Just a Note About CNN

I’ve debated writing anything. It is more inside baseball than a lot of things. But after several days of writing inside baseball for evangelicals, why not this?!

So, let me state first I was at CNN for three years. I left before Jeff Zucker got there. I was at Fox for five years. I still have deeper relationships with a lot of former colleagues at CNN than Fox in large part because at CNN, as a contributor, they dragged you into stuff and made you a part of stuff. They build a team spirit among a very diverse group of contributors, many of whom continue to be dear friends.

As a contributor to Fox, there are a lot of conservative contributors. I was rarely on. I made great friendships with a number of those I was regularly in contact with, but I encountered fewer people than at CNN.

At CNN, they sent me to several CNN debates. At Fox, I paid my own way to a Fox News debate and volunteered for the 5am post-debate coverage to get air time. At CNN, I went to Iowa and covered the 2012 Iowa caucuses. At Fox, I went to Iowa and covered the 2016 Iowa caucuses. CNN paid my way, made me their in-house contributor, and had me on multiple shows. At Fox, I paid my own way, contacted a friend who gets people on television for a living, and he connected me to a Fox News booker who got me an early morning pre-Fox and Friends hit. The experiences were different.

At Fox News saying you’re a conservative contributor is like going to Disney World and saying you’re there for the Star Wars rides. At CNN, being a conservative had you expecting to see Dian Fossey studying you in the mist. At CNN, I sent my schedule for availability every week. At Fox, they asked me to stop because no one does that. I know paid contributors at Fox who use part of their salary to get PR firms to pitch them to Fox. At CNN, as a conservative, you knew you’d be on every week and every day if they could get you.

At Fox News, I had lots of open conversations about what I thought, what I was writing, got the occasional call from Roger Ailes, and never once lived in fear of the leftwing mob.

At CNN, I occasionally had someone whisper to me that they appreciated what I did, often lived in fear of the leftwing mob coming for me, and frequently found myself against both the anchor and the progressive panelist.

Rush Limbaugh encouraged me to go to CNN to start my TV career. He said I needed to learn what it was like to be a missionary in the jungle where everything was out to get me. It was sage advice and I am better for having done it. I made a lot of friends and respect the hard news at CNN a ton.

That brings me to Jeff Zucker who arrived just after I left. I’d actually have stayed at CNN, but the network did not want to put any provisions in my contract protecting me from the things I and others were writing at RedState or I was saying on radio. While understandable, I and my family were tired of the constant attacks from Media Matters and the CNN executives who never seemed to be supportive. They all assured me Zucker would be different, I wasn’t going to trust their word when they wouldn’t put it in writing. At the time, having an actual conservative who said actually conservative things on CNN put a target on your back. I was tired, truly tired, and Roger Ailes offered me peace and security.

I know many of you at CNN are sorry to see Jeff Zucker leave. Y’all are leaking like the Trump White House. I know he built a sense of camaraderie at CNN that didn’t really exist before then. I know he used those editorial meetings to let others shine and have their say. I know he pushed you to be aggressive and drop the “both sides” schtick a lot of you have hated for a while. I know Jeff Zucker made you want to go to the mats for him and your network every day.

He gave CNN a sense of purpose Jon Klein and Jim Walton had not given. It was as close to having Ted Turner back in the building challenging, pushing, and encouraging you to pursue a story. That matters, particularly when the headlines pre-Zucker had been about CNN’s ratings, CNN possibly being for sale, and CNN’s morale problems.

As a viewer from the right, however, and as someone who was both a Trump critic and a CNN fan, I think he did the network a disservice. Many of you think Republicans were turned off of CNN because of the network’s Trump coverage. I actually think conservatives were turned off of CNN because the network seemed to treat us as carnival freaks — even the legit voices of the right. Even when I was there, it was far more common to see DailyKos show up in a packet for story prep than any right-of-center site. But with Zucker, we became your tool to entertain your friends on the left. There no longer was room for Trump critics who didn’t hate him. You either had to be all in or all out from the right. Only recently with Scott Jennings and Alyssa Farah have you guys come back around to conservatives who aren’t defined by or against Trump.

A friend of mine and a very prominent evangelical in America once said he’d prefer to go on Anderson Cooper’s show where he knew he’d be challenged, but get a fair hearing, than go on any show on Fox where he’d get head patted and dismissed. Over the last five years, however, he came to conclude that not only was it likely he’d never even get invited on CNN, but if he did it’d be to make him out to be the clown or use him to attack his friends.

From my perspective, CNN went from being a network that handled the news fairly and honestly, to a network that handled the news with an underlying narrative of protagonist and antagonist. There had to be a bad guy and my side is usually it — sometimes deserved, sometimes caricatured. And if I thought there was a level of fairness and evenhandedness, I’d be okay with that. But under Zucker it became so much about Trump and politics and you guys left a great deal of America behind and another bit of it alienated by the Trump obsession. So much of the news became stuff people within a hundred miles of a river valley don’t even care about. And they were put down for not caring.

When I got to CNN, lots of people were excited that Lou Dobbs was departing because it meant CNN could just be a news network and not have to deal with the opinion shows like Fox. Fast forward to the Zucker era and Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo could fit at home with MSNBC after dark. He foisted Jim Acosta on the world and turned Don Lemon from a journalist to whatever he is now.

Right now, after Chris’s departure, your best-rated shows are the ones with the journalists everyone across the board respects — Tapper, Blitzer, King, Cooper, and Burnett, all of whom are news first, even as some of my friends on the right won’t agree. And, in fact, the shows that shine are the shows that go in-depth to explore the news without a pre-programmed right v. left dichotomy where my side gets typecast as a villain.

It was under Jeff Zucker where guys went after Nicholas Sandman and then praised a kid for flipping off anti-mask protestors and then got offended by some other kid’s behavior who was a conservative.

Before Zucker, you guys were upset about ratings and everyone was complaining about CNN’s ratings. With Zucker, CNN did the Malaysian Air non-stop fest to see a blip in ratings, then went hardcore helping Trump become the GOP nominee. Yes, I remember when you guys forced Wolf Blitzer to cover a landing of Trump’s campaign jet as if Air Force One had landed and we know now Zucker was in the control room directing coverage of so much of Trump’s campaign. You guys who made your name taking on Trump had a heavy hand in making Trump.

And, to be honest, it worked. You built up Trump then got to spend four years tearing him down.

But along the way, what did you lose?

Jeff Zucker flaunted Warner's rules about relationships in the office. You and I know damn well if any other CEO of a major corporation had a long-term affair with someone in the office, you’d be calling it out. You’d be wringing your hands about the women who couldn’t get ahead because the boss was keeping the glass ceiling in place with his penis. You know you would. If Jason Kilar did that, y’all would be out for blood even before Zucker’s ouster.

Not only did Zucker flaunt Warner’s rules on office relationships, he flaunted journalistic ethics. His relationship with Andrew Cuomo and his build-up of Gov. Cuomo was discrediting to the journalistic standards of CNN. His use of Brian Stelter to defend the network, turned Stelter into the Baghdad Bob of CNN.

What we know about how Zucker pulled Andrew Cuomo in, used the relationship with Chris Cuomo, and set aside journalistic ethics should give every one of you who values ethics real pause and cause some self-reflection. For all the disdain about Fox and Trump, Zucker was ignoring CNN’s own journalistic standards for Andrew Cuomo. And the ratings aren’t great right now.

Alas, I gather you all know this and a lot of you still miss him. I can’t blame you. He gave you a sense of self-worth. He gave validity to your work. He made you feel seen and heard. He provided a sense of camaraderie and unity that was missing under leadership since Ted Turner left. Jeff Zucker made CNN a team. He gave you license to punch back at critics and it felt good to show emotion. Though it didn’t get ratings gold, it got past the quest for high ratings and focused on talking truth to power. For many of you it was worth it.

Ironically, a lot of Trump supporters feel the same way about Trump. They ignored the bad, the ethics, the problems, and the behavior. He made them feel seen and heard. He was fighting for them and sticking it to the elite. He gave them a sense they could punch back and show emotion. Trump provided a sense of camaraderie to a lot of people who were looking for someone to take up their cause.

I think so highly of CNN. I wish it was still Atlanta-based — something that set it apart as a network from America instead of the DC-NYC corridor — something that got lost in the branding once Ted Turner left. I never had a day I really regretted being there even as my friends told me I was suspect for working there. But I think for all the good Zucker brought to morale and team, he helped divide and sow distrust in a very Trumpian way and now you guys have the chance to take the good sense of team and purpose he built and use it to find a way back to putting news above narrative. I wish you well.