How quickly they turn on each other. Chris Cuomo was thrown out and turns on a person he called his brother in a CNN complaint. He’s accusing both Don Lemon and CNN anchor Jake Tapper of “breaching journalistic standards.” He’s throwing accusations around. Tapper may have said Chris “threatened” former CNN chief Jeff Zucker and Lemon didn’t think Chris should be paid for breaking standards.
The demand for arbitration states
“Cuomo had no reason to believe that his assistance to Gov. Cuomo was inconsistent with CNN’s or Turner’s policies nor its expectations, especially given the fact that Zucker and Gollust had encouraged him to do so and had themselves provided advice to Gov. Cuomo. In fact, CNN fostered a culture in which the network’s standards and practices were a constantly moving target, modified at CNN executives’ discretion as they saw fit., and that culture began at the top with Zucker and Gollust.
As long as Zucker and Gollust believed CNN’s ratings would benefit, they were more than willing to disregard breaches of traditional journalistic standards by CNN personalities, such as Don Lemon and Jake Tapper, or even to engage in blatant breaches of journalistic ethics themselves. There is no better example of this than Zucker and Gollust making an exception to the CNN rule to direct Cuomo to interview his brother several times over the course of three months.”
It’s all about the ratings
The demand continues, “Before Cuomo was terminated, Zucker at first claimed that he had been unaware of Cuomo’s discussions with Gov. Cuomo’s aides, when Zucker had done the same thing himself. After Cuomo’s termination, Zucker claimed that Cuomo had broken his word and that Cuomo misrepresented the extent of his support for his brother. Other CNN staff joined in the calculated campaign to smear Cuomo and destroy his reputation. Jake Tapper, a CNN anchor, publicly assailed Cuomo’s ethics as a journalist and falsely claimed that Cuomo “threatened” Zucker. Don Lemon, another CNN anchor, falsely claimed that Cuomo had been “found to break with those journalistic standards and then [was] paid handsomely for it.”
If you go against the tide that constantly moves, you’re out. Each day you might not be sure of your position in the company.
No severance package
Lemon didn’t think Chris should have a severance package. It doesn’t send a good message. Lemon spoke with WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar about that.
Lemon asked Kilar, “Did you think about what message it sends to the journalists in the company and also to the larger public that someone can be found to break with those journalistic standards and then get paid handsomely for it? And what is to stop the next person from doing the same thing, and possibly getting compensated for it, by saying, ‘Hey I’m going to spread rumors if you don’t give me this amount of money’?”
Among the programing CNN provided was a podcast called “The Handoff”. It gave viewers the chance to hear the two “brothers” talk politics without being on the clock. The last in that series was aired November 2021, a month before Cuomo was let go.
