CNN Eliminates ‘Race and Equality’ Team As Part Of Layoffs

So much for diversity and inclusion...

The Race and Equality team at CNN no longer exists after the network’s “newsgathering operations restructure,” Phil Lewis reported in his What I’m Reading newsletter.

CNN’s new chief executive, Mark Thompson, announced the news on July 10. One reporter was laid off. The other two were reassigned to different departments in the newsroom.

The award-winning team produced coverage on Black maternal mortality, police brutality, and other topics pertinent to Black viewers. In 2020, a memo by former CNN president Jeff Zucker, who created the team, hailed it as a “significant, sustained commitment to ensure race coverage is a permanent part of our journalism.”

“The recent conversations we’ve had in our newsrooms have been informative and constructive. We have valued them, we heard you, and we will continue listening,” the memo read. “There are structural changes and investments we can and will make to better cover what is happening in our society. We are committed to doing that.”

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, segmented by the killing of George Floyd, a number of companies and media organizations, including CNN, made a pledge to fight against what was labeled a “racial reckoning” by examining internal policies and making donations to civil rights organizations.

According to the New York Post, a spokesperson claimed the team was still employed as a mission-oriented unit, but later recanted.

“For all intents and purposes, the team is not a team anymore,” the spokesperson said. “They’re assigned to different areas so that their perspective and work [are] brought into all of our types of programming. It’s not a unit in the way it was before, but race and equality is very much still their focus.”

CNN’s laid off nearly 3% of the workforce, or 100 employees, including high-profile names like media critic Brian Lowry and senior tech writer Samantha Murphy Kelly. The network made headlines in 2023 after firing star anchor Don Lemon after 17 years. Rumors of Lemon leaving the network came after former CEO Chris Licht wanted to pull news coverage back to the center, catering to both sides of the spectrum regarding specific topics.

Under Thompson’s leadership, CNN will roll out its first-ever subscription product for the website. The subscription offerings will be “want to use” content produced by lifestyle journalists.