CNN’s effort to lock down its leading international correspondent for several more years reportedly fell apart after the network and Clarissa Ward failed to reach agreement on key terms.
Ward, 46, declined a proposed “multiyear” contract earlier this year, according to Status.
Instead, the award-winning journalist agreed to a one-year deal, which sources told the outlet is due to run out in April.
Her reluctance to commit to the longer agreement was reportedly fueled in part by executives’ unwillingness to give her a podcast.
Ward believed that format could offer a stronger venue to “showcase” her “personality,” sources said.
The chief international correspondent also brought forward “ideas” that would have expanded her role in CNN’s digital strategy, but those proposals were “dismissed by those executives,” the report said.
She was also reportedly “frustrated” with the executives currently in charge of CNN’s online editorial operation.
Last year, Ward won an Emmy for a CNN digital report on the 2012 disappearance of American journalist Austin Tice in Syria.
CNN Chief International Correspondent Clarissa Ward, 46, passed on a plum deal that would have kept her at the network for several years this past spring, according to a new report
Ward has also won Peabody, DuPont and Edward R. Murrow awards for her reporting on Syria’s civil war while at CBS News, which she left for CNN in 2015.
‘CNN is, simply put, the most important name in news,’ Ward said in a statement at the time. ‘No other organization has the same scope and depth and recognition across the world.’
The Tuesday report from Status suggested the star has since become disillusioned.
Sources said she ‘faced friction’ from some of the CNN executives overseeing her 2025 report on Tice, which ‘did not sit well with her.’ The nature of the purported pushback was not specified.
The freedoms a podcast would have provided were Ward’s solution, according to Status.
After it became clear executives were not ‘enthusiastically engaged’ by such pitches, Ward went in a different direction.
The one-year deal was reached despite CNN being ‘eager to renew her with a new multiyear agreement,’ according to Status, which is run by CNN’s former media reporter Oliver Darcy.
Sources told the publication that Ward was also turned off by CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss’s recent changes at the network. CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, is currently being sold to Paramount, meaning CNN could soon come under Weiss’s control.
The network’s parent company is currently in the process of being sold to rival media company Paramount. The CNN center is seen here in Atlanta, Georgia
The award-winning journalist signed a one-year contract that’s set to expire this April after disagreements with higher-ups about the nature of her role and concern about potentially coming under control of CBS News’ parent company, Paramount
Other CNN journalists have balked at the prospect of coming under the purview of Paramount’s Trump-friendly CEO, David Ellison, as well, according to reports from The New York Times and Variety released in recent weeks.
CNN’s former chief legal affairs correspondent, Paula Reid, declined to renew her contract last month over concerns about the network’s future under Ellison and potentially Weiss.
Anderson Cooper – a CNN anchor since 2001 – left his CBS gig at 60 Minutes after nearly 20 years in May.
Cooper, 59, has privately told colleagues ‘he does not want to work for’ the Free Press Founder if the merger goes through, according to a Times report released late last month.
Early Start’s Rahel Solomon also announced she was leaving CNN in April, days after Ellison’s $111 billion bid for Warner was approved.
Ellison, 43, hired 42-year-old Weiss with a network-wide overhaul in mind back in October.
Ellison has since maintained that CNN’s ‘editorial independence’ will be ‘maintained’ if and when the merger is approved.
Other CNN journalists have balked at the prospect of coming under the purview of Paramount’s Trump-friendly CEO as well. Anderson Cooper, seen here with Ward and former correspondent Sam Kiley during the US’s pullout from Afghanistan, left 60 Minutes this year. He remains at CNN but has reportedly told staffers he does not want to work for Paramount
Paramount’s looming takeover likely means cuts on both sides.
CNN declined to comment on the negotiations surrounding Ward’s contract.
A number of former CNN journalists have started independent ventures over the years, including Jim Acosta, Don Lemon, and former Chief White House Correspondent Jessica Yellin.
