On His First Day, CNN’s New Leader Grapples With Israel-Hamas Crisis — a Fraught Time for Media

Alex Weprin
·10 min read
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On day one as the CEO of CNN, Mark Thompson found himself facing a global crisis after Hamas’ surprise attack against Israel. The veteran news executive is taking over a massive news organization in the middle of an enormously consequential world event, one that will undoubtedly be critical for CNN and its plan to restore itself as the global TV news leader.

When Russia invaded Ukraine last year (just a few months before Thompson’s predecessor Chris Licht took over the venerable news channel), CNN’s viewership soared as it converged on the nascent war (CNN has long benefitted from viewers who don’t typically watch TV news but tune in where there is a major event).

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It’s too soon to tell if CNN will see a similar rise in viewers given the violence in Israel, but Thompson, speaking on CNN’s Monday morning editorial call, seems acutely aware of the stakes. The executive said in recorded remarks that CNN’s coverage of the Hamas-Israel conflict has been “basically great.”

Thompson, who officially started at CNN on Monday morning, is not a stranger to the news business. He previously served as director-general of the BBC and CEO of The New York Times, so its safe to say he has been at the center of seismic events that have galvanized newsrooms.

And he won’t have to micromanage CNN’s coverage either.

“I was blown away at the muscle memory that kicked in at CNN during major crises,” Jon Klein, the former president of CNN U.S., tells The Hollywood Reporter, noting that the channel has veterans who have covered every news event imaginable. “It’s just lurking not very far under the surface because you’ve got to move quickly.”

“Having run two world-class news organizations already, Mark no doubt brings the right DNA to the crisis coverage he is stepping into,” Klein adds.

Thompson has serious business-side problems to solve at CNN. “TV is also too dominant at CNN and digital too marginal,” Thompson also told staff on Monday. “We have some real talent and bright creative spots on the digital side, but despite all the hard work, our digital products today lag well behind the current state of the art.” But the Israel conflict is now the second time in as many years that new leadership is joining right as a geopolitical conflict breaks out, and as CNN itself shines through its coverage.

While Thompson was addressing CNN staff in New York, Atlanta and Washington on Monday morning, CNN foreign correspondent Clarissa Ward and her team found themselves diving into a ditch on the side of a road near the Israel-Gaza border, as sirens blared and rockets and jets roared overhead.

“So we have had to take shelter here by the roadside,” Ward said, looking into the camera lying on the ground next to her, as her producer was visible behind her, cell phone glued to his ear. “Gaza is in that direction. We can hear now a lot of jets in the sky. We can also hear the Iron Dome intercepting a number of those rockets as they were whizzing overhead and making impact in that direction, not too far from here.”

As the Hamas attack on Israel appears poised to erupt into a full-blown conflict, news organizations once again find themselves surrounding a story that is vital to cover given its international significance. NBC News’ Lester Holt, ABC News’ David Muir and CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell, the network evening news anchors, all flew into Israel on Monday. But journalists are also finding themselves grappling with a geopolitical landmine.

“What you were able to witness was how her cameraman — even as he’s running for cover — had the savvy to keep rolling even while heading for safety, and her producer while they’re huddled against an embankment, and Clarissa is looking at the camera, you could see her producer behind her continuing to talk into his cell phone presumably to the control room in New York or London,” says Klein. “That’s a very vivid example of the kind of experience that you want to have available. Less experienced people will either panic when something like that happens and fall apart, or they won’t know when to take cover or how to take cover.”

For a news outlet and news executives, conflicts like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the emerging violence in Israel are, in Klein’s words, among the most “fraught” and “unpredictable.” But they are also critical. Challenging world events are when news outlets define themselves.

But for the executives in charge, it also takes a personal toll.

“You can’t sleep, you know, it’s your people out there,” Klein says. “Even the most seasoned journalists can suddenly find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time and be arrested, be captured, be killed or injured.”

“It’s a grave concern constantly, and so, maximum communication and maximum caution,” he adds. “The people on the ground need to know that the most important thing is their safety, not getting the story. You don’t want them taking unnecessary risks, being reckless, putting themselves in harm’s way unnecessarily. That said, the very act of basically parachuting into a war zone is inherently dangerous and risky, and these tend to be risk-taking people so you’re really dependent on everyone’s cooler head prevailing.”

It’s not a hypothetical concern. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich is currently in a Russian jail after being arrested in March on charges of espionage.

And in March of 2022, in the early weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, shelling from Russian troops killed a veteran Fox News camera operator, Pierre Zakrzewski, as well as a local “fixer” working for Fox Oleksandra “Sasha” Kuvshynova. The correspondent they were working with, Benjamin Hall, suffered grave injuries, losing one of his legs, his other foot, and the use of one of his eyes.

In an interview with THR earlier this year, Hall said he thinks of the moment of the attack “every day.”

“I think back to lying on the ground, I think back to sitting next to Pierre [in the car before the attack]. I try as hard as I can to remember what it felt like, and in a strange way it gives me strength,” Hall said. “I realized that if you can get through that you can get through absolutely anything. In another sense I realized that I had to remember that point forever. Because if you don’t make the best of everything, then Pierre’s life is going to waste as well.”

According to Klein, in difficult breaking news events, networks lean on veteran correspondents (like Ward) and producers, who know how to handle difficult situations.

“Of course, you want to get there as quickly as you can, and you want to report as thoroughly as you can, but you really want to make sure that everyone comes home from there,” Klein says. “The best way to ensure that, first of all, is to deploy highly experienced people who know which risks to take and which ones not to.” (During his tenure atop CNN from 2004-2010, Klein oversaw coverage of Israel’s disengagement from Gaza, two U.S. presidential elections, a tsunami in Southeast Asia and a devastating earthquake in Haiti.)

“You’re looking for people who understand that even if their title is producer and they’re technically in charge of the operation, that they have a good sense for the people like the camera operators or other producers or correspondents who have far more experience than they do,” he adds. “So it’s it’s a matter of looking for people with a cool head and good judgment, and to understand that the first task is not to get the story but to get home.”

Of course “when mayhem erupts, there’s not always a guarantee of anything,” Klein notes.

In the case of the conflict in Israel, some circumstances make it easier for news organizations to report on what’s happening. There are multiple non-stop commercial flights from the U.S. to Tel Aviv every day, and essentially every news outlet has a bureau in the country, giving it ample resources on the ground already.

While conflicts are unpredictable, having an existing presence in the country has a number of advantages that can be felt in coverage.

“Another component is the casting, making sure that it isn’t just sending the closest bodies to the scene, but rather adding people who know the story best and could bring a depth or perspective that goes beyond just narrating the unfolding events,” Klein says. “So the difference between a story that that informs you about what’s going on and one that blows you away is that combination of narration plus background understanding, not just the what but the why of it all.”

Klein recalled another complex story that ultimately helped define CNN: the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

“When the Haiti earthquake struck, we insisted on making [CNN chief medical correspondent] Sanjay Gupta one of the three reporters that we sent — we actually pulled another correspondent off the plane that the logistics team had had already gotten fueled up and ready to take off for Haiti within literally within an hour of the earthquake — we pulled one correspondent off so that Sanjay could fly in because we knew there was a huge medical component to the story,” Klein recalls. “He ended up performing surgery on patients on camera… that’s that idea of matching the story to the right correspondents with the proviso that they understand how to get the story as safely as possible.”

But speaking on the CNN edit call Monday, Thompson also weighed in on another core challenge of a news executive: What to cover and what not to cover, and what perspectives should be brought to the table. The new CNN chief wanted viewers and readers to understand what Hamas is, who they are, and what their goals were in the unprecedented attack.

It’s a challenging piece of the puzzle, given the stakes and emotions at play. On Monday morning Jonathan Greenblatt, the director of the Anti-Defamation League, appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, where he criticized how the channel had been covering the attacks.

“I must say, I love this show. And I love this network. But I’ve got to ask who is writing the scripts? Hamas?” Greenblatt says, angry at how MSNBC covered the events.

“To my colleagues in the media: call it what it is. Terrorism, conducted by a (designated) terrorist organization. Murder and torture of Jews. There is no justification. No context that explains these atrocities,” added CNBC Squawk on the Street anchor Sara Eisen Monday afternoon.

Klein says that is a problem that is impossible to avoid.

“There’s the question of perspective, recognizing that given inflamed passions on all sides of the global crisis, it’s invariably going to cause half of your viewers — or sometimes almost all of them — to think that you’re biased or ignorant or putting your finger on the scale for one side or the other,” Klein says, adding that as a news executive to have to “take all of that into consideration” when it comes to directing coverage.

For Thompson, now fresh on the job at CNN (and where he will be serving as its “editor-in-chief,” per Warner Bros. Discovery), it’s a consideration that will come into play sooner rather than later.

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