Well, we now know what it would take to fire Chris Cuomo: Proof that he was more dug into his brother’s defense against sexual misconduct allegations than he admitted, plus a new sexual misconduct allegation of his own.
Mind you, Cuomo should have been fired well over a year ago, after he abdicated journalistic responsibility and started using airtime as paid political advertising for his brother. (We’ve been saying this since the beginning here at The Western Journal, mind you — and we’ve been keeping the mainstream media honest on this. Help us in our fight by subscribing.)
But no. Even after text messages and testimony from the New York state attorney general’s office investigation into now-former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo showed that Chris Cuomo had been untruthful about how much aid he had given his brother’s team and whether he’d used his journalistic sources as part of that aid, he was still only suspended indefinitely from the network on Tuesday evening.
Finally, he was fired Saturday night — during the much-hyped SEC Championship Game between No. 1 Georgia and No. 3 Alabama, just in case you needed to know how desperately CNN wanted this story to sink into the background — because “additional information has come to light.”
CNN refused to answer what that “additional information” was, but The New York Times’ Jodi Kantor would later report it was because “the network received a new accusation of sexual misconduct from a former junior colleague” at another network. Cuomo had previously been accused of harassment by former former ABC News producer Shelley Ross.
“This means that both Cuomo brothers have lost their positions in the wake of #metoo accusations,” Kantor wrote in a Twitter post.
NEW: Chris Cuomo was fired three days after the network received a new accusation of sexual misconduct from a former junior colleague. This means that both Cuomo brothers have lost their positions in the wake of #metoo accusations. https://t.co/LIaJwYhVrN
— Jodi Kantor (@jodikantor) December 5, 2021
Given that information, it’s worth noting how much some at CNN knew about the Cuomo brothers before either one was out of a job.
On Thursday, conservative guerrilla journalism organization Project Veritas posted a clip featuring previously unreleased videos taken in March with two CNN employees who featured heavily in Project Veritas’ series on the network, published earlier this year. In it, the two employees talk about the network’s coverage of Andrew Cuomo, then still the governor of New York and once a frequent guest on his brother’s show.
One of the employees also appears to acknowledge there were “open secrets” about Andrew Cuomo, comparing him to entertainment industry sex offenders like R&B singer R. Kelly and movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.
“To attest to the strength of the media, look at what happened with Cuomo and the bulls*** that he pulled off for years and years and years, but when his numbers went down because all of a sudden there’s — the thing with the nursing homes starts to happen,” technical director Charlie Chester said to an undercover Project Veritas journalist.
“And there is strength now because the giant goes down just a notch, people feel empowered to come forward,” Chester continued. “Guarantee you, a number of women have come forward and PR firms are like ‘wait for our moment, wait for moment. Down tick, strike.’ Only happens because of the strength of media today.”
“Do we know where this is going to end up with the Cuomo situation?” the reporter asked Chester. He didn’t.
“The interoffice has already outlined that Chris Cuomo is no longer allowed to interview his brother on air because they’re saying it’s a conflict of interest, which is bulls***.”
Chester was then asked who issued that edict.
“The organization — CNN and [network head Jeff] Zucker. We’re not doing that anymore,” Chester said. “Which is complete bulls***. That should have been from day one.”
“Why are they doing that?” the Project Veritas reporter asked.
“Because the scandal that’s happening with the brother, they don’t want CNN to be accused of, like, downplaying it or playing favorites at the scandal. News first,” Chester responded.
“Is that the case, though?” the reporter asked.
“No, not really,” he said.
CNN graphics producer Rachelle Hoffman, who can’t be seen on camera during a clip toward the end, talked about Andrew Cuomo’s “open secrets.”
WARNING: The following video contains graphic language that some viewers will find offensive.
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“Harvey Weinstein was an open secret in the movie industry. R. Kelly was an open secret in the music industry. We have open secrets in our industry. Everybody has that,” she said.
“Cuomo being a piece of s*** manager, boss, governor is not a quiet secret. It’s just those that know to whisper and turn the other way they’re — again, it’s nothing new.”
These are people who seemed to know quite a bit about Andrew Cuomo’s propensities and the fact Chris Cuomo was wallpapering over them, helping promote the image of his brother as America’s authoritative political voice on COVID-19. Even as evidence began to mount that the New York governor was covering up the Empire State’s nursing home death toll, the brothers were doing tired Abbott and Costello bits on national cable airtime.
People at CNN knew this wasn’t the news and that, to some extent, it was being done to prop up a man they had some inkling was a sleazy, mendacious bully.
When the scandals began to escalate, CNN addressed the problem by taking Chris Cuomo off the sibling beat. The host kind-of-sort-of-not-really apologized in August, saying he hadn’t acted as an “adviser,” but a “brother.”
Even after last week’s revelations, however, CNN still refused to fire him summarily, instead giving him an indefinite suspension — until another sexual harassment allegation came down the pike.
The most trusted name in news, indeed.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
