ABC News President Kim Godwin has been a largely silent figure since she joined the company from CBS News in 2021, only giving three one-on-one interviews during her tenure.
In a rare interview with Vanity Fair, she addressed the GMA3 situation between co-anchors Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes.
The pair were embroiled in a scandal late last year after reports of an alleged extramarital affair between the pair was uncovered. Initially, Godwin decided to keep them on the air. In her estimation, neither party had broken any established policies.
However, after the duo appeared to make a joke about the situation on the air, they were removed from the show before they ultimately both exited the company earlier this year.
“It’s very easy to Monday-morning quarterback and second-guess when you don’t know what you don’t know, and frankly you’ll never know, because we’re not going to litigate it publicly,” Godwin told Vanity Fair, in what the publication called her first interview of the year. “We ended up where we needed to be, and I’m very comfortable with that decision.”
At the time of their departure, reports claimed that people on both sides were frustrated with the way things were handled by the network.
“These decisions are not easy, they are not knee-jerk, but they are necessary for the brand and for our priority which, you guys know, are all of us — the people here at ABC,” Godwin said at the time.
When pressed on if she should have done more to refute a story from New York that claimed ABC News had a “horned up” culture, Godwin said she didn’t know what happened before she joined the network, but claimed there is now a zero-tolerance policy in effect.
In spite of the scandal, Good Morning America remains the top-rated morning network news program. ABC News’ World News Tonight with David Muir is also the most-watched evening network news program.
