New CNN boss Mark Thompson appears to be embracing liberal CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour as her presence at the network has gotten bigger with a weekend show.
Amanpour, who first joined CNN in 1983 and has been a mainstay at sister network CNN International, launched her new Saturday program, "The Amanpour Hour," marking one of several network changes occurring under Thompson's tenure. The show was first announced in August under interim leadership before Thompson came aboard, and the British media executive officially took over CNN on Oct. 9, just two days after the horrific terrorist attacks against Israel. A CNN insider tells Fox News Digital that Thompson is supportive of Amanpour and her program.
The timing of Amanpour's program launch is notable since her coverage of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, as well as her past commentary, has raised eyebrows.
Amanpour claimed last month "the rest of the world" agreed with Jordanian Queen Rania Al Abdullah's complaint that the Western world shows more support for Israel than the Palestinians. She also reported that third-party negotiators were trying to implement a "hostage release on both sides," implying Israel, too, is keeping civilian hostages instead of only Hamas terrorists.
In May, Amanpour was forced to apologize after she claimed the murder of an Israeli rabbi's family was the result of a "shootout."
In November 2020, she was condemned by the Israeli government and the Anti-Defamation League for comparing the Trump presidency to Kristallnacht, known as the "Night of Broken Glass" when Nazis terrorized Jews throughout Germany and Austria, resulting in at least 91 deaths and 7,500 Jewish businesses vandalized during the Holocaust. Amanpour walked back her comments following the intense backlash.
Amanpour also shares the attitude of several other prominent national journalists that worries about so-called "both-sidesism." At this year's commencement ceremony at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Amanpour urged the graduates to "be truthful, but not neutral" when they enter the workforce.
"Both-sideism—on the one hand, on the other hand — is not always objectivity. It does not get you to the truth. Drawing false, moral or factual equivalence is neither objective nor truthful," Amanpour told the future journalists in May. "Objectivity is our golden rule. And it is in weighing all the sides and all the evidence hearing everyone reporting everything, but not rushing to equate them when there is no equating."
The ideology of rejecting neutrality is diametrically opposed to the mission repeatedly signaled by parent company Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, which was to restore CNN's reputation after the network took an anti-Trump approach under ousted CNN President Jeff Zucker.
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To carry out that mission, Zaslav initially tapped Chris Licht, a longtime TV producer with stops at MSNBC and CBS. It wouldn't take long, however, for Licht to face resistance among CNN's rank and file as insiders told Fox News Digital the vast majority of the network's employees, many of whom were Zucker loyalists, completely rejected the notion that their reporting was politically biased, setting the tone of Licht's uphill battle to reform the once-respected news organization.
During his turbulent year as CNN chief, Licht made incremental steps to shed its liberal image. But Licht's biggest sin, at least in the eyes of his liberal staff and audience, was green-lighting the Donald Trump town hall in May. In fact, his most vocal critic was Amanpour herself.
During her Columbia commencement speech, as CNN was being engulfed by widespread outrage over the event with the former president, Amanpour offered a public rebuke of the Trump town hall.
"My management believes they did the right thing, a service to the American people. Some reports have written about important new thoughts and things that we learned from Trump's very mouth that night… Time could very well prove that Trump's electroshock therapy to the world jolts the undecided into greater awareness," Amanpour said. "For me, of course, the fact that the American people voted three times against Trump and Trumpism- 2018, 2020, 2022- also speaks volumes. We've done our duty. We have told the story. We have put that in everybody's awareness and people have had the opportunity to make their choices and they have done."
She continued, "I still respectfully disagree with allowing Donald Trump to appear in that particular format," which sparked applause from the audience.
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Three weeks later, Licht was fired after just one year on the job. And Amanpour, wittingly or unwittingly, was the face of the internal coup that occurred within the network.
CNN, which has been suffering a ratings free-fall ever since Trump left office and a brutal round of layoffs, has a lot riding on Licht's successor Thompson, who had been credited for revitalizing the profitability of The New York Times as its CEO and effectively leading BBC as its director-general.
CNN did not respond to request for comment.
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