Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast
CNN boss Chris Licht is a dead man talking. That’s the damning judgment from dozens of CNN on-air talent, producers, and journalists who’ve spoken with Confider in the days since press-obsessed Licht’s assisted career suicide-by-profile ran in The Atlantic.
More on that shortly, but the deeper story insiders want to know is how David Zaslav got the network in this mess in the first place. This newsletter has made light of Licht on a regular basis as Confider’s “favorite schmoozer,” because that’s how he got the CNN gig: Instead of casting a wide search for a replacement to Jeff Zucker, Zaz went with someone who had little more experience than running shows with a couple dozen staffers at Morning Joe and CBS This Morning and had started showing up at Zaz’s annual Hamptons party.
Zaslav has now parachuted in his buddy and longtime lieutenant David Leavy to fix the mess he created. While hardly a rock star in the Warner Discovery universe, Leavy is throwing his weight around and calling CNN talent to try and shore up support. But it’s going to be a long, hard road back for the likes of Jake Tapper, Wolf Blitzer, and Erin Burnett—CNN bedrocks who, Confider has learned, have lost confidence in the boss.