11 March 2022: Inside CNN's Journalism Ethics Breakdown with Andrew M. Cuomo

'Cuomo-W. Trump-L.': How CNN's Jeff Zucker and His Cronies Manipulated the News

This report describes how Andrew M. Cuomo's influence network member Allison Gollust, Chief Marketing Officer at CNN, exercised her influence at the news network to promote Cuomo's political interests. Let's get to what is perhaps the most notable excerpt of a story that contains multiple examples of how journalism ethics broke down at the news network:

According to one source familiar with the CNN investigation and another who is a Democratic operative, Gollust’s ongoing connections to Gov. Cuomo also raised eyebrows. Two sources familiar with the matter say Gollust and the governor exchanged texts in which they agreed to meet up for drinks on multiple occasions in 2019 and 2020. In early 2020, several months after his split from partner Sandra Lee, Cuomo asked Gollust, “You don’t want to see me now that I’m single?” She replied, “A drink with you would be the best date I’ve had in a while.” Four months later, he fired off a text to Gollust suggesting he be her “pool boy.” She responded that she’d welcome that scenario, and they set up a call. When their texting resumed, Gollust wrote, “That was fun. Sleep well.”

(“It’s no secret that Allison and Governor Cuomo had a friendly relationship after Allison briefly worked for him in 2012,” says Heller. “For Rolling Stone to suggest through innuendo and creative syntax — and no evidence — that there was a sexual relationship between the two in 2020 is disgusting, sexist, and patently false. In fact, Allison was never in the same room as the governor during 2020.” A representative for Cuomo adds, “Allison and the governor were former colleagues and friends, never had a romantic relationship, and it is impossible to have two sources saying otherwise because it is a total fabrication.”)

Gollust’s texts went beyond friends’ banter. When a rumor circulated that Trump was about to shut down New York City, Gollust invited the governor to come on CNN’s New Day the next morning and “squash it.” She quipped to her former boss, “I’m pretty sure I stopped being your publicist 8 years ago, but apparently I still am.” On another occasion, he asked her to critique his press conference.

Heller says, “These are innocuous, mundane conversations that are being spun into a nefarious tale.” But she acknowledges that Gollust asked the governor to help her friend cut through bureaucratic red tape to open a birthing center in Manhattan. Months later, Heller also confirms, Gollust hit up Cuomo with a request involving Billy Joel, who’d once hosted a Cuomo-campaign fundraiser. She prefaced it with “I never ask you for favors, but . . .,” to which Cuomo replied, “Yes, u do ask me for favors, and that’s okay. It’s mutual.”

“It was clear that she leveraged the relationship [with Andrew Cuomo],” says the Democratic operative. “There was a consistent exchange of favors between them.”

This report appeared in Rolling Stone, which has its own sorted history of journalism ethics scandals. This entry was added to the timeline on 13 March 2022.