Zucker’s ouster from CNN looks shabby at best

Journalism these days already operates on a knife’s edge of anxiety. It doesn’t need any more disruption — especially not from corporate masters seemingly eager to upend a newsroom by shoving its leader out the door.

The rapid-fire removal of Jeff Zucker as CNN’s president last week has led to a sustained backlash inside the organization. Anchors and reporters discussed their confusion on air; others confronted Warner Media chief Jason Kilar directly at a meeting inside the cable channel’s Washington bureau. (Full disclosure: I worked for Zucker at times during our years together at NBC.)

The barely-contained tumult came as CNN — like most news outlets — faces a long list of challenges: the decline of overall cable viewership as streaming grows, the bungled leadership of corporate overlord Warner Media by owner AT&T, and the approaching merger of Warner with Discovery.

Through all those challenges, Zucker kept CNN relatively stable and — more importantly — he invested heavily in expanding the brand into streaming with the soon-to-debut CNN+ service.

But the most valuable ingredient he delivered to the newsroom was confidence. Journalists do their jobs best when they feel leadership has their backs and is powerful enough to protect the newsroom from the worst impulses of corporate executives. By all accounts, Zucker did that.

Just as significant: Reporters, producers and editors felt confident that Zucker had a plan, that he knew how to transform CNN during an era of accelerated change.

And he executed his plan in a typically splashy way. To build CNN+, Zucker hired Chris Wallace away from Fox and greenlighted a travel show from actress Eva Longoria. He swept up younger stars from digital platforms like Instagram and Twitter.

Those accomplishments led many inside CNN to insist his punishment did not fit the crime. Some insiders believe something deeper is being covered up; theories involving the Cuomo brothers have bubbled to the surface, along with various Game-of-Thrones-like scenarios centered on a rivalry between Zucker and Warner Media’s Kilar. None of this is great for morale.

But assume for the moment all relevant facts are now public. In that case, Zucker’s sole offense is that he violated company policy when he did not inform Warner Media that he was in a relationship with a colleague and long-time friend, Executive Vice President Allison Gollust. To be very clear, Warner is not saying the relationship itself was improper, only that corporate needed to be told. So, yes: Apologies are in order, policy must be obeyed. But it seems very unlikely that instant removal was the only course of action available.

At the same time, others — mostly, but not only, outside CNN — have supported the move by Warner Media. The company’s action demonstrated that no one was above anyone else, not even a figure as important as Jeff Zucker. His resignation, some said, was another victory for reforms regarding workplace relationships.

But at what cost?

For example: Few people have been more important to the modern newspaper business than Jeff Bezos. Since he bought the Washington Post in 2013, he’s doubled the size of the newsroom, increased subscriptions and turned the paper into a profitable online giant. Along with his deep pockets, Bezos brought a Zucker-like sense of confidence to the Post, a belief that the digital future was winnable.

But what if, due to some corporate policy reason, Bezos had been forced to step down and sell the Post because of the controversy surrounding his divorce and new relationship? It’s hard to see that as a purely positive step for journalists and the news business.

Maybe what needs to change at CNN, then, is not the top person but the way their corporate chieftans deal with workplace romantic relationships at all levels. 

This is admittedly a very tricky area for large companies with lot of employees. But, if Warner Media’s approach really has been to swiftly and summarily fire anyone who doesn’t tell them about such a relationship — if nothing else is honestly going on here — that’s just wrong.

It’s particularly wrong for a media company overseeing a news organization. The demands of journalism can often require total sacrifice of any real personal life. It’s a profession where workplace relationships are not uncommon. Also not uncommon: the break-ups and divorces that result from professional pressures.

The reward for meeting those demands should not be even more instability and anxiety at the top of an important news institution in the middle of a critical transition — especially not to simply satisfy some poorly conceived corporate policy that has been carelessly carried out.

Joe Ferullo is an award-winning media executive, producer and journalist and former executive vice president of programming for CBS Television Distribution. He was a news executive for NBC, a writer-producer for “Dateline NBC” and worked for ABC News. Follow him on Twitter @ironworker1.