2 June 2021: CNN's Cuomo Exposes Systemic Ethical Failures at Network

CNN under ethics scrutiny following Cuomo revelations

The amazing revelation in this report is that CNN has virtually non-existent policies for addressing any of its journalists' conflicts of interests or ethical missteps. Instead, its managers and editors substitute arbitrary enforcement of vague guidelines, which lets them do whatever they want.

CNN is coming under internal and external criticism over its approach to conflicts of interest for journalists after host Chris Cuomo escaped disciplinary action despite advising his brother, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), on how to handle sexual misconduct allegations.

Current and former employees have criticized the host of “Cuomo Prime Time” for the transgression, but a retired CNN ethics executive says the lack of clear cut policies are largely to blame.

“You won't see any rules that are etched in stone so that a violation could be a firing offense,” said Steve Holmes, who retired from CNN in 2019 after working at the network for more than a decade.

“And I think you see sort of the results. I mean the Chris Cuomo thing, they can't say that he's violated any written policies because there aren't any, period,” said Holmes, who reported to the executive vice president of news standards and practices when he was at CNN.

What Holmes is describing is an environment in which a toxic culture with a high tolerance for corruption can thrive. Holmes indicates CNN's managers and editors are effectively complicit in Chris Cuomo's ethical lapses.

Holmes, who was an editor at The Washington Post and part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team at The New York Times before joining CNN, said the inaction on Cuomo sends the wrong message.

“For them to sort of just shrug their shoulders and slough it off is just to me like, ‘Hold on people, don't you see how this looks?’” Holmes said.

“They could do that and take the criticism that it’s too lenient,” he said. “But what do they do when they don't do anything? What kind of signals does it send that you don't do anything?”

CNN's absence of written ethical standards is unique, according to an industry interest group:

Matthew Hall, national president of the Society of Professional Journalists, said, “Each outlet should have a policy, explain the policy to staff, expect the staff to follow the policy and then actually enforce the policy.”

Without such a written policy, CNN's journalists have little to no recourse to challenge ethical misconduct by their peers, their editors, and their organization's management:

CNN’s ostensible reasoning for having ethical guidelines, as opposed to hard and fast rules, Holmes said, was because it allowed them to handle problems on a case-by-case basis. Holmes said that also allowed CNN to deal with people who violated the guidelines depending upon how they felt about them.

That's the exact recipe needed to allow a toxic culture of fear and corruption to become institutionalized.