How ironic! Donald Trump, sworn enemy of CNN, finds himself indirectly responsible for the resignation of the boss of CNN, in place for just over a year… Chris Licht had been appointed by the new owner of the news channel, Warner Bros. Discovery, with the mission of raising its audience and making it a benchmark in journalism. Chris Licht’s failure to date is patent. CNN’s audience is at rock bottom and so is the morale of its troops.

The 50-year-old, who worked for CBS before becoming producer of comedian Stephen Colbert’s nighttime talk show, quits his job under criticism from a few big names still known on the air, like Anderson Cooper, Jake Tapper and Erin Burnett . He is overwhelmed for having made multiple mistakes over the past thirteen months. In recent weeks, its legitimacy seemed irreparably damaged. He is accused of having indulged in too strong criticism of the former editorial staff of CNN, during a long interview given to The Atlantic magazine. And above all, he is held responsible for the resounding failure of the live interview, on May 10, of the former President of the United States, Donald Trump.

Far from demonstrating, as Chris Licht wanted, that we could confront Donald Trump in a calm and factual way to force him to correct his often misleading slogans and his outrageous shortcuts, the forum in front of an audience too rich in Trumpist voters from the New Hampshire became an incredible campaign platform for Donald Trump, watched that night by a record 3.3 million viewers. The former president, more skilful than ever in the art of cutting short any embarrassing question, played wonderfully with Kaitlan Collins, a journalist who was nevertheless well prepared to face the bubbling candidate on his return to the White House.

The “new CNN” gave the impression of being manipulated by a more provocative Donald Trump than ever, still proclaiming that his re-election had been stolen from him by Democratic cheats. Chris Licht’s hope was to bring back to CNN an audience of centrists and conservatives, disgusted by the activism and the pontification of the teams put in place by Jeff Zucker, boss of the chain from 2013 to 2021. Donald Trump who made her pet peeve CNN for years, will therefore have interrupted her boycott of the channel, the better to trap her and ultimately behead her.

Since the evening of May 10, the elders of the Zucker era no longer hid their revolt in the face of the blunder of their new boss. For his part, David Zaslav, boss of Warner Bros. Discovery, ended up reluctantly letting go of the colt he was counting on so much. “For a number of reasons things didn’t work out and that’s a real shame. In the end, I am responsible for it,” admits David Zaslav. The latter himself is accountable to one of his big shareholders, John Malone, cable pioneer and great mythical media figure, who in November 2022 set fire to the powder by denouncing the partisan caricature that had become CNN.

Chris Licht’s departure was so hasty that Warner Bros. Discovery does not know who will succeed him. A triumvirate of CNN veterans is currently taking over editorial management. It includes Amy Entelis, Virginia Moseley and Eric Sherling. In addition, David Leavy, man of confidence of David Zaslav, takes the direction of the business affairs of CNN.

Donald Trump’s “townhall meeting” affair last month capped a long succession of missteps on the part of Chris Licht. Less directly involved in daily editorial meetings than his predecessor, he immediately gave the impression of being in an ivory tower. Subsequently, his choices of new presenters did not yield the expected results. In particular the morning show, on which he relied a lot, which flopped.

Barely arrived in office, he had the thankless task of explaining why the CNN streaming service had been abandoned by the channel’s new owner, when it had just been launched, after long months of work and recruitment of well-known journalists, such as Chris Wallace, a defector from Fox News, the number one cable news outlet, with more audiences than its two rivals combined, MSNBC and CNN. Its cost-cutting measures and the dismissal of several hundred people were also badly accepted.

The original idea of ​​remaking CNN into a “normal” channel, to make people forget that it had become a kind of left-wing Fox News, more pretentious and less transparent than MSNBC, is probably still the objective of Warner Bros. Discovery. But in this American information landscape that has become very polarized, the failure of Chris Licht is already celebrated, like that of the failure of the “anti-wokes”.