a press release that “Jeff never advised Andrew Cuomo,” and that the notion that Gollust was “laundering advice to the Governor” was “far-fetched” and “patently ridiculous.” But two sources aware of the matter dispute this. To observers each inside and outside CNN, the community brass’s interactions with the governor represented the worst form of journalistic lapse — “one of the most clear-cut ethical breaches you could think of,” says University of Missouri journalism professor Ryan Thomas. News retailers are supposed to show the wrongdoings of politicians, not function their publicists. That’s very true for the community that payments itself as “The Most Trusted Name in News.”
Zucker was ousted from CNN on Feb. 2, 2022, citing a beforehand unreported affair with Gollust. The relationship was unearthed amid an inner investigation into CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, who was fired final December for serving to his brother navigate sexual-misconduct allegations. But, as was revealed days later in a press release by WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar, that probe turned up not solely Zucker and Gollust’s affair, but in addition violations of journalistic finest practices round the couple’s cozy relationship with the governor. The preliminary suggestion was that these failings have been latest — lapses that came about throughout the extraordinary instances of the pandemic. But in line with dozens of former colleagues who spoke with Rolling Stone, they marked the end result of Zucker’s three-plus many years spent in a craven pursuit of rankings and energy, a profession that will foster a poisonous tradition at two networks and fan the flames of the disinformation age alongside the manner.
At NBC, Zucker put Trump in entrance of tens of millions of American eyeballs for 14 seasons, positioning him as a lovably irascible titan of enterprise and successfully turning The Apprentice right into a shadow marketing campaign for the future chief of the free world. It was a union spawned in 2003, when Trump was a semifailed businessman searching for a picture overhaul, and Zucker, then president of NBC Entertainment, was apparently wanting to acquiesce. To cross-promote that present, he put in Trump as an everyday visitor on Today, the place he was exalted like a Nobel laureate earlier than an viewers of America’s stay-at-home mothers. And, in fact, Zucker presided over Matt Lauer’s heyday, when the Today anchor preyed on susceptible younger staffers, seemingly with no worry.
“Jeff and Trump are essentially the same person — the ability to self-promote and be wildly duplicitous. They are very similar. And vindictive. They’re not gonna forget anything.”
By the time he obtained to CNN, Zucker was each kingmaker and king. He introduced in on-air expertise like Clarissa Ward and, extra just lately, Chris Wallace; launched landmark docuseries like Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown; and turned a moribund digital information operation right into a scoop machine. He additionally made a $6-million-a-year star of his shut good friend Chris Cuomo, who has since been accused of sexual misconduct along with journalistic missteps. (Cuomo denies the sexual-assault and harassment allegations, and maintains that any moral transgressions have been sanctioned by Zucker and Gollust.) Zucker bucked conflict-of-interest protocol to have Chris interview his brother, shamelessly capitalizing on Andrew’s rising nationwide profile throughout the pandemic. All the whereas, sources say, Zucker was conducting his affair together with his subordinate, Gollust, in plain sight, bringing her from one community to the different, selling her — and approving her compensation — at each stage of his ascension. She was a key participant in Cuomogate, offering speaking factors to the governor — for whom she labored briefly between stints with Zucker — and relaying his most popular matters to CNN producers, together with on that day in March 2020. It was all, sources say, a part of a sample of conduct Zucker had been nurturing for years.
“Jeff will do anything for good ratings and buzz, journalistic ethics be damned,” says one former NBC comrade. “He’s like, ‘Everybody’s talking about it. It’s great TV.’ But great TV doesn’t always translate to great journalism.”
Tom Touchet, who was a successor to Zucker as govt producer of Today from 2002 to 2005, usually collided with Zucker and Trump throughout the early years of The Apprentice on NBC. His evaluation of Zucker is extra pointed: “Jeff and Trump are essentially the same person — the ability to self-promote and be wildly duplicitous They are very similar. And vindictive. They’re not gonna forget anything.”
Zucker and Gollust’s March 28 communications with Gov. Cuomo could also be amongst the 100,000 texts and emails swept up in CNN’s investigation into Chris Cuomo’s journalistic processes, carried out by the regulation agency Cravath, Swaine & Moore. When the probe wrapped on Feb. 13, Kilar’s assertion referred to as it “comprehensive and definitive,” noting that the investigators had “found violations of Company policies, including CNN’s News Standards and Practices, by Jeff Zucker, Allison Gollust, and Chris Cuomo.”
Gollust (far proper), with Zucker and Tom Brokaw in 2016, was promoted at each stage of Zucker’s ascendancy at NBC and CNN. Their affair got here to gentle final yr.
Jared Siskin/Patrick McMullan/Getty Images
While Zucker had maintained his resignation was a results of the uncovered affair, plot twists abound. First off, each events claimed their relationship had solely just lately turned romantic. (“Jeff and Allison have had a professional partnership for over 22 years. It evolved over time and became romantic during Covid. Any speculation to the contrary is false,” Heller says.) But a number of colleagues say it started many years in the past.
According to at least one supply aware of the CNN investigation and one other who’s a Democratic operative, Gollust’s ongoing connections to Gov. Cuomo additionally raised eyebrows. Two sources aware of the matter say Gollust and the governor exchanged texts wherein they agreed to fulfill up for drinks on a number of events in 2019 and 2020. In early 2020, a number of months after his break up from accomplice Sandra Lee, Cuomo requested Gollust, “You don’t want to see me now that I’m single?” She replied, “A drink with you would be the best date I’ve had in a while.” Four months later, he fired off a textual content to Gollust suggesting he be her “pool boy.” She responded that she’d welcome that situation, and so they arrange a name. When their texting resumed, Gollust wrote, “That was fun. Sleep well.”
(“It’s no secret that Allison and Governor Cuomo had a friendly relationship after Allison briefly worked for him in 2012,” says Heller. “For Rolling Stone to suggest through innuendo and creative syntax — and no evidence — that there was a sexual relationship between the two in 2020 is disgusting, sexist, and patently false. In fact, Allison was never in the same room as the governor during 2020.” A consultant for Cuomo provides, “Allison and the governor were former colleagues and friends, never had a romantic relationship, and it is impossible to have two sources saying otherwise because it is a total fabrication.”)
Gollust’s texts went past mates’ banter. When a rumor circulated that Trump was about to close down New York City, Gollust invited the governor to return on CNN’s New Day the subsequent morning and “squash it.” She quipped to her former boss, “I’m pretty sure I stopped being your publicist 8 years ago, but apparently I still am.” On one other event, he requested her to critique his press convention.
Heller says, “These are innocuous, mundane conversations that are being spun into a nefarious tale.” But she acknowledges that Gollust requested the governor to assist her good friend minimize by bureaucratic purple tape to open a birthing heart in Manhattan. Months later, Heller additionally confirms, Gollust hit up Cuomo with a request involving Billy Joel, who’d as soon as hosted a Cuomo-campaign fundraiser. She prefaced it with “I never ask you for favors, but . . .,” to which Cuomo replied, “Yes, u do ask me for favors, and that’s okay. It’s mutual.”
“It was clear that she leveraged the relationship [with Andrew Cuomo],” says the Democratic operative. “There was a consistent exchange of favors between them.”
The inappropriate relationship, coupled with clear indicators of collaboration, sealed Gollust’s destiny. On Feb. 15, she was minimize unfastened from CNN. (WarnerMedia declined to touch upon questions on Gollust and Cuomo’s relationship and all different issues, pointing to Kilar’s assertion relating to the investigation. Heller insists that CNN’s characterization of Gollust’s journalistic integrity is a “retrofitted justification for an unmerited dismissal.”)
If all of it appears too incestuous to be true, it was hardly uncommon inside the tradition that adopted Zucker wherever he went. For all his many journalistic wins, a brazen disregard for office ethics appeared to envelop his newsrooms — a perform, maybe, of his early successes and the privileges he loved alongside the manner.
Raised by a heart specialist and a schoolteacher outdoors of Miami, Zucker graduated from Harvard in 1986, and three years later turned a discipline producer for Today. Andrea Smith, a then-producer of the present who had been with the community since 1975, educated the new recruit on produce and edit a narrative. “I saw what salary they were giving him right out of the gate, and it was like 10 times what I was making, maybe more, and here I was being his tutor,” the Emmy winner recollects. “Men were treated so much better than women in those days, because that’s just the way it was.”
Just three years after his auspicious begin, Zucker turned the boss when he was named govt producer of Today at the age of 26. The producers purchased him a youngsters’ lunchbox as a result of he was so younger, and he was rapidly dubbed a wunderkind. His arrival ushered in the golden period of the morning present. “He was the best producer I ever worked under,” says Smith. “He was unparalleled at motivating the producers under him, and just knew how to manage a show, and knew how to get people to do their best.”
His Midas contact included helming manufacturing in the now-iconic streetside studio, and assembling a killer crew that included Katie Couric and Matt Lauer. A key addition off-camera was Gollust, who, in line with her bio, joined the community in 1996 — the identical yr Zucker married one other NBC worker, Caryn Nathanson — and made her leap to senior publicist inside a yr. It was well-known that Gollust and Zucker have been greater than colleagues, NBC alums say. They often flew on the NBC personal jet along with one other Today colleague, who sources say was additionally concerned in a barely hidden relationship with a married prime information govt. It was round this time that Lauer, the rising star, started concentrating on younger, susceptible ladies, notably assistants, temps, and receptionists.
Matt Lauer’s relationships with susceptible younger staffers have been mentioned to be a widely known secret all through Zucker’s tenure at NBC.
Robin Platzer/FilmMagic
Addie Zinone was a kind of ladies who got here ahead with accusations in opposition to Lauer in 2017. When she started interning at Today in 1999, the present was at the top of its reputation. Still, there was a a lot darker facet. In 2000, Zinone was a manufacturing assistant and Lauer a newly married famous person when he first hit on her. They started a consensual relationship that she now attributes to that gross imbalance in energy. The affair included encounters in Lauer’s workplace, a now-familiar MO for the anchor.
While Zinone describes Zucker as “nothing but professional” towards her, she is skeptical that he didn’t learn about his star worker’s fame. “Matt’s behavior was despicable and ongoing, and that doesn’t happen in a vacuum,” she says immediately. “A lot of what we’ve heard about Matt was in-house, meaning he had to feel protection from those above him.”
“It was totally an old-boys’ club,” says Smith. “Everybody knew about the affairs and everything going on. The idea that [network brass] would say, ‘Oh, we had no idea [about Lauer’s conduct]’ is very funny. Everybody talked about it. All of the highest-up executives at NBC knew.” (Heller strongly denies this, saying Zucker “was entirely unaware of Matt Lauer’s behavior while the two overlapped at NBC. If he had been, he would have taken action immediately.”)
By the time Tom Touchet arrived in 2002 from ABC News, the environment was “like Mad Men,” he says. Zucker had change into president of NBC Entertainment a few years prior, and with one other promotion in 2003, was in control of the information division, too. Touchet goes on to explain the Athens Olympics in 2004 as “the weirdest melting pot of everybody sleeping together.”
Lauer specifically acted extra boldly as time went on. In 2005, Smith despatched the anchor a thank-you word by way of an inner communications channel after he’d dealt with a very difficult interview. His response took her unexpectedly. “Are you buttering me up?” Lauer wrote, in line with Smith. Then he started detailing the place he wished to unfold butter on her physique, together with her thighs. He ended the message with a requirement: “Wear that skirt. It’s easy to get off.”
Smith was confused. She appeared down at the leggings she was carrying like she did most days. Skirts weren’t precisely a staple of her wardrobe. She rapidly discovered that the message wasn’t meant for her. Instead, she realized, it was meant for a younger receptionist who had an identical title.
Smith says she felt it was knowledgeable “death knell” that she’d came upon about the affair. In the atmosphere cultivated below Zucker, in line with Smith, Touchet, and others, it was unstated however understood that highly effective males have been making strikes on underlings who could be committing profession suicide to report them. Lauer’s fame was well-known internally by then, but he continued to be placed on the highest pedestal at the community. (Even highly effective ladies misplaced in the event that they crossed him. In 2011, NBC executives gave Ann Curry the boot only a yr into her stint as Today co-anchor reportedly with the intention to entice Lauer, who’d made his disdain for her clear, to re-up his contract.) Smith says she was pushed out in 2006, after greater than 30 years with NBC. She believes the “dangerous” data she’d acquired about Lauer might have been an element. (NBC vehemently denied data of Lauer’s conduct at the time.)
While doubt stays about what Zucker knew of Lauer’s conduct, NBC’s prime canine supplied a clue at a 2008 Friars Club roast of the anchor that was dubbed “three hours of dick and pussy jokes,” many at the expense of Curry. “It’s just good to see Matt up here and not under my desk,” Zucker cracked. “I don’t want to say Matt’s a germaphobe, but he’s the only guy I know who uses Purell both before and after he masturbates.”
Even in any case that later turned public about Lauer, Zucker remained pleasant with the #MeToo pariah. In 2019, he and Gollust attended Zucker’s 54th-birthday occasion at New York’s McKittrick Hotel. Couric’s tell-all 2021 memoir, Going There, describes the threesome palling round at Don Lemon’s 2019 engagement occasion in the Hamptons.
“I think Jeff probably would have hired Matt [at CNN] if there hadn’t been so much blowback,” says one on-air persona who labored with each. “Jeff likes to repay loyalty by hiring people.”
Lauer wasn’t the solely dangerous actor Zucker enabled. His bromance with Trump was in full swing in the mid-aughts, their co-dependent lust for rankings fueling noxious conduct. On Feb. 3, 2005, Trump settled into an opulent chair at Studio 1A in Rockefeller Plaza, able to cross-promote The Apprentice alongside that present’s producer, Mark Burnett, who was showing remotely from L.A. Lauer affectionately referred to Trump as “the Donald,” whereas the friends prattled about the sequence’ soon-to-be-launched spinoff with Martha Stewart. Then Lauer did the unthinkable: Noting that The Apprentice’s viewers numbers had been on a downward trajectory after a smash-hit first season, he requested Trump, “Why do you think that is?”
Trump spun the fact — claiming the rankings have been truly up, and “in the number-one demographic, are very substantial” — however Lauer pushed again. “The information I have is [that] in the premiere the ratings were better, but since then they’ve been down about 20 percent. That’s not what you have?”
Zucker and Trump have been mates for twenty years main as much as Trump’s presidency. As just lately as 2017, Zucker informed a journalist, “I like Donald.”
Nick Hunt/Patrick McMullan/Getty Images
After the section, Trump stormed into the management room, orange face turned purple, “and had a hissy fit,” in line with Touchet, who was then operating Today. Zucker adopted, and, at first, counseled Touchet in entrance of the workers for urgent their visitor on a tough query. Then, Touchet says, Zucker pulled him apart and — borrowing a line from Trump — informed him, “You’re fucking fired.”
“Trump was the worst guest we ever had to deal with, and he was serially abusive to my staff,” Touchet says. “I heard from Jeff and Mark Burnett daily. Trump was on the show constantly.”
Within a couple of months, Touchet says he was formally proven the door with years left on his contract. (“Tom Touchet was not fired because of any interview with Donald Trump,” Heller says.) Later that yr, Today actually rolled out a purple carpet for Trump earlier than one in all his appearances on the present, taking part in “The Imperial March” — Darth Vader’s theme from Star Wars — as he walked on, with Al Roker introducing him as the “king of the universe.” Jokey although it could have appeared, gambits like this helped to burnish the picture of Trump created by way of The Apprentice: that of an achieved, authoritative chief to be each feared and lauded. For tens of millions of Americans outdoors New York City — the place Trump was largely seen as nothing greater than a carnival barker — the cartoon character that Zucker and Co. had drummed as much as goose rankings was changing into actual.
Given that Trump had beforehand expressed political ambitions (together with a short presidential run on the Reform Party ticket in 2000), this TV-star glow-up was harmful sufficient. But the actuality behind the scenes was even worse: Trump’s rising stardom appeared to amplify a few of his most insidious qualities. Already a reputed racist who many years earlier had been sued for housing discrimination in opposition to Black renters and had referred to as for the demise penalty in opposition to 5 Black and Latino teenagers wrongly accused of rape in the infamous Central Park Jogger case, Trump reportedly used the n-word liberally on the set of The Apprentice, in line with sources in former contestant Omarosa Manginault Newman’s e book about her time in the Trump White House, Unhinged. It was additionally round this time that the notorious Access Hollywood tape, the place Trump casually bragged to host Billy Bush (throughout an interview for one NBC program about his visitor spot on one other NBC program, the cleaning soap Days of Our Lives) about grabbing lovely ladies “by the pussy” was recorded.
As with Lauer, it’s unclear how a lot Zucker knew about his money cow’s dangerous conduct in the studio, however Trump’s audaciousness suggests he wasn’t precisely holding his proclivities a secret. Yet Zucker continued to make use of different NBC applications to each feed and siphon Trump’s superstar — with dire penalties.
“By putting Trump in [the] pseudo-factual setting [of a] reality show, Zucker helped to create the Trump phenomenon,” says Columbia University journalism professor Samuel Freedman. “And the whole country is now paying a terrible price.”
By the time Zucker had ascended to president and CEO of NBC Universal in 2007, his and Trump’s worlds have been ever extra intertwined. The Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants had change into a three way partnership between NBC and Trump. That yr, NBC Universal reportedly made a $10,000 donation to the Trump Foundation. Trump’s 2007 enterprise how-to e book, Think Big and Kick Ass, even cited a remark Zucker had made about how, in a post-Friends world, Trump was NBC’s new Jennifer Aniston. (“He said very, very nicely, ‘Donald Trump may not have hair as good as [her], but he’s got great ratings.’ ”)
Still, Zucker’s fiefdom was crumbling from the inside. Despite all of the cross-promotion, The Apprentice rankings had continued to slide, together with the remainder of NBC’s prime-time lineup. Today’s numbers had additionally taken successful. The complications piled up. In 2009, Zucker engineered Jay Leno’s disastrous transfer to prime time, solely to reverse course 4 months later and transfer him again to late evening, the place an already put in Conan O’Brien was heading up The Tonight Show.
Corporate winds have been shifting, too. The subsequent yr, Zucker was proven the door forward of Comcast closing its 51 % acquisition of Universal. Though he’d acquired a golden parachute pegged at $30 million to $40 million, he was dealing with his first profession comeuppance.
“Jeff liked gimmicks. The gimmick of the missing plane, the gimmick of Trump, and Andrew and Chris Cuomo and their dog- and-pony show. This is an important story. People are dying. It’s not about ‘Who does Mom love more?’ It was ridiculous.”
Meanwhile, as one door closed for Zucker, Trump was strolling by the one The Apprentice had opened, beginning to lay the groundwork for a political future. Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2011, he floated a potential presidential run — and, in a style of what was to return, started selling the Obama birther conspiracy. He later reversed course and mentioned he wouldn’t run, deciding to take advantage of the promotional machine of The Apprentice — which additionally earned him $427 million over its run — a little bit longer.
After a few years executive-producing his previous colleague Katie Couric on her short-lived Disney-ABC syndicated discuss present, Katie, Zucker left in January 2013 to run CNN — a job Trump bragged he’d secured for his previous good friend. The diploma of Trump’s involvement is murky. Beyond a few tweets endorsing Zucker (“Great move by CNN if they sign Jeff Zucker. He was responsible for me and The Apprentice on NBC — became #1 show!”), a supply aware of the interplay says Trump did put in a very good phrase with then-Turner Broadcasting System chairman and CEO Phil Kent at a gala dinner for the American Turkish Society in 2012, calling Zucker “a genius.” (Kent declined to remark for this piece, however has just lately informed mates that he has no regrets about his resolution.)
As CNN president, Zucker’s first hires included Chris Cuomo and Gollust, who resigned from her place in the governor’s workplace, the place she’d been working lower than six months. At first, she reported to the community’s senior vice chairman for Turner Broadcasting, however inside seven months, she started reporting on to Zucker.
Unlike NBC, whose coverage acknowledged that supervisor-subordinate romances have been “strongly discouraged,” CNN’s guidelines have been way more strict. According to the firm’s code of conduct, “To avoid a conflict of interest, employees must not hire or supervise (directly or indirectly) someone with whom they have a personal relationship, and if you are in a position to influence the employment, advancement, or hiring of someone with whom you have a personal relationship . . . you must inform the HR department in advance of taking any action.” But as community president, Zucker had oversight of the HR division, and apparently didn’t care about flouting these guidelines.
While inside the community some folks resented the Gollust relationship, Zucker seems to have been extensively preferred by CNN staffers, notably the high-paid anchors whose careers he championed. (Don Lemon referred to as him “the backbone, the glue, and the spirit of this company, the man who I personally credit with change in my life, the man who believed in me when nobody else did.”) But as the years went on, Zucker was taking hearth from outdoors critics for giving a disproportionate quantity of airtime to his onetime famous person, Trump. In the lead-up to the 2016 election, CNN was mocked for its breathless protection of the candidate’s rallies, which the community often aired from begin to end. Sometimes producers went as far as to depart a digicam mounted on an empty podium with a chyron that learn: “Trump About to Take the Stage.” Trump additionally recurrently guested on the community’s political exhibits, having moderately civil conversations with its anchors about his divisive rhetoric. The tactic labored: CNN routinely trounced rivals MSNBC and Fox in rankings throughout the election cycle, and boasted its most-watched yr ever in 2016.
At a December 2016 dinner held at the Harvard Institute of Politics, Zucker was heckled and booed when the dialog turned to CNN’s protection of Trump. “The crowd did not react positively,” says one attendee. “It wasn’t just GOP people. It was people on the left who were upset over CNN’s role in giving that kind of attention to Trump.” But Zucker seemed to be neither stunned nor contrite. Instead, he argued that Trump was nice for rankings and profitability. And he insisted that his previous Apprentice buddy was the solely Republican candidate keen to name into CNN’s morning present. “Cable news in general, and CNN in particular, should not be held responsible for the fact that Donald Trump said yes to those interviews and the others didn’t,” he mentioned.
Sources say that in the run-up to the 2016 election, Zucker and Trump spoke instantly about protection, in addition to by disgraced Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who was a frequent visitor on CNN. Cohen denied any involvement to Rolling Stone. Still, in a 2020 section of Tucker Carlson Tonight, the host ran audio clips he mentioned have been from a 2016 telephone name between Cohen and Zucker. In the recording, the CNN exec praised Trump’s campaigning, supplied recommendation for that evening’s Republican debate, and mentioned he wished to debate giving Trump a weekly present.
To many observers, Zucker’s legacy is inextricably linked with the forty fifth president, to his detriment. “Overall, I think Zucker is a very flawed figure,” says NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen. “He definitely participated in the onslaught of Trump coverage that was part of his rise to power. He also turned CNN into an extremely adversarial network to Trump when that was needed. That’s part of his legacy as well. Which is not to say that they balance each other. But you have to reckon with both of those things.”
But even when the tone of the relationship between Trump and CNN shifted, Zucker couldn’t resist bragging that Trump’s animosity was private. It went again to their “strong, 20-year friendship,” as he defined on an episode of David Axelrod’s podcast, earlier than crowing with no trace of irony that when Trump didn’t get the “preferential treatment” he anticipated primarily based on the pair’s lengthy historical past, he turned on the community.
Of course, Trump is a person recognized to thrive on detrimental consideration, so CNN’s hammering of his presidency nonetheless performed instantly into his fingers. As the supposedly impartial community turned extra partisan in its tackle him, Trump painted himself as a sufferer of bias, branding CNN, and later most mainstream media, as “fake news.” The each day Trump-versus-CNN cage match set the stage for the misinformation age, with giant swaths of the inhabitants finally questioning something the community reported, from Covid demise charges to 2020 election outcomes. And nonetheless, Zucker couldn’t fairly give up their co-dependent relationship, figuring out that wall-to-wall Trump equaled stellar rankings, even because it contributed to the collapse of discourse in the U.S. “Jeff is responsible for the death of nuance,” as one NBC News alum who labored with Zucker places it.
As the pandemic raged in March 2020, Andrew Cuomo’s star was rising, and he was touted as a possible challenger to Joe Biden for the Democratic ticket. Zucker, seeing a brand new rankings bonanza, reversed course on an inner coverage barring Chris Cuomo from interviewing his brother. “You get trust from authenticity and relatability and vulnerability,” Zucker informed The New York Times’ Ben Smith of the resolution. “That’s what the brothers Cuomo are giving us right now.”
The on-air exchanges between the Cuomos have been usually cringeworthy, like when Chris requested his older sibling: “With all of this adulation that you’re getting for doing your job, are you thinking about running for president? Tell the audience.”
“Jeff liked gimmicks,” says one former anchor who labored with Zucker, citing CNN’s incessant protection when a Malaysian passenger jet disappeared from radar in 2014. “The whole gimmick of the missing plane, the gimmick of Trump, and the gimmick of Andrew Cuomo and Chris Cuomo having their little dog-and-pony show. This is an important story. People are dying. It’s not about, ‘Who does mom love more?’ It was ridiculous, so non-journalistic at every turn. There’s no excuse for it at all.”
Zucker’s interactions with Gov. Andrew Cuomo throughout the pandemic got here below scrutiny as a part of CNN’s investigation into the conduct of anchor Chris Cuomo.
Brad Barket/Getty Images
For a time, Zucker’s abuses of energy went unchecked; CNN operated like an island inside the large portfolio of WarnerMedia (as the community’s mother or father firm was renamed following AT&T’s accomplished acquisition of Time Warner in 2018). That is till Jason Kilar took over as Warner CEO in May 2020 and started overhauling the sprawling leisure and media conglomerate. One of his first choices: to take away Zucker’s oversight of CNN’s funds, human assets, and company communications, the division run by Gollust. Zucker had no enter in the matter, and was given simply 24 hours’ discover. The transfer prompted a number of journalists to question WarnerMedia about the relationship between Zucker and Gollust.
At the identical time, quite a lot of storms have been closing in. By February 2021, Gov. Cuomo had change into embroiled in a rising #MeToo scandal wherein he was accused of sexual misconduct by 11 ladies. New York Attorney General Letitia James carried out her personal investigation into the matter, with the outcomes indicating that New Day anchor Chris Cuomo had reached out to “sources,” together with different reporters, to gauge whether or not extra ladies have been going to return ahead, and relayed what he was listening to to his brother’s advisers. Even extra surprising, Gollust performed a job behind the scenes as Andrew Cuomo navigated the fallout; she related with Chris as he guided his brother’s response to the claims, in line with sources, a lot as Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund co-founders Roberta Kaplan and Tina Tchen had. (Those ladies resigned in August 2021 over their involvement in the governor’s dealing with of the sexual-harassment allegations.)
Controversies continued to pile up for Zucker. In June 2021, he was criticized for permitting CNN’s chief authorized analyst, Jeffrey Toobin, to return to the air after he’d uncovered himself on a Zoom with New Yorker journal colleagues. In September, as Cravath, Swaine & Moore launched its investigation into Chris Cuomo, Zucker steadfastly backed the anchor. In December, the actor Jussie Smollett testified in his case involving a falsely reported hate crime that he’d acquired recommendation from Lemon in the aftermath of the incident, prompting him to not hand over his telephone information to Chicago police; the difficulty was by no means raised internally at the community.
Early that very same month, the tide apparently turned on Chris Cuomo when Washington, D.C., lawyer Debra Katz despatched a letter to CNN’s basic counsel stating she represented a Jane Doe who claimed she was sexually assaulted by Cuomo when he was an anchor for ABC’s 20/20; the girl wished CNN to carry Cuomo liable for his actions. (A Cuomo consultant says, “These apparently anonymous allegations are not true.”)
On Dec. 4, CNN fired Cuomo for trigger. (A WarnerMedia supply says the assault allegation was not an element.) Six days later, CNN fired Cuomo’s New Day producer John Griffin following his indictment by a federal grand jury in Vermont for trying to lure minors as younger as 9 to interact in illegal sexual exercise. (Griffin has pleaded not responsible.) That identical month, information surfaced that police in Virginia had launched a prison probe into Rick Saleeby, who resigned from his put up as a senior producer on Jake Tapper’s The Lead; that investigation additionally concerned allegations from “potential juvenile victims.” Heller says that “Jeff had no knowledge of either of these two producers’ behavior.” But by the time the Cravath investigation introduced Zucker and Gollust’s misdeeds to Kilar’s consideration in late January, the writing was on the wall for Zucker.
Kilar acted swiftly to oust the media trade’s most high-profile govt, who departed with out severance. But Zucker, ever the grasp at shaping the narrative, negotiated the phrases of his Feb. 2 exit, sources aware of the matter say, citing solely the supposedly latest, undisclosed romantic relationship with Gollust. (Nothing about journalistic lapses was talked about, though a minimum of two publications, Rolling Stone and the New York Post, invoked the Andrew Cuomo ties.) Plenty of high-paid anchors, like Lemon and Tapper, bemoaned their fallen chief on air in hyperbolic phrases that mirror the loyalty Zucker instilled in his favourite expertise. (Tapper: “[Chris Cuomo] threatened Jeff. Jeff said, ‘We don’t negotiate with terrorists.’ And Chris blew the place up. How do we get past that perception — that this is the bad guy winning?”)
In his wake, Zucker leaves a media panorama extra fractured than ever, with public mistrust of journalists at an all-time excessive. And why not, when a peek behind the curtain reveals secret dealings between his information retailers and the politicians they’re supposed to carry to account, protection dictated not by the points however by no matter sensational dreck would preserve eyes glued to the display screen, and newsrooms the place alleged predators roamed freely? Zucker could not have invented the tradition of highly effective males exploiting the ladies round them, however he incubated it for the fashionable media age, empowering individuals who have been supposed to carry the public’s belief — however couldn’t even be trusted to maintain their fingers off of their subordinates. Perhaps most damning, he leaves a political panorama warped by a person he was all too proud to make use of for rankings all through his profession.
“I understood who and what Donald Trump was, because I was from New York, and I understood that he was just a one-man publicity machine,” Zucker informed an viewers of school college students again in 2011. “Even if the show wasn’t good, he was going to say it was good. Even if the ratings weren’t good, he was going to say the ratings were great. Nobody could generate publicity like Donald Trump. And by the way, that turned out to be entirely true.”
Now, many are ready to see how the onetime wiz child will reinvent himself once more. Though a journalism job would appear out of the query given all that went down at two networks on his watch, a return to indicate enterprise is inside the realm of risk. He has additionally mentioned he would like to run the Miami Dolphins, and hasn’t dominated out a run for workplace himself. Wherever he lands, former colleagues are positive it’ll be on his ft. “Don’t hold the garage sale for Jeff Zucker,” says one. “Someone will hire him. He’s too smart.”
And as for the influence he’s had on American tradition, some say it’s too early to name. “It’s a 100 percent fair assessment to say Jeff laid the groundwork for a Trump presidency,” says Touchet. “From the beginning, there was a symbiotic relationship. But I don’t know if that’s Jeff’s legacy, because I don’t think he’s done. I know Jeff, and he’s not going away. I don’t know where he’s going to land, but there’s too much drive and power hunger to sit sideways for too long.”
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