CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Jeffrey A. Zucker, CNN’s president, is accustomed to complaints about his network going easy on Donald J. Trump: providing extensive coverage of his rallies, letting him phone in for interviews and hiring his former campaign manager as an analyst.
Rarely, however, does Mr. Zucker — or any television news executive, for that matter — face the kind of A-list revolt that brewed here Wednesday evening.
In extraordinary exchanges, aides to Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush openly accused Mr. Zucker of enabling Mr. Trump and undermining their candidates in the Republican primary, heckling from their seats as Mr. Zucker spoke on a panel in a hotel ballroom.
“You showed hours upon hours of unfiltered, unscrutinized coverage of Trump!” shouted Todd Harris, a top adviser for Mr. Rubio. A Washington Post reporter, Karen Tumulty, prompted applause when she pressed Mr. Zucker on why he allowed Trump surrogates to spread falsehoods on his network.
Continue reading the main storyIt was a visceral airing of grievances before an audience of the country’s leading political operatives and journalists, gathered for what is typically a staid postelection conference at Harvard. And it captured CNN’s lightning-rod position in the debate over the role of the media in Mr. Trump’s rise and, now, his looming presidency.
Since Election Day, Mr. Trump has singled out CNN for criticism, posting on Twitter that the network had “total (100%) support of Hillary Clinton” and chastising Mr. Zucker during a private meeting with television executives at Trump Tower. Yet media commentators have accused CNN of giving preferential treatment to Mr. Trump to lift ratings. The network is on track this year to collect $1 billion in profit.
“CNN helped make him by carrying every speech he made in the primary season,” Larry King, the former CNN anchor and a friend of Mr. Trump, said in an interview. “It was almost like the other guys didn’t exist.”
Mr. Zucker, for his part, was steadfast on Wednesday that his network covered Mr. Trump and the election fairly, telling attendees that the Manhattan businessman routinely made news “and we are in the business of covering news.” He pointed to tough questioning of Mr. Trump by Anderson Cooper and Jake Tapper, and said that the bipartisan contentiousness over CNN’s coverage gave him comfort, not anxiety.
“Half the people want to blame us for Trump, and half the people want to say that we’re terrible to Trump,” Mr. Zucker said. “That’s how I always think we’re doing the right thing.”
For all the complaints from vanquished rivals, Mr. Trump has been no fan of CNN in recent weeks, especially after the network — along with other news organizations — discredited the president-elect’s false claim that millions of illegal ballots cost him the popular vote.
Mr. Trump thinks that CNN’s coverage of him turned negative at the start of the general election, according to a person with direct knowledge of his thinking. He also thinks that he helped advance the career of Mr. Zucker, whom he has known for years since they worked together at NBC on “The Apprentice.”
In 2012, Mr. Trump recommended Mr. Zucker as the next president of CNN during a dinner at the Plaza Hotel with Phil Kent, then the chief executive of Turner, CNN’s parent company, according to three people with knowledge of the hiring process, who were granted anonymity to share private conversations.
Mr. Trump believes he was instrumental in getting Mr. Zucker that job, the people said, although Mr. Kent had already been discussing the position with Mr. Zucker and his conversation with Mr. Trump lasted only a few minutes.
Clad on Wednesday in a silky pinstripe suit, Mr. Zucker seemed aware that he might be in for an onslaught. The first question — had Mr. Trump been good for CNN? — set off snickers in the audience, and Mr. Zucker’s co-panelist, Kathleen Carroll of The Associated Press, smiled. “Ba dum bum,” she said.
Mr. Zucker conceded, as he has in the past, that he broadcast too many unedited Trump rallies in the early months of the campaign. But he rejected claims of bias, saying that rival candidates received ample invitations to appear and rarely accepted.
“People should think about the decisions they made not to come on the cable news networks,” Mr. Zucker said, even as some campaign aides in the audience argued that Mr. Trump was featured as a ratings draw, and treated less aggressively. When Sasha Issenberg, the moderator, suggested that the panel move from CNN “to a less contentious subject, fake news,” Jeff Roe, Mr. Cruz’s campaign manager, piped up.
“You just covered that!” he said.
In books, Mr. Trump has referred to Mr. Zucker as “a total dynamo,” “the best in the business” and “brilliant.” Those compliments have faded. In September, Mr. Trump posted on Twitter that Mr. Zucker “failed @NBC and he is now failing @CNN.”
“My relationship with him didn’t seem to help that much,” Mr. Zucker, who has spoken privately with Mr. Trump since the election, said on Wednesday. A spokeswoman for Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment.
Whether Mr. Trump likes it or not, CNN, like other cable news networks, stands to gain financially from a Trump administration. John Martin, chief executive of CNN’s parent company, Turner, said at a Code Media conference on Wednesday that CNN “is completing its Hall of Fame year,” and he expects the network’s ratings to stay high.
“With the Trump administration,” Mr. Martin said, “there will be a general fascination that wouldn’t be the same as under a Clinton administration.”
How that plays out journalistically is another question. On Wednesday, Mr. Zucker defended his hiring of Corey Lewandowski, Mr. Trump’s ex-campaign manager, who was constrained as an analyst by a nondisclosure agreement with the Trump campaign. “It was important to have people who could give us a peek into what people supporting Trump were thinking,” Mr. Zucker said.
Given that few predicted Mr. Trump’s victory, Mr. Zucker said, “that insight turns out to have been exactly the right thing to have had, and I’m proud that we did it.”
That prompted Ms. Tumulty of The Post to ask Mr. Zucker why he allowed on so many “nut job surrogates” to appear, noting that some Trump supporters told lies, which CNN anchors had to correct. “At what point do you say you cannot come on our air anymore because you have told too many lies?” Ms. Tumulty asked.
Mr. Zucker said it was up to viewers to decide whether a supporter offered a compelling case for their candidate. And he circled back to the notion that televising Mr. Trump’s words was one thing; voters choosing to support him was another.
“At the end of the day,” he said, “it is up to the viewer to say whether that augurs well for their candidate or not.”
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