In the world of CNN president Jeff Zucker, CNN has no political ax to grind, and simply tells the truth, while Fox News is “state-run TV.” Speaking on The New Yorker Radio Hour broadcast over the weekend, Zucker was asked to characterize the area of cable news in the era of President Trump. Zucker responded, “Obviously Fox News is, uh,” paused for roughly ten seconds, then continued, “So, look, there’s three cable news networks. Certainly in primetime and in the morning, Fox is state-run TV and is extolling the line out of the White House.”
MSNBC, according to Zucker? They have “become the opposition.”
Zucker’s own CNN? “Seeking the truth.”
David Remnick of The New Yorker pressed, “Do you think the other two networks are not broadcasting the truth?”
Zucker: “Well, I think that there are clear agendas at work at the other cable news networks depending on their political points of view.”
Zucker spoke of Trump branding CNN and other outlets as “fake news.” He said, “I think it’s an unfortunate phrase. I think we should all try to avoid it. I think it’s also dangerous and unfortunate that the president of the United States and the people around him would try and denigrate an institution like the media, which is one of the bedrocks of this country.”
Zucker acknowledged some “news that isn’t real” that is false but furthers a political agenda or uses clickbait to sell advertising, but added Trump’s “fake news is news he doesn’t like — and there is a difference between news that is not real and news that he doesn’t like.”
Zucker, who helped Trump rise to stardom on The Apprentice, said Trump “knows how to work an audience.” He reminisced:
There’s no way I or anyone else back in 2004, when The Apprentice went on the air, would have predicted that Donald Trump would end up as president of the United States. I never had political conversations with him, ever. We had conversations about the ratings of The Apprentice and how much [money] he was going to make doing The Apprentice. We ended up paying him what we wanted to pay him. He wanted a million dollars an episode to do The Apprentice in the second year.”
Zucker said airing the Trump 2016 campaign in full and unedited was a mistake, adding, “I think, in hindsight, if we could go back, we probably wouldn’t do all those. I think we probably did do too many of them. I do not think that’s why he’s president of the United States. I do not believe that’s why he won the Republican nomination.”
Of course, Zucker relentlessly promoted Trump as far back as 2005; when Trump was readying for his marriage to Melania Knauss in 2005, Zucker wanted to broadcast the wedding live. And last October, when it looked as though Hillary Clinton would win the presidency, Zucker wasn’t sorry he promoted Trump during the campaign and raised CNN’s ratings, saying, “We recognized … there was a little bit of a phenomenon to Donald Trump.”