American broadcast journalist, Katie Couric, revealed her former worker Jeff Zucker’s “consensual relationship” in her Oct 21’s memoir.
On Wednesday, CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker, 56, resigned from the company in a memo detailing that he made this decision after failing to reveal a “consensual relationship” with Allison Gollust, who works at CNN as a chief marketing officer.
“Jeff Zucker just announced his resignation to a stunned CNN”, wrote Brian Shelter.
Later that, the next day, Katie Couric, while addressing the resignation of her former colleague as part of her newsletter, “Wake-up-call” claimed, “ many people turned a blind eye to inappropriate behavior.”
“I worked with Jeff Zucker for many years at NBC and later on my talk show. He was a talented and energetic producer,” she wrote. “His resignation took me by surprise. I’ve also known Allison Gollust since my days at the Today Show.”
Couric further added, “I’ve wondered about the nature of their relationship, but I do know, as I wrote in my memoir Going There, that it made me uncomfortable. It seems their colleagues and the media at large turned a blind eye to inappropriate behavior.”
In Couric’s 2021’s memoir, “Going There”, she revealed how his colleague, Zucker “previously “made a huge push to bring on Allison Gollust”.
Couric served as a host from 1991-2006 at NBC’s Today. While Zucker spent 20 years, including 5 years as a CEO and President at NBCUniversal.
“When we worked together at NBC, she and Jeff cooked up even bolder ways to draw attention to TODAY and later Jeff himself when he moved to Entertainment,” Couric explained. “They were joined at the hip.”
She further added that “The problem was, we’d already hired a PR person for the show. There wasn’t a role for Allison. Jeff asked me to meet with her anyway.”
At one place in her memoir, Couric wrote, “why Jeff was angling so hard to bring Allison on board” and reminisced the time “when Gollust and her husband and kids had moved into the apartment” above the one that the former NBCUniversal shared with his ex-spouse, Caryn Nathanson.
Zucker and his ex-wife Nathanson share children. The two officially separated in 2018.
“Everyone who heard about the cozy arrangement thought it was super strange,” Couric writes in her memoir. “By that point, [Zucker’s then-wife] Caryn had become a close friend and it made me really uncomfortable.”
Zucker revealed that his departure came “as part of the investigation into Chris Cuomo’s tenure at CNN in his Wednesday memo.”
He concluded his statement by saying he is extremely “grateful to the thousands of incredibly talented CNN and Turner Sports employees who helped make this such a joy for me, and such a success for all of us. I wish each of you nothing but the best in the years ahead.” In 2021, he revealed he had planned to leave the organization as soon as his contract expires after being slammed with uncountable scandals.
