CableTV News: Jeff Zucker Blasts Fox News

Jeff Zucker

Jeff Zucker said he was thrilled to be back at the Television Critics Association press tour on Friday afternoon, his first trip to the event since he started his tenure as president of CNN Worldwide.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Zucker addressed recent comments Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes made in The Hollywood Reporter that CNN was "out of the news business." (See original posting, Click Here)

"There is no network covering American news as seriously and substantially as CNN," said Zucker. "I think that criticism is obviously meant to deflect your attention from the book that's in the news this week."

The book, an unauthorized Ailes biography by Gabriel Sherman that Ailes and Fox News did not take part in, had not made its way to Zucker yet -- though he had choice words for its contents.

"[It] confirms what we've known all along," he said. "The Republican Party is being run out of News Corp headquarters masquerading as a cable news channel."

When asked for comment, a rep for Fox News told THR that Zucker's remarks were "nothing more than an attempt to deflect attention from CNN's dismal ratings."

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