New York (awp / afp) – The emblematic president of CNN Jeff Zucker, who symbolized the repositioning of the chain, in particular during the Trump presidency, announced his resignation on Wednesday, after the revelation of a hidden affair with a colleague.
56-year-old Jeff Zucker, who had been head of CNN since 2013, said he was “wrong” to silence this relationship with the channel’s marketing director.
Donald Trump, of whom CNN has been a favorite target for years, hailed the departure of a “world-class scrapper”.
Jeff Zucker explained that he admitted to the existence of this liaison during a recent internal investigation unrelated to him, devoted to journalist Chris Cuomo, recently dismissed.
“I was asked about a consensual relationship with my closest colleague, with whom I have worked for more than twenty years,” the leader said in an internal memo published by CNN.
“I recognized that this relationship has evolved over the past few years,” the official continued. “I should have reported it when it started, but I didn’t. I was wrong. As a result, I’m stepping down today.”
In another internal memo, marketing director Allison Gollust, who the channel said she would keep her job, also expressed regret for not reporting the affair, which she said began during the pandemic, to her employer. .
Jeff Zucker has been estranged from his wife, Caryn, since 2018.
In addition to CNN, Jeff Zucker was also president of WarnerMedia News and Sports, an entity of the WarnerMedia group devoted to information and sports, since 2019.
A pure television man, Jeffrey Adam Zucker, by his full name, started in the industry at just 21 years old, at the bottom of the hierarchical pyramid, as a documentary filmmaker for the major national channel NBC.
Endowed with a sense of production and information well above average, he quickly rose through the ranks, before becoming, in 2007, CEO of the giant NBC Universal.
Thanked in 2010 after the acquisition of the group by the cable operator Comcast, Jeff Zucker then bounced back to CNN in 2013.
Charismatic, voluble, the man with a shaved head has repositioned the chain against its big competitor Fox News and took advantage of the aspiration following the entry of Donald Trump into politics.
The original Floridian has a complex relationship with the real estate developer, a mixture of attraction and repulsion.
In the early 2000s, Jeff Zucker gave him a launch pad by airing the reality show “The Apprentice” when he ran NBC, but has since distanced himself from the former president.
During Donald Trump’s two campaigns as well as during his tenure, CNN presented itself as the channel for factual information, which was often opposed to what its reporters saw as false allegations or lies by the Trump team. .
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