It has been quite a while since we’ve seen a media dustup like this.
Back on June 2, The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta wrote a lengthy and much-talked-about profile of then-CNN CEO Chris Licht. Less than a week later, Licht was out at CNN. The article itself didn’t get Licht fired, but it certainly appeared to have hastened his departure.
Then this week, Variety’s Tatiana Siegel wrote this story: “Inside the Battle for CNN: Jeff Zucker, David Zaslav, Chris Licht and 18 Months of Crazy Backstabbing.”
Both stories contained plenty of interesting anecdotes and behind-the-scenes drama.
But almost immediately, there was pushback to the Variety story. I mentioned this briefly in Wednesday’s newsletter, but here’s more.
The Variety story painted former CNN boss Jeff Zucker as still upset over his CNN ouster and obsessed with buying the network.
Risa Heller, a spokesperson for Zucker, told CNN’s Oliver Darcy that the Variety story was a “total joke.” She said, “There used to be a time when Variety held its content and its reporters to a high standard of truth and facts in journalism, but those days are clearly over. It is stunning to read a piece that is so patently and aggressively false. On numerous occasions, we made it clear to the reporter and her editors that they were planning to publish countless anecdotes and alleged incidents that never happened. They did so anyway.”
Then, Wednesday afternoon, TheWrap’s Natalie Korach reported, “Zucker has requested a retraction for a Variety report that characterized him as desperate to acquire the network.”
Korach added, “According to sources familiar, Zucker’s team denied the allegations made in the report multiple times prior to its publication, but Variety chose to move forward with the article. Zucker’s team had reached out to Variety’s co-editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh in protest of the article, which they insisted contained massive falsehoods. When that did not meet a response, they attempted to appeal to Variety’s other co-editor-in-chief Cynthia Littleton, who has a long-standing relationship with Zucker. Littleton referred his team back to Setoodeh, who said that they would have to take up their grievances with Siegel herself.”
Zucker’s reaction, perhaps, was not surprising.
But what happened next was a surprise, as journalists pushed back on Variety’s story.
The story took shots at the reporting done by Alberta and Puck’s Dylan Byers, who has covered CNN extensively. The Variety story leaned heavily into the idea that Byers had a conflict of interest when it came to Zucker (Byers once worked for Zucker at CNN) and that he was particularly hard on Licht.
Siegel’s story also questioned Alberta’s reporting for his blockbuster Atlantic profile.
Siegel wrote in her story, “Much of the initial reaction to the piece focused on how much access Licht granted and how unfiltered he was. But those familiar with the Atlantic backstory say Alberta had just four meetings with Licht. … Those same sources say liberties were taken with the Atlantic piece, including that key off-the-record details and quotes were used on the record. On-the-record interviews that were neutral or painted Licht positively were not used. Licht’s trainer, Joe Maysonet, who was present for some of the Atlantic conversations, tells Variety that Licht’s comments were taken out of context multiple times.”
Alberta fired back on Twitter not long after the Variety story was posted online Tuesday. In a lengthy Twitter thread, Alberta tagged Siegel and listed 10 items defending his story, including the number of times he met with Licht and that no off-the-record quotes were used.
His 10th item was: “Credulously laundering false background claims without seeking specific responses... is not journalism.”
He closed with, “Other than that, well done.”
Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg gave a lengthy statement to Darcy, including, “The charges leveled by Tatiana Siegel in Variety against The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta are completely false. Siegel was informed by The Atlantic that the charges were completely false, but she nevertheless decided to smear Alberta. Siegel’s report is based on false assumptions and false information, and she provides no evidence to support her claims and characterizations. When Siegel reached out to our spokespeople, she was asked for specific examples of the alleged journalistic liberties taken by Alberta, but she did not provide any, apart from the false anecdote about Alberta’s conversation with Chris Licht at his gym. We provided her with a specific refutation of that false charge.”
Goldberg also noted that no one associated with the Atlantic story ever asked for a correction or raised any concerns for a piece that was published nearly two months ago.
“This,” Goldberg wrote, “is because Alberta’s article is entirely accurate, and the quotations in the article were all collected under clear guidelines.”
Alberta put out another tweet Wednesday, writing, “If @Variety had real editorial standards this piece never, ever would have published. A retraction is probably in order, but I doubt they have the stomach for it.”
Meanwhile, Puck editor-in-chief Jon Kelly told Darcy, “Dylan Byers singlehandedly elevated the CNN story into the popular culture through his extraordinary and relentless reporting, which was always fair and unbiased and based, frankly, on virtually innumerable sources. Any assertions to the contrary are absurd.”
In a column Wednesday night, Byers said he originally wrestled with whether or not to write about the Variety story, but decided to do so because everyone in the media was talking about it. He wrote that from the opening sentence “the story seemed problematic and riddled with factual inaccuracies.”
Byers goes into detail about parts of the Variety article, particularly about Zucker’s supposed interest in buying CNN.
Byers goes on to write, “As CNN’s Oliver Darcy recently noted, the veracity of the Variety story quickly came under ‘heightened scrutiny’ from journalists, executives, television agents, and others across the industry for whom it simply does not pass the smell test. But perhaps more curious was the way in which Variety’s editors have chosen to address — or rather, not address — the pushback.”
A Variety spokesperson told CNN and TheWrap, “Variety stands by our investigative story about CNN written by one of the best journalists in the business.”
What makes this story so puzzling is that everyone involved is respected in the business: Alberta, Byers and Siegel. But the feverish and widespread pushback to Siegel’s story has been quite eye-opening.
