CNN stars' reaction to Jeff Zucker's ouster reveals a "stunning disconnect" with what should matter to viewers

https://www.inquirer.com/columnists/attytood/jeff-zucker-cnn-replacement-20220208.html

Anchors offering emotion on the air is usually associated with real-life tragedies. So seeing Don Lemon tear up last Friday night "was a little unnerving," says Will Bunch, especially since Lemon thanked Zucker not just for what he’d done for CNN but “for what you’ve done to the whole country." Lemon wasn't the only CNN star to go overboard over Zucker's exit. Clarissa Ward called Zucker's ouster "devastating," while Jake Tapper “hosted a shiva-like get together at his home," according to Puck News. "There are many layers to the Zucker saga that one has to peel away before reaching what I see as the crux of the matter: the stunning disconnect between what really matters to the cloistered community of careerist six-figure elites who went to the same Ivy League schools and dine at the same D.C. steakhouses, and what their angry, resentful viewers actually care about," says Bunch. "It’s clear that CNN’s on-air stars are seriously confused about the difference between a great boss — who mentored their promotion or let them cry on his shoulder in a personal crisis — and a great American." Zucker, Bunch adds, "was the apostle to fulfill the tragically brilliant 1985 prophecy of media critic Neil Postman, who tried to warn America in Amusing Ourselves to Death that one day the values of TV entertainment would crush civic discourse. Yet CNN’s anchors only seemed to notice that their ratings, their public profile, and presumably their paychecks rose in the years when the reigns of Zucker and Trump overlapped. Completely lost on Zucker’s acolytes was the irony of delivering such impassioned tributes to their ex-boss in the same news hour they were reporting that Trump — the monster that CNN helped create under that boss — has been destroying documents, dangling pardons for those who aided his January 6 coup attempt, and threatening a racially charged civil war. The saddest irony is that not only did Zucker’s ratings triumph collapse the moment Trump left the White House, but that ratings can’t buy you love ... outside of the CNN newsroom anyway."