From the Beast’s media desk

EXCLUSIVE —  ‘DEAD MAN TALKING,’ PART ONE: CNN boss Chris Licht is a dead man talking. That’s the damning judgment from dozens of CNN on-air talent, producers, and journalists who’ve spoken with Confider in the days since press-obsessed Licht’s assisted career suicide-by-profile ran in The Atlantic. More on that shortly, but the deeper story insiders want to know is how David Zaslav got the network in this mess in the first place. This newsletter has made light of Licht on a regular basis as Confider’s “favorite schmoozer,” because that’s how he got the CNN gig: Instead of casting a wide search for a replacement to Jeff Zucker, Zaz went with someone who had little more experience than running shows with a couple dozen staffers at Morning Joe and CBS This Morning and had started showing up at Zaz’s annual Hamptons party. Zaslav has now parachuted in his buddy and longtime lieutenant David Leavy to fix the mess he created. While hardly a rock star in the Warner Discovery universe, Leavy is throwing his weight around and calling CNN talent to try and shore up support. But it’s going to be a long, hard road back for the likes of Jake Tapper, Wolf Blitzer, and Erin Burnett—CNN bedrocks who, Confider has learned, have lost confidence in the boss. The fact anyone thought two flashy profiles in less than a year was a good idea is alarming, insiders griped to Confider. The most comical part of the Atlantic profile, our newsroom insiders said, was the starring role of Licht’s celebrity trainer, Joe Maysonet, and the lofty claims Licht has lost 50 pounds thanks to the rigid self-discipline of early-morning workouts and skipping breakfast. The reality may be more complicated, however, as the Daily Mail reported that Licht has bragged to associates about taking weight-loss drug Ozempic—a claim Confider’s sources have also confirmed hearing firsthand.

EXCLUSIVE —  ‘DEAD MAN TALKING,’ PART TWO: Ultimately it was Licht’s comments about CNN’s COVID coverage—that it was feverish, lacked context, and often broke from reality—that most enraged network staffers. Further insulting staffers over the weekend, insiders told us, was the fact that Licht’s camp appeared to leak unflattering internal data to try to defend his negative portrayal of the network’s COVID coverage. Licht made a weak attempt at damage control during Monday’s 9 a.m. staff-wide editorial call. “I know these past few days have been very hard for this group,” he reportedly said. “I fully recognize that this news cycle and my role in it overshadowed the incredible week of reporting that we just had and distracted from the work of every single journalist in this organization. And for that, I am sorry.” But network staffers at all levels who spoke with us suggested that if Licht’s ego would allow him, he’d be smart to start negotiating an exit with Zaslav so both execs can soon put this sorry mess behind them. “Perhaps the parent company can tolerate shitty management at CNN. But how long will they stomach lousy ratings and shrinking revenue?” one CNN staffer asked Confider. Another question that came up often in chats with insiders: Does right-wing billionaire John Malone really want to own a piece of what is quickly becoming a distressed asset? The most telling part of this shambolic episode, sources pointed out, is how Zaslav—too busy co-hosting Graydon Carter’s fuck-you to Vanity Fair party at Cannes—did not sit for an on-record interview with The Atlantic to offer support for his own hire. And realizing how brutal the profile would be, Zaz seemingly wasted no time inserting Leavy into the newly created position of CNN’s chief operating officer. While that role has been sold as Leavy “reporting to CNN CEO Chris Licht,” Licht himself did not announce the gig in one of his trademark staff-wide memos featuring his name in a gigantic font at the top. Speaking of Zaz, CNN sources told Confider that the Warner Discovery boss last month raised eyebrows inside the newsroom when he commented “Looking great buddy….miss u” on a picture posted to Instagram by Brian Stelter, whom Zaslav fired last summer. A rep for Warner Discovery and a rep for CNN declined to comment.

CNN RATINGS IN CONTEXT: While CNN isn’t alone in watching its ratings plummet over the past month—Fox News has seen a massive erosion after firing Tucker Carlson—the network has continued to see viewers flee since the Trump town hall debacle. Outside a one-night viewership bump from hosting Trump, the channel’s May ratings were, shall we say, moribund. CNN averaged less than a half-million primetime total viewers for the month, placing it in 14th place among all basic cable. In the key advertising demographic of viewers aged 25-54, CNN struggled even further, averaging an audience of just 113,000 in primetime to finish 20th in basic cable. The network’s top-rated program was Anderson Cooper 360, which averaged just 646,000 viewers overall—27th place among all cable-news shows. (The program was also beaten several times by Newsmax, adding to the channel’s embarrassment.) Besides seeing double-digit decreases in total day and primetime viewership from April, the network was also way down in year-to-year comparisons. In primetime, for instance, the network saw a decrease of 25 percent in both total viewership and the key demo compared to May 2022.

THE MESSENGER WHO?: The humiliations just keep piling up for Jimmy Finkelstein’s media outlet The Messenger just weeks into its rocky launch. The much-hyped startup, which has already seen several editors quit over its push to flood the zone with aggregated clickbait, has struggled to generate name recognition or searchability. Case in point: Tom LoBianco, the site’s national politics reporter, had to painstakingly explain what The Messenger is to a CNN anchor while on-air. LoBianco, a former CNN and AP reporter who left Yahoo News for The Messenger this spring, appeared Sunday on Jim Acosta’s show to discuss Mike Pence’s visit to Iowa. While introducing LoBianco, Acosta apparently thought the journalist worked for an obscure local Iowa outlet. Why? Well, when you search for “The Messenger” online, you’ll more often find the 167-year-old newspaper serving the Fort Dodge area. “Oh, we’re national,” LoBianco told Acosta. “We launched about a month ago. I urge—if you wanna know more about it, there’s a great piece in Vanity Fair that just published about a week or two ago with our CEO Jimmy Finkelstein.” That piece in question featured VF’s Joe Pompeo pressing Finkelstein on his archaic business model for the site, which centers on cheap programmatic advertising and “super-high-octane aggregation,” all while boasting of delivering “impartial and objective news.” With the site’s president Richard Beckman promising investors pie-in-the-sky revenue and traffic projections for the first year, and The Messenger not showing up in the most basic search-engine queries, the current SEO strategy now appears to be paying Google to appear at the top of searches as a “sponsored” result. “We are aware of the issue with Google,” a Messenger spokesperson told Confider. “We are working with SEO experts who have never encountered this before and are attempting to resolve the issue.”

EXCLUSIVE — DISHY DAILY MAIL: Despite being one of the more colorful tabloids, it’s rare that we actually get a glimpse inside the Daily Mail’s newsroom. But Eden Lipman, a model and former executive assistant to DailyMail.com editor-in-chief Gerard Greaves, gave us a little bit of that with an e-book memoir dishing on her yearlong stint at the outlet—which she likened to The Devil Wears Prada. On working for Greaves, Lipman recalled being tasked with serving him “the perfect English tea” on a regular basis. “I was absolutely Andy Sachs in the Devil Wears Prada, grabbing hot lunches, only for them to be dismissed with—‘I don’t want that, I’m going out for lunch,’ being gaslit into thinking you've done it all wrong, even though you did exactly what they asked of you only 20 minutes prior, and having to say, ‘I’m terribly sorry, let me fix this, one second!’ But I’m fine, I’m no pussy,” she wrote in the book, titled Ambitchious: The Broke Girl's Guide to Leveling the F*ck Up. "Admittedly, I vomited before work almost every morning—I was superfuckingstressed, but pressure is a privilege. I had to be at the office at 7, on the dot, and be fully prepared for what was to come: ‘AEEEEDEN - A TEA PLEASE.’” Lipman elsewhere described "chaos, mayhem, and shouting in the newsroom,” but ultimately claimed “it was wildly fun” to work for the tabloid. “The Daily Mail certainly has a reputation, but it will always have a huge piece of my heart,” she concluded. Following its March 30 release, a Daily Mail staffer relayed to Confider that many in the newsroom found the book “funny,” but not in a ha-ha way, and also felt “embarrassed” for Lipman as she described the grueling work environment while “naively” lauding it. A Daily Mail rep declined to comment.

EXCLUSIVE — FORBES FLOP: Unionized staffers at Forbes, the glossy magazine dedicated to wealth, announced last month that they would only work a 40-hour week as it finalized its most recent edition. The protest is designed to spare these employees from working an often undetermined amount of extra hours: One Forbes staffer said some people could work up to 26 hours in a row to get the magazine to print. The “work to rule” action, which came just before the outlet’s America’s Richest Self-Made Women 2023 edition, left managers in a bind, according to several staffers who spoke to Confider. During a May 15 kickoff meeting, magazine brass explored how to fill in the gaps, with some entertaining the prospect of roping in a high-schooler shadowing Executive Editor Luisa Kroll at the time. Some reporters were also asked to help cross-check each other’s work, according to multiple staffers, and when one pushed back, arguing it was not in their job description, contributing editor Brian Dawson said that the company was forced to make that request thanks to the union, noting that actions have consequences. The remarks prompted multiple staffers to push back on the workload further, leaving Kroll exasperated. “We’re happy to pick that up so we’re working 70 hours a day while others are working the hours they’re comfortable working,” she said, according to multiple staffers in the meeting. The company also brought on two former 2022 interns as freelance fact-checkers, assigning them each multiple stories, according to an internal spreadsheet obtained and reviewed by Confider. (One of the former interns confirmed to Confider she worked as a primary and secondary fact-checker.) The protest was a result of the union’s prolonged contract negotiations, unit chair Andrea Murphy said. “There’s some of your job that you have to do, and there’s other parts—the journalism parts—that you love to do,” she said, adding: “When you work to rule, you have to do those parts. It oftentimes leaves less time for the parts of your job that you love the most.” The unit plans to continue the action until at least its next bargaining session on June 8. A spokesperson for Forbes declined to comment.

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YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: NBC’s Chuck Todd is out as host of Meet the Press after nearly nine years on the job—a shake-up that Confider readers may recall us having reported last August as coming down the pike. And British Vogue editor-in-chief Edward Enninful, who earned the nickname “Queen Mother” from staffers, is out at the magazine after apparently losing his ongoing power struggle with Anna Wintour—a feud that Confider reported last year as having turned “Condé Nasty.” Read that here.

Tips? We’re all ears: confider@thedailybeast.com or call/text us 551 655 2343.

WE HEAR WHISPERS: Disney execs have settled on former CNN flack Lauren Pratapas to be ABC News’ new senior vice president of communications and work closely with news boss Kim Godwin.

MORE FROM THE BEAST MEDIA DESK

—Conservative media types love to mock the “triggered” liberal masses, yet it seems like the only people throwing tantrums these days are right-wingers upset about this or that “woke” bugaboo. Joe Berkowitz explores how the “fuck your feelings” crowd got so hysterical here.

—Insider’s union launched its strike last week, protesting the company’s switch of healthcare providers, dozens of layoffs, and its wage proposals. Find out how we got there, and where things may go, here. 

—Sen. Tim Scott, the latest Republican to enter the 2024 field while refusing to differentiate from Trump, went into the supposed belly of the liberal beast on Monday, facing down The View hosts and blasting their “offensive” comments about Black Republicans. Watch here.

RECENT READS

—In a major win for press freedom, powerful Aussie “war hero” Ben Roberts-Smith last week lost his defamation action against The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and The Canberra Times. The backstory of what two investigative reporters who broke the story of his war crimes went through, as they defended their work against an Aussie billionaire media mogul funding Roberts’ lawsuit, is nothing short of fascinating. Read that yarn here.

—Fox News refused to publish on-record comments the White House provided in response to a story compiling right-wing criticism of Joe Biden’s recent fall during an Air Force event. HuffPost obtained testy emails showing that the two offered comments made reference to Fox mogul Rupert Murdoch’s age (92)—and neither made it into the article. More here.

—That feeling when the worst person you know just made a great point. The insufferable bros over at Barstool Sports have drawn the ire of right-wingers by supporting Pride Month. And the fratty sports outlet responded by taking the piss out of their reactionary critics. Read it here.

***WHAT ARE WE OUTRAGED ABOUT NOW?***

Is it bad to try to make the world a more hospitable and better place to live? According to Fox News host and Real World alum Rachel Campos-Duffy, it is actually sacrilegious. As a leading voice of the right-wing outrage-industrial complex, Campos-Duffy has a marked history of making eyebrow-raising comments to own the libs. On Sunday, though, she seemed to take it several steps further. Essentially, she said, the left is worried about climate change because they don’t believe in heaven, while conservatives know they will live in paradise after death. “For them, where we live right now, this place, Earth is it,” she declared. “So everything’s on the line here for them. They think, as you said, they can perfect this Earth. Those of us who have faith don’t believe that, and we believe how we act here determines where we go after. And so we got to behave.” Campos-Duffy went on to equate major faiths with climate, insisting that liberals have made climate change advocacy their own religion. “We’re made for religion,” she concluded. “So if you don’t have a faith, whether it’s Hindu, Islam, Christianity, you’re going to create one. And it could be climate, or it could be yourself.” Read more here.

Confider will be back next week with more saucy scooplets. In the meantime, subscribe here and send us questions, complaints, or tips  here or call/text us  551 655 2343.

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