A Costly Retraction for CNN and an Opening for Trump<br />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<br />that has curtailed access and labeled the news media an “opposition party.”<br />“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<br />and was granted anonymity to describe private remarks.<br />He added, “If you don’t follow those procedures, you don’t work here, period.”<br />Those procedures broke down last week, according to several people at CNN who, in speaking on condition of anonymity<br />to discuss internal matters, recounted a scramble inside the network after the story was published last Thursday.<br />Like other news channels, CNN’s ratings are up compared with last year,<br />but on weeknights, the network has fallen behind its rivals Fox News and MSNBC in prime time.<br />Mr. Scaramucci contacted CNN executives to dispute the story and said<br />that he was considering legal action, according to a person familiar with his conversations who spoke on condition of anonymity.<br />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,<br />that showed a low-level CNN producer criticizing his network.
