Ex-CNN CEO Reflects on His Ouster

Before Chris Licht was ousted as CEO of CNN last year, he was the subject of a scathing, 15,000-word profile in the Atlantic. Perhaps not surprisingly, he regrets the magazine piece. "If I can say one thing to anybody, do not bring a reporter to the gym," Licht said Saturday at the New York Press Club in Manhattan, where he was interviewed by ESPN analyst Stephen A. Smith during the club's Journalism Conference. That was a reference to the part of the feature during which Licht, while doing squats with heavy weights at the gym, said, "Zucker couldn't do this s---." Among other things, the article made it clear Licht felt he was in the shadow of his predecessor Jeff Zucker, the New York Post reports.

"The Atlantic article I absolutely should not have done," he said, adding that he'd initially turned down the magazine's interview requests—more than once—but ultimately gave in out of "arrogance" and a belief that by the time the article came out, he would have turned things around at CNN: "Now, I hadn't failed at anything before. So ... I absolutely thought, you know what, it's been a year, they're going to be writing about 'Wow, look at all these great things that have happened.'" Instead, he was out at the network shortly after the article was published. "So, no, I should (not) have done that," he said. He also spoke about what he believes led to his ouster, Fox News reports.

"When you try to change something dramatically, you can't do it alone. You've got to build the trust of the organization. They have to believe in you. And I did not build that trust," he said. "I was not able to, in the time that I was there, build trust so that people would tune out the noise and sort of follow me into that." The "noise" being, among other things, a town hall with then-candidate Donald Trump, after which Licht was accused of putting host Kaitlan Collins in a no-win situation, surrounded by Trump supporters who cheered him as he interrupted her. Licht said Saturday that he still believes hosting the town hall was the right choice, but said he wished he'd informed viewers that the audience was largely made up of Trump fans. (More Chris Licht stories.)