Former CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin detailed what happened behind the scenes in the years and months leading up to her exit from the network after 13 years on-air.
baldwin wrote an essay She spoke in Vanity Fair about her experience at CNN, citing “manipulation” and “bullying” by her male colleagues and blaming herself for not speaking up sooner for what she wanted.
Hungry for experience, Baldwin described herself as a “yes” woman, which paid off when CNN transferred her from Atlanta to New York. However, problems arose when his executive producer stayed behind and his close relationship with him changed.
She wrote, “My producer made me feel as if I couldn’t do heavy-handed interviews without him. Or, perhaps, I allowed him to make me feel like I couldn’t do heavy-handed interviews without him.” “Word gaslighting It’s become very cliché, but that’s how it felt. Cleverness. Naughty.”
She said he would sometimes “go dark” during his live broadcasts and “depending on his mood, he might actually refuse to speak in my ear, instead dictating notes to me on a teleprompter during commercial breaks. Writes.”
Balvin described how he did not report up the chain of command because “Nice girls smile, are grateful for our jobs, and keep their mouths shut. We certainly don’t speak.”
“Everything changed for me that day in 2015 when Donald Trump came down the escalator,” he said. “In the years that followed, I was not only left out of touch with what the news had become and how I was being asked to cover it; I was also changed. I was curious to learn about the number of women who ultimately decided to speak out as a direct result of that election.”
When she finally advocated for herself in November 2019, asking former CNN president Jeff Zucker to remove her producer from his team, as did another male colleague, her request was denied.
A few weeks later, she was called back into Zucker’s office and her agent said something like, “Brooke, your boss is mad at you. What have you done?” she wrote. “I couldn’t help but wonder: Why was I sitting there? Why did I suddenly feel like a third wheel with my executive producer and my boss? Had I inadvertently kicked a hornet’s nest? All this because Because I went over my producer’s head to Bigg Boss?”
“Instead of addressing me immediately, my boss engaged in the longest five-minute conversation of my life – not with me, but with my agent,” he wrote. “Subject: What Anderson Cooper, Another client of his was pleased with the view from his new office. I stood there waiting to hear my fate.”
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Before he told her he needed his executive producer and that he would not fire her from his show, Brooke said Zucker threatened: “I can give your show to someone in Washington. Tomorrow.,long pause) “But I won’t do that…because I believe you are the best broadcaster on this network.”
Jeff Zucker ((Getty Images))
Baldwin was later removed from the air for two months during the 2020 presidential election and when she went back on the air, she said Zucker cut her time in half. Then, in January 2021, she was informed that she was being kicked out without explanation.
“From that moment on, during the 13 years I spent at CNN, Jeff never spoke to me again,” she wrote. “Nor did my former executive producer, who ultimately moved to another show for COVID-protocol reasons and then ultimately got promoted.”
Before his final show, Baldwin gave an interview M / s, Magazine podcast, where she discussed gender inequality at CNN, which reportedly “nuked” Zucker according to her agent.
He wrote in Vanity Fair, “During my final days at CNN, I was so allergic to the idea of that guy that rather than risk running into him on the way to the bathroom, I thought about peeing in a Gatorade bottle in his office. I thought.” “Everything was upside down.”
David Levy, Brooke Baldwin, Jeff Zucker and Don Lemon attend CNN Heroes 2017 at the American Museum of Natural History on December 17, 2017 in New York City. (Getty Images)
Baldwin reflected on his termination at CNN and his journey to find his voice to speak for himself.
“Life is unfair,” Baldwin wrote. “People are sh—y. Bosses are scumbags. This is not news. In the hierarchy of giving s—t, I didn’t think my story, my thousands of little cuts, was worth much.”
He said, “It took me about three years to remove the veil from my eyes, to feel the anger, to welcome the fear, and to recognize that in all my yeses, in all my silences, in all my enabling, the person who hurt me the most was It was I who cheated the most.” wrote.
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