but your around the same height. a thinking style of the main. anymore. apparently from inside cnn, they re asking him to leave cnn. i feel like we become espn o that cable news. you just get a small little highchair, you just have them sit there and every once in a while you just smack him in the back of the head. can get you could be my little doctor evil, kat, did you see the new york post they said tha there is new information that him and his girl were helping the governor appear on his brother show great that s not surprising.
governor cuomo. the governor hurt his brother chris and that caused headaches for zucker. for months there were debates whether cnn did the right thing by keeping chris cuomo on the air on prime time. there was debates inside cnn. eventually zucker decided to fire chris, no searches, no payout and that s when cuomo called in lawyers. he wanted the money. someone brought up zucker and gulust. were they a couple and concealing it? wasn t zucker guilty just like cuomo was guilty? see, the way cuomo s detractors see it he exacted revenge, it s as if he said you took me down so i m taking you down. cuomo s allies reject this view, they say chris hands are clean. either way zucker did have a secret and that secret came out because of cuomo s firing and the tug of war that followed. zucker was asked if he was in a romantic information with
new yorker for decades, the author of many books including one about ted turner the creator of cnn. ken, great to see you this morning. thanks, brian. what can you tell us about zucker and zsalov and what zucker was thinking about his future. my understanding is there was a world where zucker may not have been at cnn much longer anyway? well, remember, as you know better than i jeff zucker was planning to step down at the end of last year, chose not to after the merger announcement. he and zsalov are close friends. not polite friends, they re close friends and they talk and golf regularly. but when i interviewed zsalov in late november at a public forum at the paly center i asked him about cnn, i asked him about fox. he described fox news as an advocacy network and he talked about the importance of facts and suggested there was too much commentary, right wing commentary on fox.
was walking the halls. zucker was in charge one minute and he was gone the next, so why? even employees who didn t look like are mad because this made cnn look bad so they want to know why. they want to know what happened. but most staffers did like him. many loved him. many felt zucker was the best boss they had ever worked for. they would walk into war zones for him and sometimes they did. and in return zucker protect them, defended them, cheered for them. he was like a heat shield. that s the best way i can explain it. he shielded his staff from all sorts of heat. from corporate interference, from ratings pressures, from presidential threats. zucker was always on, seemingl always awake and online, always watching, always quick with words of encouragement or a sharp question for a guest or a better idea for a homepage headline. he cared deeply and every employee knew t even if they didn t like his story idea for his solution to a problem, they
trip wires that come with doing business in china, and certainly when it comes to, you know, your point at the top of the segment about free expression and the need to defend that free expression when exploring these ugly truths and the nuances to this relationship. and hacking is a major threat to global news outlet, not just from china, not just at news corp, it s a major threat. eric, i love the book. best luck with the launch. thank you, brian. i want to end the hour with a final thought, and i m going to go a little bit rogue here, so bear with me. jim zucker s departure was shocking to the staff of cnn. but cnn was not built by just one man, not by only ted turner and it was not led only by jeff zucker. cnn is so much bigger than any single individual. it is about teams and teams of people, thousands of individuals who make up cnn.