The Five Worst Moments from the Exposé That Ended Chris Licht’s CNN Career
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After 13 tumultuous months marked by widespread criticism and terrible ratings, Chris Licht departed from his position as chairman and chief executive of CNN on Wednesday.
Licht, 51, launched Morning Joe on MSNBC and was the showrunner for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert before becoming CEO of CNN in May 2022. His tenure with the network was tarnished by mass layoffs, dwindling profits, poor employee morale, and a widely-criticized town hall with presidential candidate Donald Trump.
But the final straw was a damning 15,000-word article in The Atlantic, published almost a week ago, that provided a warts-and-all look behind the scenes of Licht’s reign over the embattled network.
Licht gave Atlantic staff writer Tim Alberta incredible access, providing several interviews and allowing him to observe CNN’s inner workings over a year-long span. Alberta spoke with almost 100 CNN employees for the piece, which portrayed Licht in such a negative light that even the network described it as the “final death knell” before Licht’s dismissal.
The soon-to-be ousted executive apologized after the article was released, saying he didn’t recognize the person it portrayed and vowing to “fight like hell” to win back the trust of his CNN colleagues. But it was too late. Five days after the article published, Licht was out of a job.
Below are five of the most damaging revelations from the piece.
A Disastrous Trump Town Hall
More than any other specific instance from Licht’s tenure, The Atlantic article focuses on the televised town hall with Donald Trump on May 10. Hosted by Kaitlan Collins, the 70-minute event saw Trump unleash “a continuous blast of distortion, hyperbole, and lies” before an audience of Trump supporters “cheering him on so loudly and so purposefully that what began as a journalistic forum devolved into a WWE match,” Alberta wrote.
The article portrays Licht as both unprepared and unconcerned with how CNN would cover Trump, who had repeatedly barraged the network as “fake news” and “the enemy of the people” throughout his presidency. When asked about future coverage of Trump before the town hall, Licht said, “The media has absolutely, I believe, learned its lesson… We know that we’re getting played, so we’re gonna resist it.”
Licht believed Trump’s political ascent stemmed, in part, from the media marginalizing conservative views, and he sought to prioritize winning new Republican viewers for CNN, according to The Atlantic. Rather than a neutral audience for the town hall, Licht pushed for the crowd to be “extra Trumpy” because he felt it represented the GOP base. Licht even told Trump to “have fun” before the town hall, according to Alberta.
Licht believed the prime-time town hall with Trump would vindicate his courting of Republican viewers and prove to his colleagues that his vision would lead the network into the future, according to The Atlantic. But as its story said, “Trump had other ideas.”
His Obsession with Former CEO Jeff Zucker
A recurring theme throughout The Atlantic piece is Licht’s apparent fixation on his predecessor, Jeff Zucker, who oversaw CNN for nine years before resigning in February 2022 amid a sexual scandal. “The comparisons with Zucker were inevitable, and Licht hated them,” Alberta wrote in the article. One of Licht’s first acts as CEO was to turn Zucker’s former 17th floor office into a conference room.
Licht became “consumed by” the growing negative stories in the media about his leadership with CNN, and soon, he began blaming Zucker for the bad publicity, according to The Atlantic. Licht believed pro-Zucker colleagues were leaking information to reporters and became convinced even Zucker was pushing hit pieces scrutinizing Licht’s job performance.
One widely-quoted portion of Alberta’s story described a 6 a.m. workout, in which Licht lifted weights while his trainer Joe Maysonet yells at him. While squatting to hoist a pole from the ground, Licht said through clenched teeth, “Zucker couldn’t do this s––.” It was unclear whether Licht meant the comment as a joke.
Awkward Behavior at a Holiday Party
One of the key distinctions between Zucker and Licht was their social interactions with colleagues. “Whereas the old boss was gregarious and warm, giving nicknames to employees and remembering their kids’ birthdays, Licht came across as taciturn, seemingly going out of his way to avoid human relationships,” Alberta wrote.
This difference was on prominent display during a holiday party for CNN’s Washington-based employees, according to the article. Licht began the party by walking around the private room and personally greeting each journalist. Afterward, however, he sat down and spent most of the rest of his dinner staring at his phone.
“Not only did he say nothing to address the group—as they all expected he would—but Licht barely interacted with the people seated near him,” Alberta wrote. “It became so awkward that guests began texting one another, wondering if there was some crisis unfolding with an international bureau.” When some of his colleagues caught a glimpse of Licht’s phone, however, they saw that he was simply reading a critical story about him on the news website Puck.
Criticizing CNN’s COVID-19 Coverage
Among the mistakes from Zucker’s tenure, according to Licht, was CNN’s coverage of COVID-19. The Atlantic article describes Licht as repeatedly—and publicly—criticizing his CNN colleagues for their reporting on the pandemic, saying it portrayed the network as out of touch with the country.
“In the beginning it was a trusted source—this crazy thing, no one understands it, help us 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.’”
To illustrate his point, the story describes Licht as slapping his palm on a table and mimicking a panicked broadcaster: “‘COVID, COVID, COVID! Look at the case numbers! Look at this! Look at this!’… 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.’”
The story also quotes Licht as questioning the death count of COVID-19, suggesting it was overinflated by patients with life-threatening illnesses before the pandemic began who then died with a positive COVID-19 diagnosis. There have been nearly 770 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide and 6.9 million reported deaths, though some estimate it could be as many as 30 million.
An Internal Meeting Gone Wrong
Licht held a town hall meeting with employees intended to “quell concerns and rally the troops, laying out his plan for the new CNN,” Alberta wrote. Audie Cornish, CNN’s top audio journalist, served as host and posed questions to Licht during the gathering, while dozens of staffers watched in person and thousands tuned in remotely on their computers.
As the meeting progressed, however, Licht seemed to grow increasingly restless and impatient with the questions, according to The Atlantic article. Alberta wrote that Licht “looked on edge—like he was struggling to remain diplomatic in the face of questions that annoyed him.”
When asked about the perception that Licht was trying to appease right-wing viewers, Alberta wrote that Licht “fought a smirk.” In response to Cornish’s questions about CNN’s reputation and brand, Licht seemed defensive as he said that “sometimes the tone of our coverage has undercut the work of our journalism.”
Afterward, Licht acknowledged to Alberta that the meeting had not gone well, according to the story: “At one point, I wanted to just say, ‘We’re not going to turn into BuzzFeed, okay?’” Licht said. “But that probably wouldn’t have helped.”
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