CNN President Jeff Zucker: ‘We’re Not Going To Be Shamed’ Into Covering Benghazi

The Daily Caller ^ | 20 May 2014 | Brendan Bordelon

[mandaladon]

CNN President Jeff Zucker declared his network would “not going to be shamed” into covering Benghazi and other stories without “real news value” at an awards dinner Monday.

Capital New York reports that Zucker explained CNN’s post-plane plans during an interview at the Deadline Club’s annual dinner on Monday night.

“I don’t think there’s any question about our commitment to breaking news, as evidenced by all the questions about the plane,” Zucker told The New York Times’ Bill Carter (RELATED: The five most ridiculous aspects of CNN’s missing Malaysian flight coverage).

“So we’re still there whenever that happens,” he continued, “but we’re going to supplement that with some different kind of storytelling.”

What kind of stories? “Climate change is one of those stories that deserves more attention, that we all talk about,” he explained — though he lamented the fact that “when we do do those stories, there does tend to be a tremendous amount of lack of interest on the audience’s part.”

But there are some stories Zucker is loathe to touch, like the House select committee on Benghazi scandal.

“We’re not going to be shamed into it by others who have political beliefs that want to try to have temper tantrums to shame other news organizations into covering something,” he explained, taking a not-so-subtle shot at the Republican Party. “If it’s of real news value, we’ll cover it.”

[Conservative Gato]

There are some awful, awful people in this country ;/

Indeed, and they do these things arrogantly thinking they are doing "good" but we understand the evil that is disguised as "good".

CGato

[morphing libertarian]

all reporters looking for an airplane. Who can blame him.

[Caipirabob]

CNN President Jeff Zucker: ‘We’re Not Going To Be Shamed’ Into Covering Benghazi

American people: "No one watches you anyway"

[lostboy61]

Shame! We don’t need no stinking shame. Please people follow the party line and be a good little comrade.

[Third Person]

What is CNN?

[morphing libertarian]

That is the ones not working on a puff piece for Hillary’s, the Defender of Benghazi, presidential run.

[Hoodat]

CNN was actually staging a comeback there for a while. At least they were until January 2013 when Zucker took over. Since then, their ratings have plummeted.

[chris37]

I believe that the true definition of insanity is seeing Evil in that which is Good, and seeing Good in that which is Evil.

And that describes a very large amount of people in this country and in this world these days, I’m afraid.

[headsonpikes]

“Hey, CNN, nice job covering the Chinese uprising of 1989.”

That was jaw-dropping coverage!

[Resettozero]

Tonight you morons at CNN are covering the Stering “Racist” gig. Got a hint for you, no one cares about a demented old man and his rantings!!!

See that, Zuckerguy!? Don't need to pay Charter or DirecTV one single alloysteel nickel to find out what's being telecast by your silly service; got FRiends.

Allthough I'm curious how this all plays out with the NBA, I can buy a paper or wait and get one free paper in my driveway every Wednesday and find out. Or watch just about any local sports report available on all free OTA stations every single day. What's the projection for CNN's business model NOW?

[Resettozero]

I saw some good and some evil in your post.

[The Duke]

If a plane crashes on CNN does it make a noise?

[Conservative Gato]

Agreed, interesting times we live in.

CGato

[Resettozero]

...you have what 250k viewers in Prime Time on a good night...

If you wanna believe that which the going-out-of-business-soon ad agencies are still peddling. 250k unique viewers total in a week is more like it. Unless you count all folks just hitting the remote one channel at a time until they find nothing they really want to watch.

[Excellence]

it’s hard to believe it is not satire.

[RetiredTexasVet]

I guess it really doesn’t matter as both regular CNN viewers only tune in to “CNN Breaking News”, other than that they just keep on drinking until they fall off their bar stools.

[Ben Mugged]

Yellow journalism, or the yellow press, is a type of journalism that presents little or no legitimate well-researched news and instead uses eye-catching headlines to sell more newspapers. Techniques may include exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, or sensationalism. By extension, the term yellow journalism is used today as a pejorative to decry any journalism that treats news in an unprofessional or unethical fashion.

Zucker Journalism, one who practices Yellow Journalism with pride.

[muir_redwoods]

Yes it was...

...25 years ago

[FreeReign]

[Bulwyf]

Tell me this is satire.

If this is indeed not satire, this guy should be publicly flogged and run out of the country, preferably to go live in Iran or some other such nice tourist destination.