CNN president Jeff Zucker targeted his network's competitors, MSNBC and Fox News, during a Wednesday interview with The Hollywood Reporter. Zucker returned fire in response to a 2014 claim by Fox News Channel CEO Roger Ailes that CNN is "out of the news business." The network executive retorted, "It's absurd on its face. The fact is, we're doing more news than we've ever done. We're doing more news than anybody else."
Zucker added that "part of our strategy has been to mount series programming because you can't exclusively rely on just what you'd classify as traditional news. And who's copying us? Fox." He later claimed that Fox News is "not only are they doing series, they're doing scripted series. They're doing it with actors. And the fact is, they've gone further out of the news business than we have."
Still, it should be pointed that Zucker isn't committed to covering all news stories – "more news than anybody else" claims or not. Back in May 2014, the CNN executive blasted conservative critics who criticized the media's lack of coverage of the Benghazi hearings in Congress: "We're not going to be shamed into it by others who have political beliefs that want to try to have temper tantrums to shame other news organizations into covering something. If it's of real news value, we'll cover it."
Zucker also ran to the defense of one of his vice presidents earlier in 2015, after President Obama and his family attended a dinner at her home in a posh neighborhood in Washington, DC. According to an anonymous CNN staffer, "Zucker said no [it's not a conflict] because he goes to cocktail parties all the time with different parents of his children's friends. The dinner was for parents and kids from Sidwell Friends School [in D.C.], where President Obama sends his kids to school."
During the Hollywood Reporter interview, Zucker also played up how CNN's morning show, New Day, has been beating MSNBC's Morning Joe – particularly after the latter's host, Joe Scarborough, touted how "influencers" favor his program. The CNN president bluntly replied, "That's not how the game is played; that's not how [TV] is sold. And if that's what you're talking about, it's probably about time to start getting your résumé ready."
