{"id":10800,"date":"2020-09-24T08:30:23","date_gmt":"2020-09-24T15:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=10800"},"modified":"2020-09-27T06:46:20","modified_gmt":"2020-09-27T13:46:20","slug":"jeff-zucker-helped-create-donald-trump-that-show-may-be-ending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=10800","title":{"rendered":"“CNN Titan Who Helped Create Trump”, The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Ben Smith, The Media Equation, Sunday Section B cover story, September 21, 2020<\/span><\/p>\n

The coziness between the TV executive and Mr. Trump is a Frankenstein story for the cable news era. But then the monster got away.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/picture>\n

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Credit…<\/span>Brian Britigan<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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In December 2015, after the demagoguery of Donald Trump\u2019s presidential campaign became clear, I asked<\/a> CNN\u2019s president, Jeff Zucker, if he regretted his role in Mr. Trump\u2019s rise.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n

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First Mr. Zucker \u2014 who put \u201cThe Apprentice\u201d on NBC in 2004 and made Mr. Trump a household name \u2014 laughed uproariously, if a bit nervously. Then he said, \u201cI have no regrets about the part that I played in his career.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was thinking about that exchange when Tucker Carlson of Fox News recently gleefully aired recordings of conversations with Mr. Zucker that Mr. Trump\u2019s fixer, Michael Cohen, had deviously taped in March 2016.<\/p>\n

Mr. Zucker is heard speaking in flattering and friendly terms about Mr. Trump, or, as he called him, \u201cthe boss.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou guys have had great instincts, great guts and great understanding of everything,\u201d Mr. Zucker says to Mr. Cohen of Mr. Trump\u2019s campaign.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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And Mr. Zucker shows an eager interest in Mr. Trump\u2019s television stardom. \u201cI have all these proposals for him,\u201d Mr. Zucker says beseechingly at one point. \u201cLike, I want to do a weekly show with him and all this stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

You may have missed the recordings \u2014\u00a0CNN didn\u2019t cover them, nor did The New York Times \u2014\u00a0but if you can filter out Mr. Carlson\u2019s spin and Fox\u2019s campaign against CNN, they\u2019re still revealing.<\/a><\/p>\n

Of course TV executives work for access behind the scenes; of course, under the stirring mood music that fills CNN hour after hour, an old bond thrived between cable television\u2019s defining executive and the president of the United States.<\/p>\n

But the story of Mr. Trump and Mr. Zucker is a kind of Frankenstein tale for the late television age, about a brilliant TV executive who lost control of his creation. And it illustrates the extent to which this American moment is still shaped not by the hard logic of politics or the fragmented reality of new media, but by the ineluctable power of TV.<\/p>\n

Mr. Zucker made his bones as a wunderkind producer for the \u201cToday\u201d show. He took over NBC\u2019s entertainment group in 2000, as the \u201cFriends\u201d era was ending and reality TV was beginning. The network desperately needed a new kind of hit, and Mr. Zucker found it in \u201cThe Apprentice\u201d \u2014\u00a0a corporate boardroom version of \u201cSurvivor,\u201d the blockbuster at rival CBS. That show transformed Mr. Trump from a local blowhard into a national figure, and laid the groundwork for his presidential campaign.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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When Mr. Trump ran for president, Mr. Zucker briefly dismissed him as a \u201csideshow\u201d in an early 2015 email to his political team, according to one of its recipients. But as soon as he saw the ratings his old star could still deliver, he spent 2015 and 2016 turning CNN into a platform for his ambitions. He went so far as to turn the camera to the empty podium before Mr. Trump\u2019s rallies (a chyron read<\/a>: \u201cDONALD TRUMP EXPECTED TO SPEAK ANY MINUTE\u201d), while other presidential candidates seethed and suspected \u2014\u00a0accurately, it turns out \u2014\u00a0that the two men maintained a cozy back channel.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the folks over there at CNN get all high and mighty about their journalistic integrity \u2014 that\u2019s just not real,\u201d said Terry Sullivan, who managed Senator Marco Rubio\u2019s campaign and said he laughed out loud when he heard the recording. \u201cThey\u2019re running a reality TV show. That\u2019s what Zucker\u2019s good at.\u201d<\/p>\n

The story is not, of course, quite that simple. CNN retains much of its straight news DNA and its tough Washington interview machine, and is indispensable in moments of big breaking news \u2014\u00a0like Ruth Bader Ginsburg\u2019s death. But the company had hired Mr. Zucker in 2013 to restore its relevance at a moment when the internet had replaced TV as a source of the newest information. Now its signature prime-time broadcasts, from Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo, are nightly cris de coeur, featuring monologues about Mr. Trump\u2019s misdeeds, competing with MSNBC for the same enraged American audience. They feature the occasional true reality TV flourish \u2014\u00a0notably, the duet between Mr. Cuomo and his brother, the New York governor, and the highly staged exit of the anchor from his basement<\/a>, where he had isolated himself when he contracted the coronavirus.<\/p>\n

In speaking to dozens of people who know Mr. Zucker over the past few weeks, I heard two distinct theories of what is going on now: One is the current version of CNN \u2014 amped up outrage and righteousness \u2014 is just Mr. Zucker\u2019s latest reflexive adaptation in search of ratings. The other is that Mr. Zucker, TV\u2019s Dr. Frankenstein, has been willing to dent his network\u2019s nonpartisan brand in order to kill his runaway monster, Mr. Trump.<\/p>\n

Preston Beckman, who was NBC\u2019s executive vice president for program planning and scheduling just before Mr. Zucker\u2019s ascendancy there, said Mr. Zucker\u2019s thirst for ratings blinded him to the damage he was doing by offering saturation Trump coverage.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a ratings whore \u2014 and I\u2019m telling you that as a ratings whore,\u201d Mr. Beckman told me. \u201cBut it\u2019s one thing to be a ratings whore in prime time and it\u2019s another thing to be a ratings whore when it comes to news.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Zucker\u2019s friends see a redemption story.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cAs a journalist, he has a conscience, a sincere commitment to the First Amendment and a deep sense of citizenship,\u201d said Ben Sherwood, another top morning show producer who went on to lead the Disney-ABC Television Group<\/a>, and who has known Mr. Zucker since they worked on The Harvard Crimson together 35 years ago.<\/p>\n

Mr. Zucker \u201cadmits he isn\u2019t the most introspective person,\u201d Mr. Sherwood wrote in a book called \u201cThe Survivor\u2019s Club.\u201d The CNN chief is a survivor \u2014\u00a0of two bouts of colon cancer in his 30s and heart surgery in 2018.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s constantly in motion, most at home in the control room, directing shots and popping into his hosts\u2019 ears to suggest aggressive lines of questioning, suggesting stories to his digital team. People who wonder at his professional survival and resilience sometimes miss what an effective leader \u201cJZ,\u201d as he\u2019s known internally, has been at CNN, winning the deep loyalty of many of his staff with the blend of obsessiveness, decisiveness and loyalty that you need in a news leader.<\/p>\n

\u201cJeff is the most decisive and self-assured media executive I\u2019ve ever worked for or covered as a reporter,\u201d said NBC\u2019s Dylan Byers, a former CNN reporter, adding: \u201cBut he has a North Star. The North Star is ratings.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Mr. Zucker\u2019s professional passion has never been hard news: It\u2019s been ratings, corporate success and winning at every game. His most legendary moments have dramatic tactical thrusts \u2014\u00a0like his poaching of Meredith Vieira from \u201cThe View\u201d on ABC for the \u201cToday\u201d show in 2006. And his relationship with Mr. Trump reflects a certain New York social world that has always blended friendship, talent management and philanthropy. Mr. Zucker\u2019s then-wife, Caryn, lunched with Melania Trump, a mutual friend said, and raised money for the private school both families\u2019 children attended; Mr. Trump wrote<\/a> a check.<\/p>\n

Mr. Zucker\u2019s falling-out with his old star came late. Even in the spring of 2017 \u2014\u00a0after a presidency that kicked off with an attempt to ban Muslims from traveling to America \u2014\u00a0 <\/span>he told my colleague Jonathan Mahler, \u201cI like Donald.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the tensions were growing. Mr. Trump had chosen Fox over CNN as the main home of his rolling talk show, giving the conservative network constant access and interviews. His powerful son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who was rising inside the administration, lacked Mr. Trump\u2019s affection for Mr. Zucker and pushed the president away from him.<\/p>\n

When AT&T moved to buy CNN\u2019s parent company, Time Warner, in 2016, Mr. Trump began attacking his old friend. He did it in public, on Twitter. He also raised Mr. Zucker in a private meeting with AT&T\u2019s then-C.E.O., Randall Stephenson, in early 2017, a comment that hasn\u2019t been previously reported.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The president\u2019s campaign against Mr. Zucker was interpreted \u2014 reasonably \u2014 by Mr. Zucker as an attempt to get him fired as a condition of the merger, according to three people who spoke to AT&T and Time Warner executives at the time. But Time Warner stood by him, and Mr. Trump\u2019s Justice Department sued to stop the merger. When Mr. Stephenson finally took control of the company in 2018, he didn\u2019t fire the CNN president.<\/p>\n

Mr. Mahler\u2019s piece<\/a> noted that CNN had become more focused on American politics, \u201dan unending loop of dramatic moments, conflicts and confrontations\u201d \u2014\u00a0in other words, it had become Trumpier. He also noted Mr. Zucker\u2019s \u201cstrange symbiosis\u201d with Mr. Trump. But that summer, CNN fired Jeffrey Lord, a genial, silver-haired former aide to Ronald Reagan who had been Mr. Trump\u2019s most stalwart defender on the network.<\/p>\n

And by the end of that year, the lure of ratings pulled the network in a new direction: resistance. Mr. Trump\u2019s own political theater featured regular televised confrontations with CNN\u2019s White House correspondent, Jim Acosta, a different kind of win-win. But if Mr. Trump and Mr. Zucker sometimes still seemed to be winking, their audiences aren\u2019t in on the joke, and the deadly serious stakes became clear when a deranged Trump supporter mailed<\/a> a bomb to CNN\u2019s New York headquarters in October 2018.<\/p>\n

Mr. Zucker didn\u2019t respond through a spokeswoman when I asked again, five years later, whether he now regrets his role in Mr. Trump\u2019s career.<\/p>\n

But this run, too, may be coming to an end. When I spoke to former NBC colleagues of Mr. Zucker about his tenure there, the show they brought up most often wasn\u2019t \u201cThe Apprentice\u201d; it was \u201cFear Factor,\u201d in which contestants were tossed in their underwear into a pit full of rats, among other grotesque stunts. USA Today described it as perhaps \u201cthe most vile program ever to air on a major network.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFear Factor\u201d didn\u2019t age well. The show lasted six seasons, and a revival was cut short by public backlash to a stunt in which competing sets of identical twins drank donkey semen. The public got tired of it (and that donkey stunt didn\u2019t air).<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter a while it was like, Jesus Christ,\u201d the host, Joe Rogan, recalled in a 2019 interview. \u201cHow many times can you throw them off buildings?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Consuming the news of the last four years has felt at times like watching \u201cFear Factor\u201d and its cruel and violent strain of reality television. That\u2019s the sensation of doomscrolling on Twitter late at night, the unending outrage cycle that has propelled cable news to its current strong and steady ratings.<\/p>\n

When I spoke to people at CNN, they made the point that ultimately they cover and react to the news, they don\u2019t make it. Mr. Zucker may be in the control room, and when we look back at this disorienting era, media leaders will be important, secondary figures. But this isn\u2019t reality TV, it\u2019s reality, and the show\u2019s executive producer is Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

And the part of the American electorate that was enjoying the show may get tired of this too. If Donald Trump loses in November, that may also mark the end of this era of cable television, which he had fed and fed off, and which has left its audience divided and exhausted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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Ben Smith is the media columnist. He joined The Times in 2020 after eight years as founding editor in chief of BuzzFeed News. Before that, he covered politics for Politico, The New York Daily News, The New York Observer and The New York Sun.\u00a0Email: ben.smith@nytimes.com<\/a> @<\/span>benyt<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ben Smith, The Media Equation, Sunday Section B cover story, September 21, 2020 The coziness between the TV executive and Mr. Trump is a Frankenstein story for the cable news era. But then the monster got away. Credit…Brian Britigan In December 2015, after the demagoguery of Donald Trump\u2019s presidential campaign became clear, I asked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10800"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10800"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10808,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10800\/revisions\/10808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}