CNN Pundit Claims She Was Blackballed By Jeff Zucker

A CNN contributor said she was kept off the air by ousted network boss Jeff Zucker after she publicly criticized his handling of the suspensions of Chris Cuomo and Jeffrey Toobin — without being informed that she was being punished.

Mary Katharine Ham

The NY Post reports Mary Katharine Ham, a journalist who has contributed to publications such as Townhall Magazine and The Federalist, claims she was “quiet suspended” by Zucker.

Ham wrote on her Substack blog that she recently discovered that she was kept off the air after she engaged in a Twitter spat with a CNN colleague, Andrew Kaczynski, in January.

The spat began when Ham reacted to a tweet by New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman, who disagreed with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ criticism of the press for not adequately covering the 2017 mass shooting that targeted Republican congressmen playing baseball.

Ham claimed that a similar mass shooting targeting Democrats would generate disproportionately more media coverage.

Jeff Zucker

When Kaczynski disputed this notion, Ham clapped back that the CNN political reporter “got jack to say about Cuomo and Toobin, but gotta fact-check me when he’s got nothing.”

Ham then posted another tweet, noting that Toobin “jacked off in front of female colleagues” while Cuomo “violated every conflict of interest rule in journalism, lied about it, and got fired.”

According to Ham, her implicit criticism of CNN management’s handling of the Toobin affair prompted then-network head honcho Zucker to keep her off the air for seven months.

“I suppose some might reasonably conclude that critiquing CNN’s coverage in a factual and calm tweet, or arguing with Kaczynski, could have spurred some disciplinary action, as it violates the rule against ‘shooting inside the tent’ among colleagues,” Ham wrote on Thursday.