Why CNN Fired Chris Cuomo

Results of Google search­es that point to the Cuo­mo story

I liked and enjoyed watch­ing Chris Cuo­mo and his pro­gram Cuo­mo Prime Time on CNN. The host was prob­a­bly one of the smartest peo­ple on Amer­i­can prime-time TV.

There are a lot of oth­ers with TV shows who sim­ply read off the script and are not mas­ters of their sub­ject. Even while jour­nal­ists are encour­aged to hold a healthy dose of skep­ti­cism with­out dip­ping too much into the sub­ject of every dis­cus­sion, Cuo­mo knew most of what he was talk­ing about. As a lawyer and a jour­nal­ist, Cuo­mo could debate his guests force­ful­ly and respect­ful­ly on TV. He could ask real­ly tough ques­tions. This is a sign of good journalism.

Cuo­mo Dis­missal Wasn’t About Bad Behavior 

Now to why I think he was fired. With this dis­missal, CNN is posi­tion­ing itself, and has been for some time, as the moral leader on Amer­i­can cable news. That is their bot­tom line. CNN wants to lead the Amer­i­can cable news rat­ings war by try­ing to make itself the place where peo­ple can look for some sem­blance of com­fort dur­ing divi­sive social-polit­i­cal times.

A lot of broad­cast­ers, includ­ing news media, have often been at the receiv­ing end of accu­sa­tions of putting prof­its over every­thing. The cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis of giv­ing more pref­er­ence to celebri­ty news and gos­sip over real news that impacts real peo­ple rakes in mil­lions for cable news enti­ties just as it impov­er­ish­es and makes life mis­er­able for mil­lions of oth­ers in Amer­i­ca and around the world. Think about media bias when you think about cable TV and the busi­ness of news. 

What’s more. We’ve seen reports of a lot of uneth­i­cal behav­ior, includ­ing accu­sa­tions of sex­u­al impro­pri­ety rock US insti­tu­tions over the last few years. And while this is so, a lot of the peo­ple accused, includ­ing TV per­son­al­i­ties, have faced few con­se­quences. While Cuomo’s case cer­tain­ly had less to do about sex­u­al impro­pri­ety as it was about giv­ing aid to his broth­er Andrew Cuo­mo, for­mer gov­er­nor of New York, who him­self resigned over such sex­u­al accu­sa­tions, Cuo­mo became a sac­ri­fi­cial lamb CNN wants to use to save itself. 

CNN is under increas­ing pres­sure to be the adult in the room that audi­ences can trust in the US cable news sys­tem that is polar­ized just as the Amer­i­can elec­torate is polarized.

The End Jus­ti­fies the Means

The tox­i­c­i­ty of cable news needs a voice that can stand up and become that voice in the wilder­ness call­ing for a return to san­i­ty and eth­i­cal behav­ior in Amer­i­ca. CNN may just be look­ing for a long-term win­ning strat­e­gy, so they took action, even if they’ll lose the rat­ing bat­tle tem­porar­i­ly to Fox or MSNBC. 

The impres­sion we get on the air is that Cuo­mo is a decent, respect­ful per­son who likes to see good things hap­pen in Amer­i­ca, to see good things hap­pen in the world. While I hate to see Chris leave. I’ll miss his intel­li­gence and jour­nal­is­tic flair. But the pow­ers that be at CNN decid­ed they need­ed a change in behav­ior and they want­ed to set an exam­ple. They found an easy scape­goat. So, Cuo­mo took the ax for “all our messes.”