Stunning warning CNN boss gave to stars the day before Trump inauguration
CNN boss Mark Thompson warned the network’s stars to refrain from bashing Donald Trump and bringing up the past during his inauguration on Monday, according to a new report.
In an editorial meeting attended by the network’s biggest names, including Anderson Cooper and Jake Tapper, Thompson urged the journalists to keep their biases to themselves.
Thompson told the journalists he wanted them ‘to be forward-thinking and to avoid pre-judging Trump’ and cautioned them against ‘expressing any outrage of their own,’ as reported by the Status newsletter.
The network’s CNN also ‘made it clear that he did not want the coverage to relitigate the past’ – meaning he did not want the coverage to focus on Trump’s felony convictions, his impeachments or role in the January 6 riots.
Instead, Thompson instructed his staff to keep an open mind and focus on Trump’s second term.
As Status notes, the CNN journalists mostly followed Thompson’s editorial line on inauguration day, not mentioning the fact that Trump is the first convicted felon to win the White House or that he was impeached for his role in inciting an attempted insurrection.
The meeting was meant to set the tone for the network’s treatment of Trump’s second term, as CNN wants to cover it in a starkly different way than they did it the first time around.
CNN’s new boss wants the network to keep an open mind about Donald Trump’s second term
According to an insider at Puck , CNN chairman and CEO Mark Thompson (pictured) hosted a company wide meeting on Wednesday morning to set the agenda for the second Trump era
The meeting was attended by the network’s biggest stars including Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper
CNN’s previous boss Jeff Zucker established a more aggressive editorial line against Trump, focusing on calling him out for lies and corruption. During Trump’s first term, the network’s stars often expressed their own indignation at the sitting president.
The day after the inauguration, Thompson reminded his staff to remain ‘fair-minded’ while also staying ‘tough-minded.’
Thompson was appointed CNN chief in 2023 after stints at The New York Times and BBC to try to save the struggling network’s after its tone against Trump saw its viewership decline over the last eight years.
CNN’s dropping numbers have caused staff to become ‘scared and frustrated’ about looming layoffs.
Stars including Jake Tapper and Wolf Blitzer have reportedly been denied raises on their multi-million-dollar salaries as the biggest names on the network fear for their futures.
Back in November, Thomson also hosted an all-hands meeting to set the agenda for the second Trump era.
The meeting was meant to set the tone for the network’s treatment of Trump’s second term
CNN’s previous boss Jeff Zucker established a more aggressive editorial line against Trump
Thompson reminded staff that there are ‘a lot of other stories out in the U.S. and around the world’ and ‘it was clear that audiences were sick of the way the media covers politics’ according to Puck.
He also said he wanted to get more ‘people we don’t normally hear on CNN’ – perhaps alluding to more right-wing pundits like Scott Jennings.
A critical demographic for network news channels are those aged 25 to 54, and on Tuesday – a week after the 2024 presidential election – CNN averaged 61,000 viewers in that range.
It was the smallest of audience viewers in that demographic since June 27, 2000, when Bill Clinton was in the White House.
It also pulled in bad numbers for its daytime programming – shows that run between 9 am and 5 pm – with an average 60,000 viewers in the demographic on Tuesday.
This was the worst for a non-holiday week since 2014, according to Fox News.
