John Harwood, CNN's White House correspondent, just announced that he is leaving the network.
Harwood, on Friday, tweeted:
Personal news: today's my last day at CNN. Proud of the work. Thanks to my colleagues. I've been lucky to serve the best in American media - St. Petersburg Times, WSJ, NYT, the NBC family, CNN. Look forward to figuring out what's next.
The big question is why Harwood has suddenly decided to call it quits, and, so far, we don't have the answer.
CNN has simply put out a statement saying, "we appreciate John's work covering the White House, and we wish him all the best."
CNN has been parting ways with a number of its top names recently. This includes former CNN president Jeff Zucker, former anchor Chris Cuomo, former CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, former anchor Brian Stelter, and others.
These departures have followed the recent takeover of CNN by Warner Bros. Discovery. With this takeover has come new management, namely Chris Licht, and Licht is trying to move the network back to the center, away from the far left, where it has been for several years now.
We simply do not know if there is any relation between this is Harwood's departure. We do not even know if Harwood is leaving of his own free will or whether he has been pushed out by CNN's new management.
Harwood, it ought to be noted, certainly seems to align with the far left. He has vigorously opposed former President Donald Trump and supported Hillary Clinton. He, in fact, even admitted that he agrees with President Joe Biden's recent "anti-MAGA" speech, which has received bipartisan condemnation.
So, it would seem that there are two likely explanations for Harwood's sudden departure from CNN: either CNN told him to leave, or he didn't like the direction the network was going, and he decided to leave himself. We may never know the answer, but either way, that's one less partisan reporter in CNN's lineup.