You may have read that CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker was booed and heckled by GOP attendees of the Harvard Institute of Politics' look back at the presidential campaign on Wednesday, December 1, 2016 at the Kennedy School in Cambridge and by Hillary supporters the previous day.
What do you know about this man? Other than he claims to be 5'6" tall, though some say that is aspirational.
The most important thing Voices4Hillary thinks you should know is that he is not a journalist and he didn't rise to his current position by moving through news bureaus. He was NBC's Head of Entertainment and eventually the president and CEO of NBC Universal.
He kept the network ahead of the pack by airing the gross out show Fear Factor, negotiating for the cast of the hit series Friends to take the series up to a tenth season, and signing Donald Trump for the reality show The Apprentice.
Donald Trump. His pal. His creation. Remember the Green Room tapes that couldn't be released because of NBC contractual issues? Yup, those would have been made on Zucker's watch. Zucker has long been one of NBC's Trump enabler,and
On February 6, 2007, Zucker moved up. He became president & CEO of NBC Universal. This next step didn't work out too well.
In 2010, Los Angeles Times reporters Meg James and Matea Gold wrote that Zucker's tenure at NBC had led to "a spectacular fall by the country's premier television network." Under Zucker, NBC fell from being the number one rated network to the lowest rated of the four broadcast networks and was occasionally being beaten in the ratings by programming on some of the more popular cable channels.
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote that in Hollywood "there has been a single topic of discussion: How does Jeff Zucker keep rising and rising while the fortunes of NBC keep falling and falling? ...many in the Hollywood community have always regarded him as ...a network Napoleon who never bothered to learn about developing shows and managing talent." She explained that Zucker "is a master at managing up with bosses and calculating cost-per-hour benefits, but even though he made money on cable shows, he could not program the network to save his life."
Dowd also reported that an unnamed "honcho at another network" stated that "Zucker is a case study in the most destructive media executive ever to exist... You'd have to tell me who else has taken a once-great network and literally destroyed it."
So Zucker failed at NBC, and had to leave but, of course, as things happen for white men, that meant that inevitably, Zucker, after a stint trying to run a show for Katie Couric, was offered a job a special President of CNN Worldwide on January 1, 2013.
How did he get that job? His old friend Donald Trump, who has been known to exaggerate his own role in any interaction says he made it happen. In 2012, Trump recommended Zucker for the CNN job during a dinner at the Plaza Hotel with Phil Kent, then the chief executive of Turner, CNN's parent company, according to 3 people with knowledge of the hiring process, who were granted anonymity to share private conversations. Trump believes he was instrumental in getting Mr. Zucker that job, the people said, although Mr. Kent had already been discussing the position with Zucker and his conversation with Trump lasted only a few minutes.
Whatever! There is a white boys' network, and Zucker, Trump's friend, landed in a big job that affects the whole world.
Before the Trump campaign gave him big ratings, how did Zucker do in his multimillion dollar gig?
His biggest accomplishment at CNN seems to have been creating the Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown, on what was once a news network.
Zucker, you see, has nothing to do with journalism or journalistic integrity or judgment. From Bourdain and travel, Zucker's only CNN path was a hop skip and a jump to false news- rallies with Trump, chit-chat with Corey Lewandowski, Trump's fallen campaign manager who was both on Trump's payroll and CNN's, and chit-chat with other false talking Trump surrogates, like Jeffrey Lord.
On Wednesday , Zucker said this, "We recognized pretty early on that there was something about Trump that was resonating. It's well known that I have known him for a long time. I've never hidden that fact. I think we understood who he was and why he resonated."
Apparently "resonating" supplied and supplies CNN's standard for what a so-called news network covers. Zucker's CNN put its resources towards Trump, both in terms of day-to-day coverage and enterprise reporting. To hell with news standards, to hell with Journalism as the 4th estate protecting Democracy.
Trump has been good for CNN's business.
"From a business perspective, this was the most-watched year in the history of CNN, and it's the most profitable year in the history of CNN," Zucker said. "Trump played a huge role, but we had contested contests on both sides of the aisle and for CNN which was a network that was able to cover both sides of the election regularly, that helped."
Zucker, do you know it is the responsibility of the press to hold candidates accountable, not provide publicity?
Is this man of no scruples remorseful? Well, he doesn't accept blame for the Election outcome, and while he admits there was excessive Trump coverage, he wants to pretend it had no consequence.
"I said a couple months ago here that if I had it to do over, I wouldn't have put as many of those early Trump rallies unedited as we did. They were attracting huge crowds right away, and he was often making news at those rallies. We are in the business of covering news. Did we show too many of those rallies? Probably. But our coverage of the early ones is not why he is the president-elect of the United States today."
Jeff Zucker is a man without scruples, but it turns that, with regard to CNN, a fish clearly rots from the head down.
John Martin, chief executive of CNN's parent company, Turner, also was at the Kennedy School conference on Wednesday. He made two points, first that CNN "is completing its Hall of Fame year," and he expects the network's ratings to stay high."With the Trump administration," Mr. Martin said, "there will be a general fascination that wouldn't be the same as under a Clinton administration."
Is "fascination" what we're looking for?
And that, my dears, is one story of the 2016 Election.
###
December 3, 2016
Addendum. You may have heard that Trump is now unhappy that CNN hasn't been continuing happy talk, wall to wall Trump coverage the last few days. Tweet. Tweet. Bird language against the First Amendment. Beware.
