Chris Licht has lost his job after it was discovered that he purposefully surrounded the Trump town hall crowd on the network with supporters.
David Zaslav, the CEO of the network’s parent company Warner Brothers Discovery, informed staff on Wednesday that Chris Licht, CNN’s CEO, had left the firm a year after he had pledged to turn around the faltering news network as a force for real journalism.
A group of top CNN executives lead by Amy Entelis, who served as Licht’s divisive predecessor Jeff Zucker’s deputy, will take over for him on an interim basis. Before he was fired last year, Zucker oversaw CNN’s shift from a largely impartial news network to a ferociously anti-Trump opinion platform, a change Licht was allegedly tasked with undoing.
Insiders in the business attribute Licht’s demise to the Trump town hall that took place last month. The incident was widely derided as catastrophic for allegedly transferring power to the real estate tycoon and his enthusiastic followers. Licht reportedly anticipated a “extra Trumpy” audience for the event, but he emphasized that the town hall moderator should try to “confront him with facts” rather than marginalizing and demonizing the former US president as the network had done when he was in the Oval Office.
With a mandate to lead CNN back from the anti-Trump abyss it had reached under his predecessor, Jeff Zucker, Licht had been appointed to the top position, and according to the Atlantic, he saw his goal as nothing less than to “save journalism.”
The CEO claimed that his “mission” for CNN was “being trusted” in a magazine profile of him. “Everyone has an agenda and works to influence events or the way people think. He stated, “There has to be a source of absolute truth,” implying he wants to elevate the network derided as “fake news” by Trump, his fans, and even many of his detractors to be that source.
The disgraced CNN chief’s profile was unfavorable; some claimed he came across as paranoid and out of touch if genuinely concerned about the network’s inability to connect with middle America and determined to rebuild its reputation, promising to “cover [Trump] like any other candidate” in 2024.
In reality, the network has been losing viewers while losing some of its most well-known and contentious personalities, such as Brian Stelter and Don Lemon. If ratings are any indication, the network has also failed to persuade audiences in the center that it has abandoned its anti-conservative polemics.
On Monday, Licht expressed regret over the Atlantic profile to CNN employees, calling the situation “tremendously humbling.”
