CNN CEO Stepping Down
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More bad news for CNN.
CNN CEO Chris Licht is stepping down.
The company is now conducting a search for a new head of the network.
Chris Licht, the embattled CEO of CNN, plans to step down, he confirmed to Axios on Wednesday. Licht has been on the job for 13 months.
Why it matters: Licht’s leadership became untenable following a damning profile about him published by The Atlantic last week.
Warner Bros. Discovery executive David Leavy, a longtime confidant of CEO David Zaslav, was named chief operating officer of CNN last week, the day before The Atlantic story was published.
The news of Licht’s planned departure was first reported by Puck.
This comes after a damning article from the Atlantic came out.
“I met with Chris and he will be leaving CNN,” David Zaslav, the chief executive of parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, told CNN employees at the start of the network’s daily editorial call Wednesday.
Licht’s departure, which came days after a devastating 15,000-word profile in The Atlantic, capped a tumultuous year for CNN, marked by layoffs, historically low ratings, and rock-bottom employee morale.
In the wake of The Atlantic article, Licht apologized to staffers Monday, telling the global news organization in a somber tone that he did not recognize himself when reading portions of the story and that he was sorry for having distracted from the newsroom’s work.
Licht, who described the experience as “tremendously humbling,” vowed to “fight like hell” to win over the trust of employees.
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