This reporting is 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.
Another week, another trove of juicy stories from inside ABC News President Kim Godwin’s “reign of error,” as one network source described it.
The embattled news boss has been shopping around a book about leadership, Confider has learned, just days after a bloody round of layoffs that seemed to target staffers she felt were insufficiently loyal to her, multiple sources told us.
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Godwin, who joined ABC promising to clean up the culture, has told friends that writing a book is on her bucket list and that she has spoken to at least one publisher about it, according to two people familiar with the matter. One irritated ABC News executive quipped to Confider: “If Kim is writing a book on leadership, it’ll be the size of a pamphlet.”
ABC insiders who spoke with Confider laid some of the blame for the handling of last month’s bloodbath layoffs on Godwin’s right-hand man Jose Andino, who has the curiously verbose title of “Vice President—Office of the President and Process Management.”
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Andino is an HR exec who followed Godwin from CBS to ABC, and he is said to have been instrumental in helping her compile a list of all HR grievances against former CBS News president Susan Zirinsky, whose job Godwin was gunning for at the time.
Andino has left fellow ABC News execs astounded with a series of gaffes. For example, when it was announced Bob Iger would return to run Disney, Andino asked several colleagues why the news division would be of any concern to the iconic CEO who began his career at ABC nearly 50 years ago and rose to oversee every aspect of the company’s television business, including news.
Andino was described to Confider by multiple colleagues as a “gossip girl” who seems highly interested in rumor-mongering and carrying out personal vendettas. And according to two people familiar with the matter, he played a significant role in advising Godwin on who to pink-slip during the firings.
Meanwhile, Godwin has further incensed staffers with several eyebrow-raising remarks: While discussing the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News, two sources said, Godwin questioned whether ABC should cover the story because it was about another media company; and after one of the Jan. 6 congressional hearings, Godwin allegedly asked several ABC journalists to “tell me what Trump did that’s actually illegal?”
A rep for ABC News emailed Confider: “This is absolutely untrue.”
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