CNN Honcho Chris Licht Is Out. Will His Corporate Overlords Now Clean House?

Though the joy is muted, it doesn’t take a genius to see the schadenfreude from current and former CNN staffers in response to the news that Chris Licht is out as CEO.

That may be short-lived. I spoke with a number of industry executives both inside and outside CNN who believe that Warner Bros. Discovery executives are now way more likely to clean house at the embattled cable news outlet. The very rank and file so eager to see Licht ousted may come to regret their open — yet anonymous — undermining of the former CEO. A leader who made mistakes, but wasn’t nearly as toxic as he was made out to be.

Licht formally replaced Jeff Zucker as the network’s head honcho in early May of 2022, and even before he started in that role, he was forced to oversee the culling of its streaming platform CNN+. Laying off hundreds of new employees right off the bat wasn’t a great introduction, and yet, impossibly, it was perhaps the happiest time of the short-lived Licht-CNN honeymoon.

As woes mounted, Puck’s Dylan Byers became a clearinghouse for CNN staffers anonymously complaining about their new boss, which set a narrative that the network was rejecting the organ transplant.

Then came the 15,000-word piece by The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta, which Mediaite has learned was pitched with a different framing focused on the state of cable news as told through Licht’s first year, but instead became a damning series of hubris and arrogance that did not shy in an unflattering depiction of Licht.

While the piece largely amplified a narrative started by Byers’ reporting and focused on Licht’s apparent aloofness and lack of communicated vision, one specific detail angered CNN’s staff: His criticism of the network’s COVID coverage.

“In the beginning it was a trusted source—this crazy thing, no one understands it, help as make sense of it. What’s going on?” Licht said. “And I think then it got to a place where, ‘Oh wow, we gotta keep getting those ratings. We gotta keep getting the sense of urgency.”

He slapped his palms on the table between us, mimicking the feverish pace of an imaginary broadcaster. “COVID, COVID, COVID! Look at the case numbers! Look at this! Look at this!” Licht said. “No context. And, you know, the kind of shaming. And then people walked outside and they go, ‘This is not my life. This is not my reality. You guys are just saying this because you need the ratings, you need the clicks. I don’t trust you.'”

Were they wrong?

“They were not,” he said.

Later, Licht later spoke with CNN’s Health team, who were upset by this comment, particularly taking issues with the overall numbers. Licht did have a broader point about how the network’s trust had been undermined. In an internal “trust study” obtained by Mediaite, “trust in CNN was at its lowest levels since tracking started in 2017.”

That was the state of the network that Licht inherited. And it doesn’t matter if The Atlantic piece was fair or unfair to the CEO; the damage was done, and it became clear that Licht could not continue as the network’s leader. Licht’s mission was to bring trust back to the network, and he was treated with by a staff that immediately distrusted his vision, opting instead for a “they know best” approach that lay at the root of the conflict.

Following the controversial Trump town hall, CNN’s staff were in open revolt, best evidenced by Oliver Darcy’s candid criticism of the event. “It’s hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening,” Darcy wrote in the Reliable Sources newsletter the morning after.

Following The Atlantic profile, Darcy again reported on the internal anger with Licht.

In the wake of The Atlantic’s explosive story, I’ve spoken with dozens of staffers across the company. There are a wide range of emotions coursing through the halls of CNN. Some staffers are frustrated. Others are angry. Many are sad about the awful state of affairs that has taken hold of an organization they love.

Darcy deserves some level of credit for his bravado, and his analysis no doubt reflected pervasive feelings within CNN’s newsroom. But his commentary was seen by Licht as going beyond the sort of dispassionate reporting you would typically see from a media reporter covering his own shop. He gave ample room to vocal yet anonymous critics of leadership, putting a spotlight on the turmoil within the network — a decision that didn’t go down well with the boss.

It demonstrated Licht’s biggest problem, as reported by former CNN anchor Brian Stelter and nearly every other media reporter eager to jump on the — mostly correct — narrative that the boss had “lost the room.” But there are a lot of very unpopular CEOs that don’t get written up in their own company’s newsletter.

So while CNN’s rank and file are likely thrilled that their nemesis is out as CEO, it doesn’t change the WBD mission for the network. WBD CEO David Zaslav and lead shareholder John Malone have made abundantly clear that they see CNN as a nonpartisan news outlet willing to treat all news as nonpartisan.

I reached out to Dan Abrams, the founder of Mediaite and a veteran of the cable news industry, who is not just a trusted colleague but also a really smart guy, for his thoughts:

CNN’s bigger problems aren’t really about Chris Licht. The more significant issue is that David Zaslav clearly wants to position CNN as a more non-partisan network. . more centrist. . and even though they won’t admit it, many of CNNs rank and file just aren’t on board with that mission. They are convinced that their more left leaning worldview is the correct one, the only one. So the only way WBD could really achieve its broader goals is to make some serious changes at various levels of the organization. Licht came into an organization resistant to a major change the company wants to implement. No doubt some of the problems he encountered were self inflicted, but others are festering and will reappear no matter who is hired to lead.

One network insider I spoke to was far more blunt in his assessment: “CNN’s staffers are probably going to regret pushing Licht out because the WBD leadership will be far less accommodating.”

CNN has long been a valued brand and has long bragged accurately about having the best news-gathering resources in the world. Which you would think would be a terrific asset if you look at any number of polls that reveal how American citizens just want unbiased news over opinion.

But a quick look at cable news ratings reveals that Americans may not be responding to pollsters asking about their desired media diets in the same manner they are watching their televisions. They don’t want nutrition, they want comfort food. A take-less network in a hot-take media ecosystem doesn’t appear to be a viable editorial strategy outside government-funded PBS.

Chris Licht’s short-term leadership at CNN was problematic, yes. But are there deeper problems at CNN that he inherited — and remain — despite his ouster? Absolutely.

And members of CNN’s rank and file that remain committed to Jeff Zucker’s conflict-oriented and personality-first programming vision? They will likely soon be looking for work, given corporate leadership’s steadfast desire to move away from that very vision.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.