CNN contributor and former Daily Caller reporter Mary Katharine Ham said the network suspended her for tweeting about former legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin masturbating on a Zoom call.
In an MKHammer piece, Ham wrote that she was suspended by the previous executives at the network for seven months without any notification of disciplinary action. She was told that former CNN President Jeff Zucker issued her suspension, but she was not informed because she had just had a baby and leadership feared she would be a “loose cannon.”
“One month was the difference between punishment for jacking off at work versus commenting on the inadvisability of jacking off at work,” Ham wrote.
Toobin, who worked at CNN at the time, exposed himself during an October 2020 Zoom call with staffers from the New Yorker and WNYC radio. The New Yorker fired him over the incident and CNN suspended him until June, when he finally returned.
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) October 6, 2022
Ham argued that she had to talk about men’s inappropriate sexual advances on a regular basis during the #MeToo era, but was then barred from discussing Toobin. Despite the reported suspension, she encouraged women to stand up to harassment and inappropriate behavior from colleagues in the workplace. (RELATED: Jeffrey Toobin—Who Jerked Off In Front Of His Coworkers—Thinks Rittenhouse Is An ‘Idiot’)
“I remain surprised that I ended up in this position in 2022, and I wish I hadn’t,” she said. “The era of keeping our mouths shut about obvious sexual misconduct from colleagues did not serve us well. Wasn’t that part of the lesson of #MeToo? My takeaway was that I wanted younger women to see that I spoke up about my treatment when warranted and survived, even thrived.”
“I was treated unfairly by the people who punished me,” she continued. “Simply shutting up about it does not sit right with me. In the course of any career, perhaps particularly a public-facing media career — even more a political media career — you’re gonna run into some jerks who treat you badly. Sometimes it’s condescension, sometimes paternalism, or harassment.”
She concluded that she embraces being the “ideological minority” in places like CNN as it is “healthy” to interact with those who disagree with you.