Fired CNN CEO Chris Licht Dishes On What Went Wrong For Him: ‘Do Not Bring a Reporter To The Gym!’
Ousted CNN CEO Chris Licht sat down with Stephen A. Smith over the weekend at an event hosted by the New York Press Club and discussed his rocky tenure leading the storied network.
Licht, a former Late Show producer, was fired by Warner Brother Discovery CEO David Zaslav in 2023 as CNN ratings continued to erode and the network’s talent and staffers were openly criticizing his approach to the news. Licht came in with the goal of reestablishing CNN as a “trusted” news brand and disconnecting it from partisan politics.
“When you try to change something dramatically, you can’t do it alone. You’ve got to build the trust of the organization. They have to believe in you. And I did not build that trust,” Licht told Smith of what he thought went wrong.
“I was not able to, in the time that I was there, build trust so that people would tune out the noise and sort of follow me into that,” he added.
“Because of time? Or because of something else?” Smith pressed.
“Time’s an element of it. We have to remember where things were at that time. It was a crazy – I think everyone could objectively say it was a crazy time, particularly in that organization, but I’m not letting myself off the hook,” he said, adding:
I think when you try to have a bold way of going forward, you have to be confident and you have to show confidence in it so people follow you, but there’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance and I still work on dialing that and I think sometimes I was on the wrong side of that.
Licht also addressed the Tim Alberta profile of him in The Atlantic that preceded his firing.
“The Atlantic article I absolutely should not have done,” Licht conceded, adding:
Speaking of arrogance, imagine saying yes after, by the way, saying no several times, but at the end, saying yes because you know what, when this comes out in a year, I will have saved everything. This is gonna be an article that’s going to be so positive because in a year, I did it. Imagine that arrogance now that I look back.
Now, I hadn’t failed at anything before. So it was I absolutely thought, you know what, it’s been a year, they’re going to be writing about ‘wow, look at all these great things that have happened.’ So, no, I should have done that. Definitely should not have taken a reporter to the gym. If I can say one thing to anybody, do not bring a reporter to the gym!
Alberta’s devastating article, titled “Inside the Meltdown at CNN,” included a particularly eyebrow-raising moment in which Licht revealed his ongoing battle to get out of the shadow of his predecessor, Jeff Zucker. “Licht jumped off the machine. At Maysonet’s instruction, he squatted down to grab a long metal pole lying flat on the ground. “Zucker couldn’t do this shit,” Licht said through clenched teeth, hoisting the pole with a grunt,” Alberta wrote.
Licht also defended CNN’s town hall with Donald Trump, which was widely criticized at the time and seen as a boost for the candidate during the GOP primaries.
“I still believe today it was the right thing to do,” Licht said, adding, “Remember, we hadn’t seen Trump for a very long time. That was the first time he answered very tough questions in a long time. And the fact that his shtick resonated with voters in New Hampshire, that’s part of the story, but people at home had to be told that and that’s one thing I would have done differently.” Licht was referring to the network not telling viewers that the cheering audience was full of Trump’s supporters, giving the candidate a kind of advantage over moderator Kaitlan Collins.
Watch the full interview above.
