CNN boss: “We’re not ready for future”
October 10, 2023
By Chris Forrester
CNN’s new boss, Mark Thompson, has told staff that the long-established news channel is “not ready for the future”. The blunt message came in a video message to staff on his first day in the job.
Thompson, a veteran of the BBC (where he was Director General) and more recently as CEO at the New York Times, praised CNN’s staff as a group of “tough and amazingly focused and enthusiastic people,” who “still believe in CNN and its mission 100 per cent, people who want to get on with the future, and so do I.”
He added that CNN needed to make changes that reflected advancements in digital and that conventional TV “could no longer define us”. The dilemma, he said, was that TV was still “too dominant at CNN and digital too marginal.”
Thompson stated that recent developments such as CNN Max were “encouraging”.
However, he also cautioned about getting to obsessed over whether CNN was too centrist or too much to the left. Staff should not get “distracted” over complex arguments about balance or whataboutism or false equivalency. “Let’s cover political news proportionately and fairly, but not be frightened of our own shadows,” he said.