Editorial

New CNN Head Admits He Considers Himself A ‘Roadside Bomb’ When Employees Mess Up

Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

Kay Smythe News and Commentary Writer
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CNN’s new president, Chris Licht, got candidly cringe in his narration for his 2021 audiobook “What I Learned When I Almost Died: How a Manic TV Producer Put Down His BlackBerry and Started to Live His Life” when he admitted he had serious a problem with anger.

Licht, 50, described his day job in the 52-second clip uploaded to YouTube in June 2021, saying, “days with the pressure and crisis of running a national cable news program had little room for casual niceties.”

“If somebody screwed up, I could go off like a roadside bomb in a finger snap,” Licht said, essentially admitting that he knew he had an inability to control his rage around his employees. To justify his toxic behavior, Licht said he “had ambitions, I had to be the killer producer.”

Evidently his rage, or just being human, led Licht to become unwell. “Most people with the medical emergency I had do not emerge from the experience physically intact, if they emerge at all,” Licht said.

The medical emergency Licht described was a subarachnoid hemorrhage, according to the Wall Street Journal. Twenty-five percent of people who experience a subarachnoid hemorrhage die within 24 hours, with a further 40-50 percent dying within the following 6 months, according to MedScape. (RELATED: Media Hails Former Producer Of Cringey Colbert ‘Late Show’ As Savior Of News At CNN)

Sources from CBS told the Hastings Tribute that Licht’s reputation as a no-nonsense producer was not quelled by his touch with death. “Maybe he is more Zen when he goes home at night, but he’s a guy who knows what he wants, and he wants it done the way he wants it,” the source stated.

Has CNN just replaced one toxic leader with another? The network is still recovering from reports of sexual deviance during the tenure of former President Jeff Zucker. Zucker himself left the network due to a “consensual relationship with my closest colleague” that he was “required to disclose” at the time it began but didn’t. (RELATED: Jeff Zucker Resigns From CNN)

While president of CNN, Zucker was also a big fan of Jeffrey Toobin, who masturbated in front of colleagues on a Zoom call, according to The New York Times (NYT). CNN was the only network to invite him back to work after the incident.

Under Zucker’s leadership, CNN fired Chris Cuomo after it was revealed that he was helping his brother, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, handle sexual assault allegations. The NYT reported in February that Chris Cuomo was fired after the network learned of an alleged sexual assault that took place that while Cuomo was at ABC News.

Disgraced former Tv anchor Matt Lauer attended Zucker’s birthday party several years after Lauer was fired over sexual misconduct allegations, as reported by Page Six.

Placing a self-admitted rageaholic with a habit of flying off the handle at the helm of CNN might not have been the best choice for the network. Are they about to replace a workplace culture of sexual deviance with a new culture of rage?

We’ll find out this coming spring.