A Variety report suggesting that former CNN chief Jeff Zucker has spent the past year seeking to buy the network from Warner Bros Discovery was criticized as a “total joke” by Zucker’s representative on Tuesday, while other leading journalists criticized the investigative article for weak reporting.
Zucker’s spokeswoman Risa Heller denounced Tatiana Siegel’s 4,000 word piece on Zucker in a scathing statement to CNN’s Oliver Darcy for his “Reliable Sources” newsletter:
“There used to be a time when Variety held its content and its reporters to a high standard of truth and facts in journalism, but those days are clearly over. It is stunning to read a piece that is so patently and aggressively false,” Heller said on Tuesday night. “On numerous occasions, we made it clear to the reporter and her editors that they were planning to publish countless anecdotes and alleged incidents that never happened. They did so anyway.”
Top editors at The Atlantic and Puck also pushed back against the report’s claim that damaging reporting about Zucker’s successor, Chris Licht, who was fired after a 14,000 word takedown in the former magazine, contained bad reporting.
“The charges leveled by Tatiana Siegel in Variety against The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta are completely false,” said Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg in a statement. “Siegel was informed by The Atlantic that the charges were completely false, but she nevertheless decided to smear Alberta. Siegel’s report is based on false assumptions and false information, and she provides no evidence to support her claims and characterizations.”
He continued: “When Siegel reached out to our spokespeople, she was asked for specific examples of the alleged journalistic liberties taken by Alberta, but she did not provide any, apart from the false anecdote about Alberta’s conversation with Chris Licht at his gym,”
He added. “We provided her with a specific refutation of that false charge.”
Jon Kelly, editor-in-chief at Puck, told Darcy in part that the site’s reporting “was always fair and unbiased and based, frankly, on virtually innumerable sources. Any assertions to the contrary are absurd.”
In the report, Siegel depicts Zucker as emotional and embittered in the 18 months since he stepped down as President of CNN — officially because he failed to disclose his relationship with his longtime lieutenant, Allison Gollust — and desperate to somehow acquire ownership of the network he ran for nearly a decade.
As just one example, Siegel, citing anonymous sources, claims that Zucker confronted Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav in March “with tears in his eyes,” complaining about Licht.
It also paints Licht in a far more positive light. Licht was fired in early June following a disastrous tenure defined by plummeting ratings and decisions, like an ill advised town hall with Donald Trump, that outraged viewers and employees alike. This culminated with a series of damning Puck articles followed by a humiliating profile in The Atlantic that laid bare Licht’s role in these failures.
But the Variety report appears to suggest Zucker somehow was behind Licht’s negative press, citing sources who claimed Zucker “orchestrated unflattering leaks about his successor to reporters.”
A Variety spokesperson was reached by Darcy who stated: “Variety stands by our investigative story about CNN written by one of the best journalists in the business.”
