Conservative CNN analyst Mary Katharine Ham claims she was suspended earlier this year after criticizing CNN reporter Andrew Kaczynski and former contributor Jeffrey Toobin.
In January of this year, Ham argued the 2017 shooting at the Congressional baseball game did not receive as much coverage as many in the media thinks it did, claiming she lived a block from the baseball field where the shooting occurred and within 48 hours all the news coverage had died down and was over. Ham then tweeted to Kaczyinski “got jack to say about Cuomo and Toobin, but gotta fact-check me when he’s got nothing”.
Toobin was seen during a Zoom call with colleagues at the New Yorker unwittingly masturbating on camera. He was fired from the company and suspended by CNN, before eventually exiting earlier this year. Toobin’s suspension from CNN was 8 months, while Ham claims hers has been seven, noting “One month was the difference between punishment for jacking off at work versus commenting on the inadvisability of jacking off at work”.
Ham then wrote on her Substack that she has not been on the air at CNN since the exchange, saying new CNN President and CEO Chris Licht informed her of a “secret ban” when he took control of the company.
“I was told it was Jeff Zucker, now gone, who put this order in place and a deputy, also gone, who kept it there,” she wrote. “I was also told I wasn’t informed of the network’s displeasure because I had just had a baby and someone in the old leadership thought I might be a ‘loose cannon.’ Not as loose as Toobin’s, but I digress.”
She also added “I have not been asked to leave CNN. In fact, I’ve been invited back by the new guard to do the job I was prevented from doing by the old guard. Clean slate, as if nothing happened. But something did happen.”
