A Costly Retraction for CNN and an Opening for Trump
But the ferocious response on Tuesday was a reminder of CNN’s unique role as a nemesis for Mr. Trump, who says the network has unfairly tried to tie him to Russian interference in last year’s election — and underlined the heightened tensions between the news media and an administration
that has curtailed access and labeled the news media an “opposition party.”
“People are trying to attack us, trying to take us down,” CNN’s president, Jeffrey A. Zucker, said in a newsroom conference call on Tuesday morning, according to a network employee who listened to the call
and was granted anonymity to describe private remarks.
He added, “If you don’t follow those procedures, you don’t work here, period.”
Those procedures broke down last week, according to several people at CNN who, in speaking on condition of anonymity
to discuss internal matters, recounted a scramble inside the network after the story was published last Thursday.
Like other news channels, CNN’s ratings are up compared with last year,
but on weeknights, the network has fallen behind its rivals Fox News and MSNBC in prime time.
Mr. Scaramucci contacted CNN executives to dispute the story and said
that he was considering legal action, according to a person familiar with his conversations who spoke on condition of anonymity.
By the afternoon, Mr. Trump’s deputy press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, was on live television scolding the White House press corps over the retraction, even urging Americans to watch a video filmed by a controversial right-wing activist, James O’Keefe,
that showed a low-level CNN producer criticizing his network.
