CNN’s Jeff Zucker Defends Letting S.E. Cupp Interview Her Boss Glenn Beck
CNN president Jeff Zucker’s remarks about Fox News at yesterday’s Television Critics Association event were so explosive that much of his other commentary got swept aside. But ThinkProgress’ Alyssa Rosenberg, who was in attendance, put her focus on a separate issue: Why did CNN let S.E. Cupp, who also works for Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze, sit down for a one-hour interview with her boss last month?
“We’ve wanted to have Glenn as a guest on CNN, and she felt that she could do an honest brokered interview with him,” Zucker explained, adding, “He was willing to do it with her.” Cupp, who was brought over to CNN from MSNBC to serve as one of the conservative hosts of the rebooted Crossfire, took over Piers Morgan Live on a Friday night in late December for a full hour interview with Beck. When she’s not on CNN, Cupp works as a paid contributor for TheBlaze.
According to Rosenberg, Zucker “declined to explain whether or not Beck had been approached by other CNN reporters, whether the network discussed having another journalist conduct the interview with Beck after Cupp made the invitation and Beck accepted, or whether Beck would only appear on CNN if Cupp was the journalist interviewing him.”
“We completely revealed the relationship between the two,” Zucker said. “We’re very up front about it and felt that he was a very interesting person to interview and had no issues having her do it as long as you know, I think it’s in all these things I think if you’re transparent with the audience and you tell them up front that ‘I work for him, and yes, I’m interviewing him,’ I think that, you know, in most of those circumstances, you can do it as long as you’re up front and honest with the audience.”
Cupp may have disclosed her business relationship with Beck during the actual interview, but as Media Matters pointed out, it did not come up when she promoted it that morning on CNN’s New Day.
Watch a clip from Cupp’s interview with Beck below, via CNN:
[photo via screengrab]
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