CNN’s Brooke Baldwin (pictured), who is leaving the network this month, has slammed the company for the lack of women leaders just months after she was taken off air and replaced by Jake Tapper
CNN’s Brooke Baldwin, who is leaving the network this month, has slammed the company for the lack of women leaders just months after she was taken off air and replaced by Jake Tapper.
Baldwin announced in February that she would be leaving the liberal network after 13 years. At the time, Baldwin made the shock announcement at the start of her 3pm show, CNN Newsroom, telling viewers ‘there is just more I need to do outside the walls of this place’.
Ahead of her departure, Baldwin, who first joined CNN in 2008, sat down for an interview with Ms. Magazine podcast where she described CNN as a male-dominated network.
‘The most influential anchors on our network, the highest-paid, are men. My bosses, my executives, are men. The person who oversees CNN Dayside is a man, and my executive producer for 10 years is a man. So I’ve been surrounded by a lot of men,’ Baldwin said.
Baldwin, who was temporarily pulled from the air in the build to the 2020 election and replaced by Tapper, said during the interview that she has fought for women’s stories.
‘I know I, personally, fight for women’s stories,’ Baldwin said. ‘I got told no a lot and I still managed to do it,’ Baldwin said, referring to the CNN series American Woman.
CNN’s Digital series American Woman features stories of women who have been trailblazers in their fields.
Baldwin was interviewed on Ms. Magazine podcast (pictured) where she described CNN as a male-dominated network. ‘The most influential anchors on our network, the highest-paid, are men. My bosses, my executives, are men. So I’ve been surrounded by a lot of men,’ she said
Baldwin announced in February (pictured) that she would be leaving the network after 13 years. At the time, Baldwin made the shock announcement at the start of her 3pm show, CNN Newsroom, telling viewers ‘there is just more I need to do outside the walls of this place’
She noted that CNN has slowly started to give more women power but ‘we still have a bit of a ways to go. I want more women in the room’.
In February, when Baldwin announced she’d be leaving, she said: ‘The next chapter will focus on what I love the most about my work: amplifying the lives of extraordinary Americans and putting my passion for storytelling to good use.’
Baldwin’s departure from CNN coincides with the release of her first book, Huddle: How Women Unlock Their Collective Power.
Baldwin’s exit may have been foreshadowed last fall when she posted a cryptic message to Instagram in October which suggested she was being forced off the air and temporarily replaced by Tapper.
‘As the election gears up, the political maestro @jaketapper will hold down my hour and his for the coming weeks. Wish I was with you, but I’ll see ya on [TV] on the flip side of the election,’ she wrote on October 1.
She gave no explanation for the move, but told supporters it was ‘not my choice’ to temporarily withdraw from her afternoon slot.
Baldwin’s exit may have been foreshadowed last fall when she posted a cryptic message to Instagram in October which suggested she was being forced off the air and temporarily replaced by Jake Tapper (pictured)
When asked by one fan, ‘Why are you taking so many weeks off at such an important time?’, she simply replied: ‘Not my choice.’
She said she was going ‘nowhere’ in response to a question about her moving on elsewhere, and also dispelled speculation that the decision to step aside was for health reasons insisting that she is ‘healthy’.
Her show was then pulled for several weeks, with CNN claiming they needed more airtime for the reporters in Washington, DC.
Baldwin was one of the network’s highest-earning journalists, with a reported annual salary in the region of $4million.
The highest paid is Anderson Cooper, who is said to earn around $12million a year.