Conservative CNN Analyst Blasts Network, Claiming Zucker Secretly Suspended Her For Speaking Out About Toobin’s Masturbation Incident
CNN analyst Mary Katharine Ham penned a scathing tell-all op-ed in which she accused former network CEO Jeff Zucker of suspending her after she commented on the Jeffrey Toobin masturbation scandal.
Toobin was notoriously fired from the New Yorker after an October 2020 Zoom meeting in which he unwittingly exposed himself to his colleagues (he was apparently masturbating, unaware his camera was on). CNN suspended him for a period of eight months, but he eventually returned to the air. In August, under the new CNN regime, he left the network.
Ham claimed in a new piece published on her Substack she was punished after she criticized Toobin during a public disagreement with CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski back in January.
Long story short, Ham argued the 2017 congressional baseball game shooting did not receive the coverage from CNN it deserved. Kaczynski disagreed with that assessment, and Ham responded with the following tweet:
Got jack to say about Cuomo and Toobin, but gotta fact-check me when he’s got nothing.
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) January 8, 2022
Ham wrote Thursday she has been off the air since, due to what she called a “secret” ban — because she was only informed it was in place when new CEO Chris Licht took over CNN.
She wrote:
In case you’re wondering, as I did, how my punishment for tweeting about Toobin compares to Toobin’s suspension for his offense, I can tell you. He was off air for eight months; I was off for seven. One month was the difference between punishment for jacking off at work versus commenting on the inadvisability of jacking off at work.
“I was told it was Jeff Zucker, now gone, who put this order in place and a deputy, also gone, who kept it there,” she wrote. “I was also told I wasn’t informed of the network’s displeasure because I had just had a baby and someone in the old leadership thought I might be a ‘loose cannon.’ Not as loose as Toobin’s, but I digress.”
Ham conceded her invocation of Toobin’s shocking actions and his return to air might have been in poor taste. But she argued her comment was “basically above board.”
She also said there was no “bad blood” between her and Kaczynski, and said, “I have never been great at being quiet.”
Ham said she has been invited back on CNN by the network’s new management but has found it “impossible” to make a TV comeback without first clearing the air.
Mediaite reached out to CNN for comment but did not hear back from a network representative in time for publication.
Read the rest of her piece here.
