Brian Stelter, the resident potato at CNN, will be leaving the troubled network, and his weekly show Reliable Sources will be canceled.
The Daily Beast was the first to report on this development, though rumors of Stelter’s ouster have been floating around for months. The Daily Beast explains that Stelter was a close friend and ally of former CNN president Jeff Zucker, and “has occasionally appeared to be at odds with the new era of CNN.”
Stelter is the latest high-profile anchor to be let go from the network. Last year, Chris Cuomo was fired for violating CNN’s alleged journalistic standards by repeatedly interviewing his brother, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, and advising him throughout the governor’s scandals.
According to an unnamed source who spoke with the Daily Mail, it was, in fact, Cuomo who “forced Jeff Zucker’s resignation from CNN by blowing the whistle on his years-long, open-secret affair with staffer Allison Gollust while fighting for his $18million severance pay.”
At the time of Zucker’s resignation, it was clear that more resignations/firings would come, and I said at the time that my money was on Stelter. Why? As soon as Cuomo was let go, Stelter started trashing him. Stelter accused Cuomo of “violat[ing] journalistic ethics and norms not once or twice, but many times,” calling his actions “a serious breach of standards and practices.”
“I think this may be a situation where it was death by a thousand cuts, where there were just so many headaches time and time again involving Chris Cuomo that even though many viewers loved ‘Cuomo Prime Time,’ looked forward to his show, he was causing so many headaches for the network and for CNN staffers that ultimately this decision was reached,” Stelter also said.
Stelter also accused the disgruntled Cuomo of being behind an effort to take the network down for firing him.
“He’s not going out quietly. There were reports he was going to get paid the millions of dollars on the remainder of his contract. As a source said earlier today, he was trying to burn the place down,” Stelter said. “He was going to court trying to burn the place down and claiming he had incriminating information. If this is the case, this is a domino effect that begins with Andrew Cuomo and Chris Cuomo being fired. That’s a remarkable domino event I think that’s part of the story.”
No official explanation for Stelter’s firing has been given yet, and it’s likely too soon to know what Stelter will do next, but in the meantime, he’ll get to spend more time with his tots.
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