About Those Cuomos
CNN surely took Chris Cuomo's family identity into account when hiring him. They can't now complain about conflicts of interest
CNN is apparently pissed that Chris Cuomo, its star anchor, discussed strategy with his brother, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is beleaguered with everything from #metoo allegations to claims that he botched the coronavirus leading to needless death in New York. This came on top of earlier allegations that Chris was supposedly favoring Andrew in softball interviews and coverage last year, allegations which caused Chris to recuse himself from covering Andrew as a journalist.
Obviously, you can’t have a journalist giving a subject of his coverage special treatment, and while politicians discussing political strategy with journalists is as old as both professions, CNN wants to tell the world that it is a unbiased, down the middle news network, and that messaging is made more difficult when one of its featured journalists is advising a politician on the side.
But what, exactly, did CNN expect when it hired Chris Cuomo? More to the point, WHY did CNN hire Chris Cuomo? Let’s be honest about this. Nothing against Chris Cuomo’s talent, but he isn’t any more talented than hundreds and maybe thousands of other print, radio, and television journalists whose last name is not Cuomo. When a big journalistic enterprises hires a person with a name like “Cuomo”, to cover POLITICS, nepotism is a big part of what is going on. Not just traditional nepotism- I have no idea if Andrew or late father Mario helped Chris at key points at his career, although it would not surprise me if they did. But also what you might call “functional nepotism”, where a person’s name and family connections make a person more useful to an organization.
We see this all the time. Why did Hunter Biden get a job with a major Ukrainian business entity? I am not in any way accusing Joe Biden of corruption, but from the standpoint of the Ukrainians, the fact that they were hiring the Vice President’s son was not lost on them. Once upon a time, Chelsea Clinton signed a contract calling for her to be paid over half a million dollars by NBC, and there is no evidence that she ever did any serious work under the contract for NBC. What was that about? Again, it doesn’t make Hillary Clinton corrupt in any respect, but NBC was quite aware who was favored in the next presidential election when they hired Chelsea.
CNN hired Chris Cuomo because he was Chris Cuomo. He was the son of a former New York governor (who very likely had extensive connections among Democrats in Albany), and the brother of a man who has held some of the highest positions in both state and federal government and national campaigns. Chris Cuomo’s family provided all sorts of potential benefits to CNN, from pleasing those who might tax or regulate or interfere with the plans of CNN or its corporate parents, to providing CNN’s news operation with potential insider information about goings on in state and federal government.
And let’s be serious here- did they really think Chris was going to stop talking to Andrew and play “serious newsman” 100 percent of the time? Did CNN even want that? Chris Cuomo is not being criticized and punished because he is too close to his brother- CNN was counting on him being close to his brother when they brought him on board! Chris Cuomo is being criticized because he got caught, and made CNN look bad.