CNN Affiliates and Other Journalists Gang Up on CNN Over Chris Cuomo’s Ethics Concerns

CNN has decided, at least when it comes to Chris Cuomo, to do nothing about him being involved in the aftermath of sexual harassment allegations his brother Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo is currently facing. According to The Hill, President of CNN Jeff Zucker said, “Temporarily suspending Cuomo would be pointless, Zucker replied, and would only be “punishment for the sake of punishing.” Zucker has also stated, “CNN didn’t have special rules only for Cuomo while adding that having a powerful governor as a brother was a “very unique” situation.

While Zucker seemingly is doing nothing about Cuomo’s actions, anchors including Jake Tapper have some words for Cuomo. Tapper is reported as saying, in an interview with The New York Times, that Cuomo put CNN in “a bad spot.” Continuing with, “I cannot imagine a world in which anybody in journalism thinks that that was appropriate.”

Brian Stelter, host of Reliable Sources asks, “If Chris Cuomo wants to call into strategy sessions with his brother’s aides, shouldn’t he take a leave of absence from CNN?” The panel he had on for comments agreed that would have been appropriate and made things transparent. They went on to discuss the banter segments he had with Andrew Cuomo during what they called the “worst part of the pandemic”.

Stelter asked if this was the “original sin?” One of the commentators agreed that yes it was, but that it would be hard for CNN to punish him now for those segments. Allowing Cuomo to use his brother on his show may have been the gateway for Chris to believe that what he was doing wouldn’t come under scrutiny.

“If Chris Cuomo wants to call into strategy sessions with his brother’s aides, shouldn’t he take a leave of absence from CNN?” Here’s our conversation about the Cuomo brothers from today’s @ReliableSources pic.twitter.com/6nk0wbaFGN

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) May 23, 2021

According to The Hill, “retired CNN ethics executive says the lack of clear cut policies are largely to blame.

“You won’t see any rules that are etched in stone so that a violation could be a firing offense,” said Steve Holmes, who retired from CNN in 2019 after working at the network for more than a decade.“And I think you see sort of the results. I mean the Chris Cuomo thing, they can’t say that he’s violated any written policies because there aren’t any, period,”

Alicia Shepard, a media consultant, and former NPR ombudsman compared Brian Williams’s removal, for telling exaggerated stories, to essentially no punishment for Cuomo’s transgressions.

More recently Rick Santorum was fired from CNN for making a statement about Native Americans not being involved in the founding of our country. Santorum said, “We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here. I mean, yes, we have Native Americans. There isn’t much Native American culture in American culture.”

Many others have commented on CNN’s lack of discipline for Cuomo’s actions. Without oversight or hard rules on the books, CNN gets to use its own discretion on how to handle clear ethics concerns. They seemingly have chosen to do nothing because of, as Zucker put it, Chris Cuomo’s “unique situation”. This may only further people’s distrust of mainstream media and makes CNN seem like even more of a “clown show” to many.