CNN President Jeff Zucker defended his organization's honor in a new interview with New York Magazine. President-elect Donald Trump publicly shamed CNN at his press conference last week, refusing to take a question from reporter Jim Acosta. He and CNN at large, Trump said, were "fake news" for choosing to report on the unverified dossier published by BuzzFeed.
After such treatment from the president-elect, NY Mag wanted to know if Zucker is worried about access to the Trump White House.
"I think the era of access journalism as we’ve known it is over. It doesn’t worry me that Donald Trump hasn’t done an interview with CNN in eight months. I think our credibility is higher than ever, and our viewership is higher than ever, and our reporting is as strong as ever. One of the things I think this administration hasn’t figured out yet is that there’s only one television network that is seen in Beijing, Moscow, Seoul, Tokyo, Pyongyang, Baghdad, Tehran, and Damascus — and that’s CNN. The perception of Donald Trump in capitals around the world is shaped, in many ways, by CNN. Continuing to have an adversarial relationship with that network is a mistake."
Zucker also accused Trump of trying to "delegitimize" journalism.
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His organization, however, is doing plenty of that on its own. CNN published a piece on Tuesday suggesting HHS nominee Tom Price was guilty of a financial scheme. The problem is they failed to report the facts. Trump's team demanded on Wednesday that CNN retract the piece.
As for CNN's decision to report on the uncorroborated dossier, Zucker noted its "news value" was a no brainer.
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