Brooke Baldwin Downloads on Jeff Zucker
/In a write up in Vanity Fair, former CNN host Brooke Baldwin opens up about her exit from CNN.
Baldwin says her relationship for her Executive Producer had soured and she went to Jeff Zucker to try and make a change. Zucker said no.
“I told Jeff Zucker, the former president of CNN, that I wanted my producer off my team. I didn’t want him to be punished—just moved to another anchor to start anew. A male colleague had made a similar request with success. My request? Denied.
Little did I know, this was the beginning of the end for me.
A few weeks later, I got called back into the boss’s office with my then agent, who’d prepared me with something like, “Brooke, your boss is furious at you. What have you done?!” I’d had a lovely relationship with Jeff up until this point. I’d even danced with him at my wedding. Now I found myself standing in his office dumbfounded, but prepared to defend myself and my integrity.
I couldn’t help but wonder: Why was I even sitting there? Why did I suddenly feel like the third wheel with my executive producer and my boss? Had I inadvertently kicked a hornet’s nest? All because I had gone over my producer’s head to the big boss? It didn’t make sense. I wasn’t accusing this guy of any kind of misconduct. Just as I’d told Jeff, our working relationship had run out of track,” Baldwin writes.
She adds, “In January 2021, the morning Trump was impeached for a second time, my cell phone rang. It wasn’t my boss —rather, it was my agent.
Jeff wanted me out. No explanation. Just out. From that moment on, after I’d spent 13 years at CNN, Jeff never spoke to me again.”
It is well worth the read.