- Angry staffers and low ratings have plagued CNN CEO Chris Licht's first year on the job.
- At a holiday party, Licht mostly kept to himself and read bad publicity about himself instead of interacting with his staff.
CNN CEO Chris Licht has been on the job for just over a year. In that time, CNN has suffered through low ratings and even lower employee morale, fired one star anchor, hosted a widely-criticized town hall with former President Donald Trump, and dismantled its much-touted new morning program. A damning new profile of Licht in The Atlantic written by Tim Alberta reveals the CEO was as fascinated with his own bad press as everyone else:
At a holiday dinner for his D.C.-based talent, Licht went around the private room at Café Milano, shook hands and spoke briefly with each of the journalists, then sat down and spent much of the dinner looking 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. It became so awkward that guests began texting one another, wondering if there was some crisis unfolding with an international bureau. When a pair of them caught a glimpse of Licht's phone, they could see that he was reading a critical story about him in Puck."
It's unclear which Puck story caught Licht's attention, but the new media startup has made the CEO and CNN a repeated target of its reporting.
Alberta was granted a tremendous amount of access for the profile, allowing him to witness firsthand all kinds of behind-the-scenes interactions, like Licht criticizing then-anchor Don Lemon's on-air outfit.
"What the fuck is he wearing?" Licht said of Lemon's fur-lined white jacket. A producer told Lemon they weren't a fan of the jacket and after the next commercial break it was gone.
Later in the profile, Licht explained some of his views on diversity to Alberta.
"Licht recalled a recent dustup with his own diversity, equity, and inclusion staff after making some spicy remarks at a conference. "I said, 'A Black person, a brown person, and an Asian woman that all graduated the same year from Harvard is not diversity,'" he told me.
A minute later—after noting how sharing that anecdote could get him in trouble, and pausing to consider what he would say next—Licht added: "I think 'Defund the police' would've been covered differently if newsrooms were filled with people who had lived in public housing." I asked him why. "They have a different relationship with their need with the police," he said."
If Licht elaborated on his plans to hire more public-housing residents into the ranks at CNN, Alberta didn't quote him on it.
A representative for CNN did not immediately respond to a request for comment.