Jeff Zucker, ‘Baffled’ and ‘Stunned’ by Variety Article, Asks for Retraction | Exclusive

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Former CNN president Jeff Zucker has requested a retraction for a Variety report that characterized him as desperate to acquire the network, an individual close to Zucker told TheWrap.

Variety is facing intense backlash in response to a report published Tuesday by executive editor Tatiana Siegel that claimed Zucker has spent the last year courting billionaires to secure funding in an effort to purchase CNN.

A Zucker confidant noted that the former CNN chief is “more baffled than angry” with the claims made in the report.

Throughout the story, Siegel characterizes Zucker as deeply bitter about his departure from CNN in 2022 and hell-bent on finding a way back to the network. The piece alleges that Zucker intended to court billionaires at a Formula One race in Abu Dhabi to financially back a CNN acquisition. Siegel also detailed an alleged letter from Allied Turkish Bank IBU Northern Cyprus to Clifford Chance — who the letter refers to as Zucker’s representation in the “acquisition of CNN Worldwide.” According to the report, “Zucker was sitting on a $1 billion war chest,” when he was tapped to “lead joint venture RedBird IMI.”

Penske Media Corporation, the owner of Variety, has been contacted by Zucker’s team with a request to issue a retraction of the article, TheWrap has learned.

An individual close to Zucker said that he is “stunned” by the publication of the article and that the reporting about him was entirely “fabricated.” The individual also noted that the former CNN president has never met the people detailed throughout the article and had to Google the Turkish bank that he was supposedly working with in order to identify it.

According to sources familiar, Zucker’s team denied the claims made in the report multiple times prior to its publication, but Variety chose to move forward with the article.

Zucker’s team had reached out to Variety’s co-editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh in protest of the article, which they insisted contained numerous falsehoods. When that did not meet a response, they attempted to appeal to Variety’s other co-editor-in-chief Cynthia Littleton, who has a long-standing relationship with Zucker. Littleton referred his team back to Setoodeh, who said that they would have to take up their concerns with Siegel herself.

All of these allegations were firmly denied by Zucker’s spokeswoman Risa Heller, who gave a fiery response to the article in Tuesday’s “Reliable Sources” newsletter.

“There used to be a time when Variety held its content and its reporters to a high standard of truth and facts in journalism, but those days are clearly over,” Heller said. “It is stunning to read a piece that is so patently and aggressively false.”

Heller said it was made clear to Siegel prior to the article’s publication that the events detailed in it “never happened.”

“Variety stands by our investigative story about CNN written by one of the best journalists in the business,” a spokesperson from Variety told TheWrap when reached for comment.

Since the article was published on Tuesday, rumors have circulated that one of Siegel’s sources was former CNN CEO Chris Licht, who was pushed out of the network following a tumultuous tenure.

“It is abundantly clear that Chris Licht is trying to re-write history,” argued a Zucker confidant.

Siegel’s article is not only receiving backlash from Zucker’s camp but also from The Atlantic, which she invoked in relation to Tim Alberta’s damning profile of Licht that led to the CNN CEO’s ouster. The Variety article questioned Alberta and The Atlantic’s journalistic integrity while claiming that the 14,000-word takedown contained inaccurate reporting.

Alberta took to Twitter to reject Siegel’s claims while calling Variety’s “editorial standards” into question. “A retraction is probably in order,” said Alberta, “but I doubt they have the stomach for it.”

Sharon Waxman contributed to this report.

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