Following revelations regarding how he coordinated aggressively with his brother former New York Governor Andrew "Rat-Faced Andy" Cuomo, Christopher "Fredo" Cuomo has been suspended.
He should be fired, and he should never get another job in journalism, for the same reason that Pete Rose was banned for life by Major League Baseball, and will never be in the Hall of Fame.
It's not Cuomo's violation of journalistic ethics that that demands his permanent exile from journalism, it's the fact that he used his position and his clout as a journalist big wig to aid in this effort to help his brother, which makes this an offense against journalism.
Pete Rose, of course, was banned for betting on Baseball, but he was banned FOR LIFE because as manager of the Cincinnati Reds, he called around to other managers to get information about their games that day so that he could make safe bets to offset his other (non-baseball) bets.
Much in the same way that Rose weaponized Baseball to launch an assault on the integrity of Baseball, Cuomo weaponized journalism to launch on the integrity of journalism.
He needs to go:
The star CNN anchor Chris Cuomo was suspended indefinitely by the network on Tuesday after new details emerged about his efforts to assist his brother, Andrew M. Cuomo, the former governor of New York, as he faced a cascade of sexual harassment accusations that led to the governor’s resignation.
Chris Cuomo had previously apologized for advising Andrew Cuomo’s senior political aides — a breach of traditional barriers between journalists and lawmakers — but thousands of pages of evidence released on Monday by the New York attorney general, Letitia James, revealed that the anchor’s role had been more intimate and involved than previously known.
“The documents, which we were not privy to before their public release, raise serious questions,” CNN said in a statement on Tuesday. “When Chris admitted to us that he had offered advice to his brother’s staff, he broke our rules and we acknowledged that publicly. But we also appreciated the unique position he was in and understood his need to put family first and job second. However, these documents point to a greater level of involvement in his brother’s efforts than we previously knew.
“As a result, we have suspended Chris indefinitely, pending further evaluation,” the network added.
………
In scores of emails and text messages between Mr. Cuomo his brother’s inner circle, he repeatedly offered advice — “Please let me help with the prep,” he texted a senior aide in March — and made efforts to track down the status of pending articles at other news outlets, including Politico and The New Yorker, that concerned allegations of sexual harassment by Andrew Cuomo.
At one point, the governor’s former top aide, Melissa DeRosa, asked the anchor if he could check his “sources” about a rumor that Politico was working on an article that included additional accusations. “On it,” Chris Cuomo responded.
Ms. James’s report also included a text from Mr. Cuomo to Ms. DeRosa sent a few days after a woman, Anna Ruch, told The New York Times that Andrew Cuomo had made an unwanted advance toward her at a wedding in New York City. “I have a lead on the wedding girl,” the anchor wrote in the text.
………
According to the documents, Ms. DeRosa texted Mr. Cuomo in mid-March to ask if he knew the status of an article about his brother by the New Yorker investigative reporter Ronan Farrow. “Story not ready for tomorrow,” Mr. Cuomo replied. Asked by investigators, he said he had obtained that information by reaching out to a “fellow journalist who works with Ronan a lot.”
He needs to be done as a journalist, just like Janet Cook, Jayson Blair, and (unfortunately to a slightly lesser degree) Stephen Glass were.
BTW, Atrios probably had the best snark about the whole sordid affair:
And the point here isn't simply, "oh, well, family is family, you can sympathize a bit," it's "since you can sympathize a bit, it seems a bit harsh for the man to be suspended from his job." This is "there should be no consequences for people who are, in many ways, qwhite like me."
(emphasis mine)
Atrios is commenting on all the "elite" journalists who are wring their hands against the "harsh" actions taken by CNN against Cuomo. (In this case, NY Times lifer Clyde Haberman)
There is a belief among the elites in journalism, and in many other fields, that accountability is only for the little people.
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