Report: ABC News Layoffs "Targeted and Personal"

Recent layoffs at ABC News were not business as usual, some staffers say. “It feels personal,” an insider told The Ny Post's Page Six.

ABC News president Kim Godwin announced layoffs at the network last month — and multiple sources believer it was a form of payback to people she thought were leaking stories about her at the network.

The cost-cutting move was part of parent Disney’s plan to cut 7,000 jobs.

Several senior execs were included in the 50 workers that ABC News will let go. Some suspected that Godwin was targeting “people she thought were not on her team, or people she suspected either wanted her job or [were] trying to take her down,” another source said.

Kim Godwin

The names of axed staffers subsequently ended up in media reports almost immediately after they were given their pink slips.

“It was like a this is a nail-in-your-coffin type of thing,” the second source speculated.

The Post reports that “seeing the names published in articles” felt like someone was out “to humiliate these people — and they’ve accomplished it.”

The source further claimed that the “news division was treated differently than the rest of the company. It was vindictive, targeted and mean.” But a third source close to the situation insists the layoffs were “done in a fair manor.”

Godwin has been the target of several hit pieces in media trades since she took over the top job from James Goldston in 2021.  “She was supposed to be change agent. A big reason they brought her in was to clean up the snake-pit culture,” the second source said.

At ABC’s news division last year, a scandal hit “Good Morning America” thanks to former “GMA3” anchors T.J. Holmes and Amy Robach’s off-screen affair being revealed.

Godwin was criticized for how she handled the scandal that ultimately cost the lovebirds their lucrative ABC jobs.