The high-profile exit of CNN CEO Chris Licht continues to be a topic in news media circles. MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough defended his former executive producer Friday.
During a discussion on Morning Joe, the former Congressman said that Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav should have had Licht’s back after a profile from Tim Alberta of The Atlantic called into question Licht’s ability to lead the network forward.
“And let me just say this about my friend Chris Licht at CNN. Chris made mistakes, right? He made mistakes and as I said, he learned from mistakes,” Scarborough admitted. “Zaslav decided to fire him or to let him go. That’s Zaslav’s decision.
Let me just tell you, though: let’s take Chris and Zas out of this. If I were a CEO, I would die before I let a magazine article determine who I was going to hire or fire. I would call him in and say ‘You screwed up, shut your mouth, keep your head down, do the job I hired you for, and we’re going to put this behind us’.”
Licht was instrumental in helping launch Morning Joe, working as the show’s executive producer.
It is not the first time Scarborough has defended Licht after his firing. In the days after his firing, the MSNBC host argued that “CNN is a really hard place to run”, adding that the perception that the network was on top of the cable news world before Licht arrived was inaccurate.
