Jerusalem – The president of CNN said Tuesday it was “shocking” to watch the political establishment’s silence over President Donald Trump’s attacks on the media, calling it an abdication of their responsibility.
Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
Speaking at a media conference in Jerusalem, Jeff Zucker, president of CNN Worldwide, said Trump’s labeling of the media as the enemy of the state was unfortunate and dangerous. He refused to say whether any CNN staff had been threatened and what kind of security measures the company had taken, but warned that “words can have consequences.”
Zucker also said he was stunned politicians had not spoken out fiercely against Trump’s assault on the free press. He singled out Republican senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham as among the few who have had the courage to stand up for their convictions.
Since taking office, Trump has lashed out repeatedly at the media, taking particular aim at CNN. He’s upbraided its reporters publicly, deriding the network as “fake news,” and his press secretary blocked CNN from taking part in a White House media gaggle.
Zucker said the contentious climate has not harmed CNN, but rather its ratings and revenue have seen a huge boost.
He said the most important thing was not to be intimidated by the president and stick to aggressive journalism.
“When you are reporting, when you are standing up for the facts, when you are telling the truth, when you are standing up for the first amendment, when you are calling it the way it is, that’s not hitting back — that’s doing your job,” he told the INTV conference. “I think that he (Trump) continues to believe that the media is insinuating that his presidency is illegitimate. That is not what is going on here. We are just trying to ask questions, we are just trying to do reporting, we are just trying to do our job.”
Zucker, who in a previous role as head of NBC Entertainment, helped launch Trump’s TV career by giving the go ahead to the hit reality show “The Apprentice,” said the last time he spoke to Trump was on Dec. 21 at 7:00 p.m, when he was watching TV at home and his cellphone rang.
“I say ‘Hello.’ He says ‘Jeff, Donald.’ I say ‘Hello, Donald.’ And he spent the next two minutes railing about a guest we just had on CNN who said something about him he didn’t like. He yelled at me for two minutes and he said ‘OK, got it? Goodbye’ and he hung up,” Zucker recalled, to giggles from the audience.
Pres Trump isnt attacking the media, hes attacking the false biased slanted news….
I agree; CNN is one of the most biased, and slanted news organizations, when it comes to reporting about Trump. For months, their correspondents, including that zoftig, disgusting reporter, named David Chalian, who works out of CNN’s D.C. news bureau, along with John King, his ex-wife, Dana Bash, and others kept repeatedly stating, that “Trump won’t get more than 220 electoral votes; there is no way that he can crack the glass ceiling, and get to 270”. Those same incompetent reporters, should have all been fired, along with the pollsters who misinformed them . Not one of them had the guts to admit that they were wrong.
CNN among others deserves all the criticism it gets from the president and others. Normal American Soul house slanted and twisted and bias the media was during the entire election campaign. It was nauseating. They should be ashamed of themselves and have some nerve asking for better treatment when they are completely guilty of every single accusation against them. They wouldn’t know honesty if they fell over it.