Jake Tapper Raves About the State of CNN After Chris Licht’s Ouster: ‘Morale Hasn’t Been Better in Years’

CNN’s Jake Tapper appeared on Kara Swisher’s podcast On with Kara Swisher to talk about a few things, including the ouster of former CNN CEO Chris Licht. While he admitted he was “bummed” to see Licht go, the anchor said morale at CNN since has “not been better in years.”

It was a jokey conversation to start, when Swisher brought up the blistering profile of Licht by Tim Alberta in The Atlantic, which was thought by many to have been the final nail in the coffin for Licht. Tapper joked, “Who is this Tim Alberta of which you speak?” before admitting he did read the profile. Swisher asked Tapper about the fallout and Tapper obliged with context:

I will say that I’ve known Chris for a long time. I’ve known him since he was at CBS News. And I was very excited when he came [to CNN] because I thought that he would be good. At that point [Jeff] Zucker had already left, and I adored Jeff, and I would like for Jeff not to have left, but he did. So I was in a new reality and the reality was, well, who are they gonna pick? And I’d heard a lot of names, some of whom I knew, some of whom I knew by reputation, and Chris was, without question, the best name I heard. And I was excited about it.

He then described the ways in which former President Donald Trump was a “disrupter,” which was something the media had to respond to and handle. Tapper said he believed that disruption affected everyone who works in news media, including CNN, saying “we were knocked off our equilibrium.” But he also didn’t think they needed a “wholesale revision,” just a few “tweaks,” which is something he said to Licht when he came on board:

Our north star here at CNN has always been the journalism. Not preaching to the choir. We’re not an entertainment company with a news division, we are a news company, and we are not trying to preach to the progressive choir or the MAGA choir. We are our own unique being. And that is what I thought Chris’s mission was, and I agreed with that wholeheartedly. Do I think there were moments we got knocked off that? Yeah. But I think that we’re good now.

When it came to the ouster, Tapper apparently felt bad about it, but painted a different picture of the state of the network now:

Swisher: Was the firing the right thing to do?

Tapper: I’m not here to judge whether the firing was the right thing to do. I’m bummed that it didn’t work out with Chris. I am. I’m bummed that it didn’t work out. But I will say that things are really good right now. And this leadership team, I will say right now, I am highly biased. I have known David Levy since the ’90s, and I knew Amy Entelis and Virginia Mosely when I interviewed for a job at ABC News in 2003, and I’ve known Eric Sherling when he was at [Good Morning America] and then he helped me launch The Lead. Those four individuals are people whom I legitimately love and respect and admire and have been out for meals with just for fun, not just for work. So, you know, take what I’m saying with a grain of salt. I think they’re doing a great job and the focus is back our journalism, not on palace intrigue and not on media criticism. And morale hasn’t been better in years.

If Licht’s mission was to zazz up news with programming that teetered on the edge of entertainment, and that mission failed, is there a place for straight-up news? Tapper thinks there still is:

Is there a world for non-ideological, non-partisan TV journalism? I think there is. That’s what I watch. That’s what I want to watch. I don’t want to watch anything else, and I do think most Americans feel that way. It’s just that most Americans aren’t news junkies, and the ones who are, when there isn’t a big news story, might like, especially in prime time, putting on their team jerseys and rooting for their side. I think that’s certainly possible. But that’s not a long-term play. That’s a short-term business decision.

You can listen to this part of the conversation on Spotify:

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