This reporting appears as one of several scoops featured in this week’s edition of Confider, the newsletter pulling back the curtain on the media. Subscribe here and send your questions, tips, and complaints here.
After Warner Bros. Discovery chief David Zaslav said during a company-wide town hall last week that he would give branded vests to all employees, some CNN staffers have a message for their overlords: Keep your cheesy gifts.
Indeed, while layoffs and cutbacks continue to roil CNN, as Warner Bros. Discovery slashes billions from the budget, some network staffers have grown tired of Zaslav’s approach. During last week’s town hall, he reassured staffers that despite the recent penny-pinching “we are not for sale”—an attempt to squash rumors of a Comcast merger—and made no mention of any pending layoffs.
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While trying to lighten the mood, Zaslav, who is famously fond of wearing branded vests, declared he would give one away to everyone. Some CNN staffers mocked the idea: “Vest + layoffs we love to see it. True start up energy,” one network employee snarked in a CNN group chat, adding: “A fucking vest??!”
One CNN on-air talent told Confider that network staffers who participated in the call “felt it had no relevance to us” and that even though Zaz mentioned CNN at the top of the call, they felt like they’d “tuned into the wrong town hall” given how little it concerned them.
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Meanwhile, a Warner-branded vest isn’t the only tone-deaf swag being offered from on high, apparently. A former CNN staffer, who was laid off in April when CNN+ was abruptly shuttered, called the gifts a “cruel joke” and then shared with Confider images of a Warner Bros. Discovery-branded plaque they recently received, months after being canned.
The front of the plaque treats a tweet from former WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar with bizarro reverence, displaying a photo he took of the NYC skyline captioned by the full metadata for his tweet: “Don’t forget to look up. No better city. New York City, NY • 4:57 PM • Sept 10, 2021 • Twitter for iPhone.”
The back of the plaque is equally strange, featuring an all-white background and the text of a rambling Kilar quote praising the doomed CNN+ staff: “Amazing things are inevitable when a talented, world-class team — that is unlike any other — passionately pursues a worthy mission, together. No finer mission, no better team. With so much thanks — Jason.”
It is unclear whether this truly cursed plaque was meant to be delivered before or after CNN+ went belly up.
“There is no such thing as an assurance from Zaslav because his actions have spoken a lot louder than his words and his talk is cheap,” the laid-off staffer said. “If I were still a staffer there, I would never feel a sense of calm. These gifts are bullshit.”
A Warner Bros. Discovery rep did not respond to a request for comment.
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