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CNN Analyst Says She Was Quietly Suspended After Commenting On Toobin Scandal

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


Conservative CNN analyst Mary Katharine Ham has penned a vicious tell-all about being suspended from CNN by the former head of the network.

In it she claimed that former network CEO Jeff Zucker suspended her after she made comments on the scandal that involved from CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin being caught masturbating on a video call.

It started on Twitter when she suggested that the shooting of a Republican Congressman during practice for a Congressional baseball game did not get the coverage it deserved on the network.

“I lived a block from the baseball field. Under 48 hours, the news vans were gone. I was on TV, live from the baseball field where they played the game a day later, after almost being canceled by mass murder, but my topic was ‘Mike Pence reportedly hired a lawyer,’” she said.

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“You’re welcome to talk yourself into idea that a similar murder attempt on an entire team of Democrats would have gotten the same treatment. I think the shooting of Gabby Giffords is pretty analogous and disproves that theory. Even without that data point, it’s just not true,” she said.

That was when another CNN talent, Andrew Kaczynski, showed a photo of her reporting on the shooting for CNN.

“It looks you discussed the baseball game?” he said.

She responded by saying “Got jack to say about Cuomo and Toobin, but gotta fact-check me when he’s got nothing.”

In her piece she claimed that she was punished for mentioning Toobin in that tweet.

“In case you’re wondering, as I did, how my punishment for tweeting about Toobin compares to Toobin’s suspension for his offense, I can tell you. He was off air for eight months; I was off for seven. One month was the difference between punishment for jacking off at work versus commenting on the inadvisability of jacking off at work,” she said.

“On one hand, the people who made this call about me are gone from the network, so maybe I could let it lie. But on the other hand, many of my colleagues no doubt knew about my banning from air, but not the reasons behind it, thereby leaving the impression I must have done something tantamount to Toobining. I did not,” the analyst said.

“I was told it was Jeff Zucker, now gone, who put this order in place and a deputy, also gone, who kept it there,” she said. “I was also told I wasn’t informed of the network’s displeasure because I had just had a baby and someone in the old leadership thought I might be a ‘loose cannon.’ Not as loose as Toobin’s, but I digress.”

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“In the #MeToo era, I have been asked to make public comment on basically every errant penis in the media, government, sports, and entertainment worlds, sometimes to the exclusion of everything else in the news, and at the expense of some amount of professional dignity. It is ironic that in shining a light on bad behavior, which is the right thing to do, you’re still a woman on TV talking about penises. Every professional woman in a green room, preparing to talk about Weinstein’s penchant for potted plants for the 17th time, knows this feeling. Nonetheless, speaking up remains the right thing to do, and I flatly reject the notion, then and now, that Toobin’s flagrantly errant member is the one I am not allowed to talk about— that this is the one offense about which I should be silent. I also reject the idea I’m to be quiet about being punished over it,” she said.

She said she has been invited by the new bosses to come back to the network but she said she could not do that until she talked about this situation.

“I have not been asked to leave CNN. In fact, I’ve been invited back by the new guard to do the job I was prevented from doing by the old guard. Clean slate, as if nothing happened. But something did happen.

“I have never been great at being quiet, and it’s not in my nature to start. So, that’s where I’ve been. I determined it was impossible for me to come back without saying why I’d been gone,” she said.

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