Not expect to get fired. this was on the minds of many on team zucker a 15 yard penalty but at&t threw him out of the game all together for it. they said he had to resign or he would be terminated. zucker ted to stay on for a transition period, a month, even just a week, but he was told no. he was out instantly. which brings us back to the question inside here, why? cnn s dana bash side it directly during a tense staff meeting, she said it felt like the punishment didn t fit the crime. that s the prevailing view inside cnn, but zucker did break the rules. news outlets hold others accountable for breaking the rules all the time. and beyond that in this case i wouldn t say timing is everything, but it s a lot of the things. at&t wants and needs that deal to go through, doesn t want any mess, any complication. so zucker is out and cnn now continues withouhim. and these headlines capture the situation, staffers are angry, they re angry at warner media, angry at cuomo and they re
Reporting comes out why and what other elements there were. my point here is regardless even if they did want him out, he and frankly by hiding that relationship handed them ammunition that was simply not necessary. joanne and mara thank you. claire, stick around. at&t ceo john stankey is about to spin off warner media. he says he thinks the best days of cnn are still in front of it. so what is ahead for this news outlet? this week the discovery ceo who will be taking over the company praised cnn s abilities and leadership in global news gathering. he said he is good friends with zucker but had nothing to do with him leaving. the question is now about whether the vision for cnn may also be influenced by key shareholder john malone who has been critical of cnn including as recently as last november. let s talk about that with ken avletta. he has been a writer for the
Gulust, he said yes but he had not disclosed it before. now, inside cnn people had wondered were they together? but there s a big difference between wondering and knowing. what people did know and i m channeling the feelings of many sources when i say this is that zucker and gulust made each other better at work. they were an incredibly effective team. she was essentially his chief of staff. she could have been in line to run cnn, but now all that s gone. and you can draw a straight line from andrew cuomo s downfall to zucker s. it is almost shakespearian. when zucker s boss warner media ceo found out about the relationship last week he brought it to his boss at&t chief john stankey. my guess is zucker knew there would be fallout because he had violated the code of conduct for not disclosing his relationship with his board senate but he did
Mara schiavocampo former abc and nbc correspondent now the host of a podcast and joanne lipman who wrote a guest essay about this topic. she is the former editor and chief of usa today and author of that s what she said. thank you for assembling this morning. claire, your 30-second assessment of what this week was for cnn. yeah, i mean, it s a little bit of a week from hell, right? we ve all been on the outside trying to figure out how this transpired, who was the main protagonist in pushing jeff out. was it the ceo of warner media, which is the holding company for sorry, the operating company for cnn? was it the at&t bosses who needed things to look clean before they hand off to discovery? was it john malone perhaps, one of the discovery shareholders? and so we ve all and chris cuomo not to leave him out, as you ve said, that s been a big part of the story here. i think this week will be a