Chris Cuomo took a sudden vacation from his hosting duties at CNN just before his brother, Andrew Cuomo, resigned as governor of New York – and if critics have their way, he won’t be coming back.
“Now that Andrew Cuomo has resigned, his brother, Chris, must be next,” wrote New York Post columnist Maureen Callahan. “They are, after all, both guilty of gross ethics violations.”
Chris Cuomo was busted earlier this year for advising his brother, who was drowning in a sea of scandals including nursing home deaths and multiple accusations of sexual harassment.
“I understand why that was a problem for CNN. It will not happen again,” Cuomo said at the time. “It was a mistake because I put my colleagues here, who I believe are the best in the business, in a bad spot. And I never intended for that. I would never intend for that. And I am sorry for that.”
But it seems like he didn’t learn his lesson: The New York Times reported this week that he was at it again, advising his brother after an investigation confirmed that the governor engaged in sexual harassment.
Two unnamed sources told the Times that Chris Cuomo told Andrew Cuomo to resign, saying he wouldn’t be able to survive the escalating scandals, essentially inserting himself into a behind-the-scenes role in a major story that his own colleagues were covering.
“Chris Cuomo has no moral authority and no journalistic integrity left,” wrote NewsBusters executive editor Tim Graham in a columned for Fox News. “He should resign.”
Cuomo last year gave his brother countless softball interviews throughout the early weeks of the coronavirus pandemic, offering him a platform to attack then-President Donald Trump and allowing him to vault himself into the national spotlight.
The fact CNN ever allowed Andrew Cuomo to appear on Chris Cuomo’s show is incomprehensible to me. https://t.co/2SbF0iMCQV
— Susanne Craig (@susannecraig) March 2, 2021
There was even talk that Andrew Cuomo could replace Joe Biden as Democratic presidential nominee.
Then, over the summer, the rosy coverage came to an abrupt halt as multiple scandals enveloped the governor.
It’s not that the coverage shifted.
It pretty much stopped… as if Chris Cuomo had never even heard of Andrew Cuomo.
When pressed, CNN said its host would no longer be interviewing his brother.
The move came as CNN workers were growing unhappy:
The revelation that Cuomo had advised his brother during strategy sessions has vexed staffers inside CNN. Multiple CNN staffers told me they were bothered by Cuomo's conduct and the violation of traditional journalistic standards. https://t.co/Dg5QWxOxNu
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) May 20, 2021
In spring, fellow CNN host Jake Tapper put Cuomo on notice, telling the New York Times that he “put us in a bad spot” with his activity on his brother’s behalf.
“I cannot imagine a world in which anybody in journalism thinks that was appropriate,” Tapper told the newspaper.
And this week, CNN media reporter Brian Stelter admitted to “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert that “some people are mad at him” inside the network.
When asked if Cuomo was his source, Stelter said he wasn’t because “you’ve gotta have boundaries, you’ve gotta draw lines.”
“Why?” Colbert shot back. “He doesn’t.”
But it was another part of the interview that raised eyebrows: Stelter claimed there’s no page in the “journalism ethics book” about a reporter covering his own powerful brother.
“I don’t think you need to look deeply into some esoteric ‘journalism ethics book’ to know that it’s sleazy and unethical to allow a CNN actor who plays the role of a journalist on TV to interview his own brother and repeatedly glorify him as the greatest leader since Augustus,” journalist Glenn Greenwald fired back on Twitter.
Washington Post media columnist Erik Wemple accused Stelter of “shilling” for Cuomo, calling the incident a “straightforward ethical disaster.”
Cuomo said his vacation was planned long before the scandal, telling the New York Times that he takes time off around his birthday every year.
He’s expected to return to the airwaves next week.
Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan said at the very least his vacation should be turned into “an unpaid suspension of significant length” and called on CNN to admit to viewers that “its anchor acted unethically and that the network won’t countenance it.”
— Walter W. Murray is a reporter for The Horn News. He is an outspoken conservative and a survival expert.