Chris Licht’s Fundamental Mistake
The ousted CNN executive failed to grasp the altered landscape of American politics.
The precipitous fall of Chris Licht is just the sort of story that today’s cable-news environment is best at covering: dramatic, messy, lurid, and ultimately lacking in much substance.
Licht was pushed out of CNN today, five days after my colleague Tim Alberta wrote a deeply textured, carefully considered, and entirely profile of the CEO. Licht’s clumsiness and tone-deafness in the story—he sniped at his staff, obsessed over his predecessor, and generally seemed feckless—were astonishing for someone in his position, and they’re the immediate context for his firing.