Jeff Zucker, 56, president of the American network CNN and the news division of WarnerMedia, announced his resignation on Wednesday (2), claiming that he had a romantic relationship with a top executive at CNN without having disclosed it to the company.
The news was announced in an internal memorandum to company employees, later obtained by The New York Times. Zucker explains, in the document, that the existence of the relationship came to light during the internal investigations into the conduct of former anchor Chris Cuomo, carried out last year.
Brother of former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who resigned after being accused of sexual harassment of co-workers, Chris was fired from CNN in December. The company claimed that new evidence had pointed to a greater involvement of the journalist in his brother’s strategy to react to the allegations.
“As part of the investigation into Chris Cuomo’s work, I was asked about a consensual relationship with my closest colleague, someone I worked with for over 20 years,” Zucker wrote. “I recognized that the relationship has evolved over the last few years. I was obliged to disclose it when it started, but I didn’t. I was wrong.”
Zucker was referring to Allison Gollust, CNN’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer and one of the network’s top leaders, who is intimately involved in the company’s business decisions. She said in a statement that she will remain in office.
Gollust explained that his relationship with the now former world president of CNN changed during the pandemic. “Jeff and I have been close friends and professional colleagues for over 20 years,” she wrote. “Recently, our relationship changed during the [pandemia de] Covid. I’m sorry we didn’t release it at the right time.”
Zucker joined CNN in January 2013. In recent months, he has been involved in the formation of CNN+, a soon-to-launch subscription streaming service. For weeks, he sided with Chris Cuomo, against the possibility of firing the anchor, but changed his mind as evidence became available.
Copies of text messages and emails, as well as testimonies from the former governor and his closest aides, contradicted what Chris stated. Evidence reveals that he frequently communicated with his brother’s staff and gave his opinion on the course of events.
To investigators, the CNN anchor insisted he never manipulated coverage or made suggestions to other journalists to benefit the former governor. To onlookers he said he acted only as a brother to “listen and give advice”, directing the Democrat to tell the truth, whatever it was, and eventually to resign.
Due to the access he has to various sources inside and outside the American press, the journalist was contacted by former advisor Melissa DeRosa – who left office two days before Cuomo – while she was trying to control, in early March of last year, journalists investigating the harassment stories. “Go ahead,” was Chris Cuomo’s response, according to US media.
Days later, she wrote to him again after learning that a reporter from The New Yorker magazine was preparing to publish a story, asking the CNN anchor to check the information.
Later that month, the journalist also reached out to DeRosa via text message, saying he was in “panic” over the way his brother’s team was handling the allegations and asked to help with Andrew’s preparation before writing proposed statements for the then governor read.
He also asked the publicist to trust him and urged them to stop hiding details. “We are making mistakes that we cannot [cometer]”, he wrote at one point.
Chris Cuomo even sought out his former advisor after a New York Times report on sexual harassment at a wedding. The journalist wrote saying he had a clue that the woman was acting to harm the image of the former governor – which was not true, he admitted to investigators.
Source: Folha
