Jeff Zucker has resigned from his position as the president of CNN, and the chairman of WarnerMedia’s news and sports division, a position he had held for close to a decade. In a memo, he wrote that he failed to disclose a romantic relationship with another senior executive at CNN.
In the memo, which was obtained by The New York Times, Zucker wrote that this relationship was discovered during a network investigation into former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, who was fired in December for allegedly advising his brother, former Governor Andrew M. Cuomo of New York.
"As part of the investigation into Chris Cuomo’s tenure at CNN, I was asked about a consensual relationship with my closest colleague, someone I have worked with for more than 20 years,” Mr. Zucker wrote. “I acknowledged the relationship evolved in recent years. I was required to disclose it when it began but I didn’t. I was wrong.As a result, I am resigning today."
Said relationship was reportedly with Allison Gollust, CNN’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer. Both Zucker and Gollust are divorced, and Gollust intends to remain at her job.
Zucker's departure comes as parent company AT&T (T) is set to offer the subscription-based streaming service CNN+ next month.
A History Of Bosses Busted For Bad Behavior
Zucker’s resignation is the latest in a series of high-profile men brought down by scandals ranging from not declaring their relationships appropriately to sexual harassment and possible sexual crimes.
The movement to hold people in a position of authority responsible for their impropriety (at best) began in earnest following the #MeToo movement of 2017, which was fueled by cultural discontent over the election of President Donald Trump, who has frequently been accused of sexual harassment and sexual assault.
The movement went nova after a series of exposé articles about film producer and Miramax co-founder Harvey Weinstein’s history of sexual assault and intimidation-based cover-ups; in 2020 he was found guilty of two of five felonies and sentenced to 23 years in prison.
Several other men have been removed from their position of power since #MeToo began.
Most famously, last year Andrew Cuomo resigned as governor of New York, a position he held for a decade, after an investigation commissioned by New York attorney general Letitia James found that he sexually harassed 11 women during his time in office.
As noted above, his brother Chris Cuomo was fired from his anchor position at CNN by Zucker after an outside law firm found that Chris was advising his brother on how to handle the fallout from the sexual harassment investigations. The New York’s attorney general’s office found that “texts between the anchor and several aides and allies of the governor revealed that Chris Cuomo sought to use his connections in the press to help prepare Andrew Cuomo's team as accusers started to make their stories public.”
Matt Lauer, McDonald's Steve Easterbrook, and More
Jeff Zucker got his start while working on “Today,” one of NBC’s flagship news programs, and helped promote the career of Matt Lauer, who eventually became one of NBC News’s top anchors and was reportedly one of Zucker’s close friends.
In late 2017, Laurer was one of the first high-profile men to be fired as the #MeToo movement rose, after a sexual misconduct review in the wake of a New York Times investigation in which he was accused of inappropriate sexual behavior and sexual assault.
In the cases of both Lauer and Chris Cuomo, both the networks and Zucker personally were frequently hit with questions about whether they knew more about their employees' bad behavior than they let on, as Cuomo later claimed Zucker knew that he was helping his brother. “They were widely known to be extremely close and in regular contact, including about the details of Mr. Cuomo’s support for his brother,” Cuomo’s spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal.
In late 2019, former McDonald’s (MCD) CEO Steve Easterbrook was fired after he acknowledged sending videos and text messages “in a non-physical, consensual relationship with an employee.” After an investigation revealed that he had been in physical, sexual relationships with several employees and had removed evidence of those relationships from his phone," reported NPR. He returned more than $105 million in equity awards and cash to the company.
In 2012 Best Buy (BBY) founder and chairman Richard Schulze left the company after an investigation found that he knew “about an inappropriate relationship then-CEO Brian Dunn had with a female staffer,” and did not disclose that to the company, according to USA Today. He later rejoined the company in the role of chairman emeritus.
In 2020, the Best Buy board investigated allegations that CEO Corie Barry had a romantic relationship with an employee who later left the company. She remained in the position after cooperating with the investigation, the details of which were not made public.
