Piers Morgan Speaks Frankly About Jeff Zucker, Larry King

By Alex Weprin 

In a very good interview with Politico’s Dylan Byers, CNN anchor Piers Morgan talks about everything from his position on gun control to the different types of news he covers. There were also two elements that really stood out.

The first was when talking about new CNN president Jeff Zucker, and the sorts of changes he may bring to the network, and the second was the frankest talk yet about his predecessor, Larry King.

On Zucker:

Advertisement

“Jeff Zucker believes you’ve got to be unafraid to expand the breadth of what news is,” he said. “There are many different ways of categorizing news. It doesn’t have to be just war and famine and serious politics. And CNN has veered too much to that in the past few years, and been too afraid to go after other stories.”

“We’re still the best when it matters, when the big stuff happens. But we have been a little bit slow to react to the competition, and we should have more personalities on the network unafraid to express opinions,” he continued. “It should be more lively, independent programming, unique to each hour. Because when there’s not much happening, having that on a repeat cycle hour after hour after hour is dull television.”

On King, who gently criticized Morgan by saying that his show is too much about him, and not the guests:

“I’ve tried to be very respectful about Larry; he’s a legend, and I feel very proud to have followed him. But I think he just slightly needs to button it, because he’s talking nonsense. The reason we’re different is, I’m a journalist and he’s not. Larry isn’t a journalist, never has been.”

Advertisement