Chris Cuomo points to alleged misconduct on the part of his former colleagues at CNN  

by mcardinal

Savannah Hulsey Pointer, FISM News 

 

Former news anchor Chris Cuomo has accused his former network and its personalities of unethical behavior in a $125 million termination suit filed against his former employer on Wednesday. 

Cuomo said in December of last year, shortly after his termination from the network, that he would bring suit against the company, according to The Post Millennial. Cuomo is reportedly suing for the balance of what would have been paid to him in his contract, which amounts to around $18 million according to The Daily Mail, as well as punitive damages for the damage done to his reputation and his journalistic integrity, which Cuomo alleges was unjustifiably smeared.

The suit claims that CNN has made it “difficult if not impossible for Cuomo to find similar work in the future and damaging him in amounts exceeding $125 million, which includes not only the remaining salary owed under the agreement, but future wages lost as a result of CNN’s efforts to destroy his reputation in violation of the agreement.”

The suit has been kicked off with a demand for arbitration, which is frequently required in employment contracts. In this case, Cuomo lists grievances against both the network and his former colleagues. 

Cuomo’s attorneys started by saying that CNN anchor Don Lemon was “widely criticized for a flagrant breach of journalistic ethics when actor Jussie Smollett testified at trial that Lemon had texted him to warn him that Chicago police did not believe Smollett’s allegations of suffering a racist, homophobic attack.” 

According to the suit, Lemon went on to cover the rest of Smollett’s case despite what was called an “inexcusable breach of ethics,” and “yet CNN did nothing; Lemon was not disciplined in any way.”

In addition to Lemon, the suit calls out CNN’s chief political analyst, Jeffrey Toobin, who was suspended and then fired from his staff writer position by The New Yorker in October of 2020 after he engaged in sexually explicate activity on a video call with colleagues there. 

“Despite this sordid act of sexual harassment, CNN took no disciplinary action against Toobin; instead, CNN permitted Toobin to take a seven-month ‘hiatus’ to ‘deal with a personal issue.’ CNN later allowed Toobin to return to work without even issuing a public apology,” the suit asserts. 

Attorneys for Cuomo also claim that the staff at the anchor’s former network have engaged in a “calculated campaign to smear Cuomo and destroy his reputation,” including when CNN anchor Jake Tapper “publicly assailed Cuomo’s ethics as a journalist and falsely claimed that Cuomo ‘threatened’ Zucker.”

“Don Lemon, another CNN anchor, falsely claimed that Cuomo had been ‘found to break with those journalistic standards and then [was] paid handsomely for it.’

Brian Stelter, CNN’s chief media correspondent, said Cuomo was “acting like an unpaid staffer” for Gov. Cuomo and had been “trying to burn the place down’ after CNN terminated him,” the suit stated. 

“Countless anonymous CNN staffers slammed Cuomo in the press, calling him ‘both journalistically and morally immoral,’ saying ‘his biggest crime was he lied to Zucker,’ and labeling him ‘toxic and distracting.’ CNN itself released a statement that Cuomo ‘made a number of accusations that are patently false’ and that he was terminated for a ‘lack of candor.'”

Cuomo made headlines earlier in his legal process when his case brought to light the affair of former CNN President Jeff Zucker with the network’s top marketing and communications executive, Allison Gollust. The fallout of that revelation had even Rolling Stone pointing out “How CNN’s Jeff Zucker and His Cronies Manipulated the News.”

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