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Photo illustration by Slate.
Jeff Zucker, the powerful and ambitious TV executive who ran CNN since 2013, suddenly quit his job this week. On Wednesday, he sent a memo to staff explaining that he was stepping down due to his failure to disclose a consensual relationship with a high-level employee. “I was required to disclose it when it began but I didn’t,” he wrote. “As a result, I am resigning today.” The employee, CNN’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer Allison Gollust, would be staying at her job.
That Zucker—arguably the person most responsible for turning TV news into entertainment and giving Donald Trump endless airtime in 2016—resigned over this feels, as one person put it to me, like getting Al Capone on tax evasion.