‘CNN Staffers Are Shocked’: Brutal Magazine Exposé Leaves Employees Angry and Frustrated

Employees of CNN have expressed frustration and anger following a brutal exposé published in The Atlantic focused on newly-appointed CEO Chris Licht.

Brian Stelter, a former chief media correspondent who spent nearly a decade with CNN before leaving last August, publicized the sentiments of several employees admitting they were completely blindsided by the piece, written by Tim Alberta.

“I woke up to messages like this from CNNers: ‘He [Licht] made a bunch of these comments to Alberta without any apparent regard for how hurtful they’d be…’ ‘Even if he thinks these things…if he’s so concerned with the CNN brand, what is the point of saying any of this stuff publicly?’ Stelter tweeted on Saturday.

“The consensus, among people who knew @TimAlberta’s piece was coming, is that it’s much ‘worse’ than they expected. Licht confided in Alberta the way a client confides in a therapist. Some CNN staffers are shocked,” Steler wrote.

The piece, which is based on nearly 100 interviews, found that even Licht’s boss, David Zaslav, the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, was losing confidence in the CNN executive. “It had become apparent, from my reporting, that Licht’s circle was small and getting smaller. He obviously felt that he couldn’t trust some of the people around him,” Alberta wrote in the piece, published Friday.

That distrust begot a certain foreboding—yet also a certain liberation. Whereas he was guarded with CNN employees, our many hours of conversations began to feel like therapy sessions for Licht, safe spaces in which he vented grievances and admitted fears and chased an elusive breakthrough.

The 15,000-word feature also showed growing internal criticism of Licht following his decision to host former president Donald Trump to participate in a town hall discussion in May.

“What was clear was that Licht knew this was bad—very, very bad. Republicans were angry at CNN. Democrats were angry at CNN. Journalists were angry at CNN. The only one who wasn’t angry, it seemed, was Trump, most likely because he’d succeeded in disgracing the network on its own airwaves,” the Atlantic journalist wrote.

Alberta received unprecedented access to follow Licht’s attempt to build “the new CNN” over the past year. “Licht’s theory of CNN — what had gone wrong, how to fix it, and why doing so could lift the entire industry — made a lot of sense. The execution of that theory? Another story. Every move he made, big programming decisions and small tactical maneuvers alike, seemed to backfire.”

Many applauded Alberta’s reporting as exemplary journalism while opining that the network had lost its way.

“I love CNN, still. And I still believe it is one of the best in news. That is because of the dedicated journalists and staff working there. It will survive this. But my heart can’t help but to break a little seeing the spiral,” former employee Morgan Stephens wrote on Twitter.