Jeff Zucker, Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Mark Halperin, Glenn Thrush, Les Moonves, etc. White men in media who shaped sexist coverage of @HillaryClinton in 2016 — as she ran against a sexual predator. All subsequently connected to sexual misconduct scandals. Not a coincidence.
— Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) February 4, 2022
Jeff Zucker, “as much as any person in the world,” rehabilitated an overleveraged, serially bankrupt, third-tier New York real-estate developer into a worldwide celebrity and political icon. Another good one from @Sulliview. https://t.co/vqteCuyH4F
— Benjamin Freed (@brfreed) February 3, 2022
… The through line? Nothing nobler than TV ratings, which always were Zucker’s guiding light, his be-all and end-all and, ultimately, his fatal flaw.
Two decades ago, as an NBC executive searching for a way to goose the floundering network’s popularity, he gave the green light to a reality show, “The Apprentice,” featuring a flashy mogul whose soon-to-be-famous tagline was “You’re fired.” Trump had a checkered history of bankruptcies, racism and failed real estate projects, but his confident bluster made him a natural on television…
Zucker created Trump the TV sensation, which was the necessary foundation for Trump the candidate. Years later, after moving from NBC to CNN, Zucker recollected very well that Trump was a self-proclaimed “ratings machine” — a rare instance of Trumpian truth-telling.
CNN infamously took his campaign speeches live, sometimes going so far as to broadcast images of an empty lectern with embarrassing chyrons such as “Breaking News: Standing By for Trump to Speak.” You can’t buy that kind of media…
… I’ll note that CNN recently has done important work, including specials about the Jan. 6 insurrection and a new “Democracy in Peril” show in the 9 p.m. slot recently occupied by Chris Cuomo.
But why is American democracy in peril? Some portion of the blame — not a tiny portion — belongs to the network executive who couldn’t resist the “ratings machine.”
how will our democracy survive now that that guy who single-handedly made donald trump a thing just got fired for smashing his subordinate
what is wrong with these people https://t.co/LqxKwCPQva
— World Famous Art Thief (@CalmSporting) February 4, 2022
if my boss had overseen a fairly steep decline in company performance but never had anything bad to say about me or the job i was doing, i would also "raise concerns" about him being forced to resign. https://t.co/gsEoAVa5bc
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) February 4, 2022
How damaging is the dirt that CNN's probe uncovered? So bad, Jeff Zucker resigned before he could be fired "and is not poised to receive any severance," @TatianaSiegel27 reports. https://t.co/cv9SUr7q8y
— Noah Shachtman (@NoahShachtman) February 3, 2022
So Jeff Zucker's alleged paramour at CNN was Allison Gollust, CNN's executive vice president.
Her job before that? Gov. Andrew Cuomo's comms director.
This article suggests their relationship is why CNN protected the Cuomos for so long.https://t.co/I7T1Ryp4SM
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) February 2, 2022
UPDATE: "[T]he timeline on Jeff Zucker and Allison Gollust’s coupledom is not only off by more than two decades, say sources who have worked with the pair — the CNN power couple also repeatedly lied about their relationship to their corporate bosses"https://t.co/E5qLCdSYHf
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) February 3, 2022
is it any wonder this network treated trump’s bonanza of ethical dumpster fires not as an actual threat to the country but as a series of entertaining reality show how-will-he-wiggle-through-this-jam game show challenges
— kilgore trout, cryptopolice chief (@KT_So_It_Goes) February 3, 2022
also gotta point out what a hypocritical game cnn has made the last several years of sparring with fox news as if they have some sort of moral high ground when the only distinction is their leadership was sleeping with subordinates consensually and not by career extortion
— kilgore trout, cryptopolice chief (@KT_So_It_Goes) February 4, 2022
Ben Cisco, MSCIS Padawan
And they’ll never cop to any of it.
FelonyGovt
Anyone who was in New York in the 1970’s knew that Trump was a racist buffoon. The Apprentice legitimized him as a shrewd businessman and billionaire. The coverage of his candidacy was in a similar vein. Zucker has much to answer for.
StringOnAStick
Where’s Villago delenda est when you need that reference?
HumboldtBlue
Good thing for Sixers basketball.
And Olympic curling, the news is an ever-worsening dumpster fire.
Mike in NC
Our putrid media spent a few decades painting Donald Trump as a “billionaire playboy” who in fact was a bankrupt imbecile who had to pay vast amounts of money to have sex with whores.
Mike E
Paging Villago Delenda Est…..
eta h/t to StringOnAStick
danielx
Fuck that guy.
Jay
@Mike in NC:
don’t denigrate the sex trade workers,
The Pale Scot
For Tony Jay,
Asian Dub Foundation ft. Stewart Lee – Comin’ Over Here
“Bloody Anglo Saxons comin’ over here
Touches my Celtic Heart it does
HumboldtBlue
NBC made sure to throw some whitewash on the Chinese Uighur genocide by portraying it in simple political disagreement terms and that China’s use of a Uighur carrying the flag in the opening ceremony was simply a “political riposte” to the western critics.
Mike E
Speakina Sixers, insert your fave pithy metaphor here! One of the baskets is fubar halfway through the 1st quarter and the Mavs arena crew is now 40 mins into their seemingly endless struggle to replace the damned thing, heh.
HumboldtBlue
@Mike E:
Yup
Alison Rose
Can’t listen to that leaked audio because it’s paywalled, but if Acosta is defending this piece of shit, that really disappoints me.
CaseyL
MOTU – all male, and 99% white – are in a mutual protection, promotion, and predation racket. Internationally, too.
dmsilev
Well, today was ‘fun’. 7 AM, email and phone call saying ‘your COVID surveillance sample has been flagged, we need you to come in ASAP for a follow-up test’. Around 8, I’m standing at our test center doing the nasal swab thing and hoping that it’s either a false positive or someone else in the pool (for surveillance, we pool together a few samples and do PCR on the mixture). Then I’m presumed contagious until those results come in, so it’s back home and start sending out messages moving in-person meetings to Zoom. Every meeting starts with ‘are you feeling ok? Any symptoms?’. 4 PM, ‘your test is negative’. 4:01 PM, breath easily for the first time all day.
Sigh. The world we live in.
Yarrow
@Alison Rose: The Daily Mail (ugh, I know) has an article on it with some excerpts of what was said in the meeting. Not going to link because Daily Mail but here’s the Acosta bit:
He thinks it’s going to get worse now?
rikyrah
I readily admit that I underestimated the misogyny that Hillary faced. I knew that it was bad… But not THAT BAD
Major Major Major Major
@Mike in NC: not that there’s anything wrong with that.
I see the EARN IT Act is back… government coming for your encryption again… guess I’ll have to write y’all a post about it this weekend.
Dopey-o
Penn said “No matter how bad you think Trump is, he’s worse.”
Why would misogyny be any different?
cain
@Yarrow: Good grief.
I could see it, conservatives especially older ones will happily spend their entire day and night watching Fox News. It’s exactly the kind of people network tv would love to have more of. I could see CNN trying to chase those viewers.
It’s a deal with the devil.
prostratedragon
@rikyrah: It [the misogyny] was screaming so loud it probably swamped your hearing, a thing I’ve learned to calibrate for. But what I’m learning now is how ubiquitous the underlying behavior was. Not every man is so devoted to things that would get them fired or sued.
prostratedragon
Ooo, curling’s started? I wasn’t ready for Olympic hype so soon after the Summer Games a few months ago, but with no more ABC Wide World of Sports, where else am I going to see any curling? Did watch the Bulls last night and tonight for the first time this season, so I think I might be ducking some of the news myself.
NotMax
Ted Turner looking better and better. Tanned, rested and ready?
//
Parfigliano
@Mike in NC: Paid to have sex with foreign whores like Melania.
Chetan Murthy
@rikyrah: I remember her being talked-down-to by Lauer, by Rose. Probably other incidents. I remember all those guys denigrating her abilities and skills. Halperin, the imbecile. And on and on and on. I think we only know the half of what she endured on our behalf. If that.
Chetan Murthy
@HumboldtBlue:@rikyrah: Do you remember Milbank and Cillizza with their youtube drinking sessions, ranting about Hillary ? Ugh.mrmoshpotato
Get fucked, Joe Walsh.
Starboard Tack
I saw a segment today of a Joy Reid show from November 2020 that had a clip of Rush Limbaugh. I felt great satisfaction that he’s still dead.
Chetan Murthy
@mrmoshpotato: He was execrable back then. I can’t say that he’s done a ton of restitution, but others might be able to. I wonder what he’d say about those tweets, if asked today. I guess what I mean is, he seems to be on some road to redemption; maybe he’ll get there, maybe he won’t. But we do allow people to redeem themselves: look at David Brock.
Hope it’s clear that I’m not saying he’s done enough to be redeemed. He did a ton of shit back then. And hell, maybe he still hasn’t paid the child support he owes.
Anne Laurie
@dmsilev: Sounds like the medical equivalent of the old ‘Any landing you can walk away from is a good one’ tenet…
Anne Laurie
@mrmoshpotato: Did you actually read Walsh’s tweet, though?
I’m not gonna invite him to the next Balloon Juice meet-up, but he’s apologized for his worst actions, and (at least for the moment) he’s on ‘our side’ of the Great Argument. Always remember — if no Conservative / Republican is ever allowed to change their mind, we wouldn’t have this here blog!
Milbank got smarter, Cillizza got dumber. I’ll always refer to CC as the ‘Mad Bitcher’ because of that final drinking video. But let’s be honest — Cillizza’s almost certainly making a *lot* more money than Milbank these days. And he still has his ‘self respect’, because he’s pretty clearly a moron who measures his worth by his paycheck.
Tony Jay
@The Pale Scot:
Love me some Stewart Lee. Not afraid to take a valid point of opinion and ram it into the faces of his audience with the merciless authority of moral superiority.
But, y’know, in a very funny way.
lowtechcyclist
@NotMax:
I was going to say Ted Turner must be rolling in his grave, but then I Googled him.
Elizabelle
I think Ted Turner is in the throes of dementia. Lewy body dementia. Terrible disease.
Tony Jay
On topic, sort of, I’m steering well clear of the fucking Guardian today out of concern for my blood pressure.
The cynical media outlet which spearheaded the daily campaign of hate and lies aimed at making the former Leader of the Opposition a monster in the eyes of millions is running articles bemoaning the horrors of Clown Prince Flobalob and asking “How did this happen?”
I’ll tell you how it happened, you two-faced clutch of bastards. You made a deliberate decision to mainstream the propaganda coming from Israel’s hardest Right eliminationists and used it to redefine anti-Semitism into a catch-all term for anyone with an unfavourable opinion of apartheid and Occupation. Then you handed that blunt tool over to an ugly alliance of Labour’s careerist Right and Tory-aligned Jewish groups so they could beat the Labour Party flat with it and guarantee Johnson a majority.
Now you’ve got scum like Freedland, who spewed garbage about a Leftwing Labour Government = Gas Chambers, blaming everyone else for letting a lying thug like Johnson get elected?
Fuck you. This is your work. You wanted it. You made it happen. Go fuck your crocodile tears all the way to the big old bank your owners made out of your misinformation. Hundreds of thousands of people are dead and millions more have had their lives ruined because you chose to destroy a decent man who threatened your cosy status quo.
Rant off.
Fuckers.
Miss Bianca
@rikyrah: I knew it was bad. Super bad. And yet the more that comes out about just *how many forces* were arrayed against her, and why, my teeth start to hurt from gnashing them.
Glidwrith
@Miss Bianca: I once faced down my Kentucky in-laws who declared Hillary was such a weak candidate. I told them it took the combined effort of the FBI, Russia, the RNC and news media to just barely manage to defeat her. She is a fucking Goddess!