12 June 2021: When Will CNN Fix Its Cuomo Integrity Problem?

What Is a Fireable Offense at CNN?

This media analysis piece asks questions that CNN's editors and managers would appear either incapable or unwilling to answer:

What if one of your top stars helps his powerful brother cover up a botched COVID response by obsequiously kibbitzing around with him during the outbreak of the deadliest pandemic in a century rather than asking useful questions, as Chris Cuomo did with his brother, New York governor Andrew Cuomo? What if Andrew sends the New York Department of Health out to Chris’s posh Southampton home to give his family special treatment even as he refuses to cover the fact that New York is sending the elderly into death traps? Nope?

What if Chris stages a fake coronavirus quarantine-emergence video for his gullible audience — even after receiving special treatment from the New York Department of Health and ignoring the nursing home deaths? And what if he participates in a communications-strategy call to help his powerful brother deal with the litany of sexual-harassment claims made against him even as the story is being covered by your network?

We're going to speculate that one possible reason CNN's problems have been allowed to fester over the past year is because its parent corporation, AT&T, has been working on a merger of its WarnerMedia division with Discovery.

AT&T owns CNN, HBO and Warner Bros. after it acquired Time Warner, since renamed to WarnerMedia. Discovery’s channels include Animal Planet, TLC and the Discovery Channel.

Zaslav said on the press call Monday that he believes the combined company will be able to differentiate itself from top streaming services like Disney+ and Netflix by offering a combination of news and sports on top of its entertainment properties like “Game of Thrones” and Harry Potter.

Zaslav also expressed confidence in CNN, which some had speculated would be spun off from WarnerMedia. Zaslav said Monday his new company plans to keep CNN with the intention “to take everything we have in news, combine it with CNN and be a world leader in news.”

But the merger requires federal approval, which may take a year or more. That delay will prevent Zaslav, who will be oversee CNN among the other media properties, from being able to directly implement the housecleaning CNN needs.

There's nothing stopping CNN's managers and editors from taking those desperately needed steps itself before then. If they don't, the more they risk becoming redundant in what will almost certainly become a thorough top-to-bottom housecleaning driven by their failure to restore CNN's journalistic integrity by the time the new boss arrives.

Unless they want to become the next Huffington Post.