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For CNN's Mark Thompson, AI and Trump offer challenges, opportunities

Published: 23 Sep. 2025, 05:10 Updated: 23 Sep. 2025, 13:30

YOON SO-YEON
[email protected]

CHOI JI-YOUNG
[email protected]

Mark Thompson, CEO of CNN, speaks in an interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily at the Four Seasons Hotel in Jongno District, central Seoul, on Sept. 18. [PARK SANG-MOON]

One of the most respected figures in the media industry, an entrepreneur and manager who successfully led a legacy newspaper into the age of digital transformation and a British knight recognized for his services to media — media guru Mark Thompson doesn’t have much left to prove, but he does have his own name to live up to.

When Thompson was named CEO of CNN in October 2023, onlookers were keen to observe his next steps to revamp one of the largest television networks in the world in the face of growing video streaming services, an overflow of media content and even the looming threat of AI: Just as he accelerated the paid subscription service at The New York Times despite skepticism, would he be able to set a trajectory for the cable news giant in keeping with the times?

Thompson has already stirred the market with some company news — CNN announced earlier this year that it is cutting around 6 percent of its staff, or 210 personnel, in a “difficult and painful process of change” to provide “high quality, fair-minded, trustworthy sources of news,” according to a memo the CEO sent out to staff in January. The notice also contained plans for a $70 million investment from parent company Warner Bros. Discovery to fund CNN’s digital strategy, which includes new programs and a subscription service.

Even against the headwinds of its latent conflict with the country’s president, Donald Trump, and the domination of right-wing media such as Fox News, CNN is ready to take its next big step. The television broadcaster is about to roll out its first “All Access” paid subscription model to allow audiences access to all of CNN’s live channels and content across the outlet's mobile app, connected apps and CNN.com, in a move to manifest the company’s bold ambition to improve profitability in the deeply competitive market environment.

“Initially, it's going to be available only in the United States, but our ambition is that it should become a complete global service in phases,” said Thompson. “Not only will it be for people to subscribe to from anywhere in the world, but also it'll be portable, so if you're traveling, you can use it wherever you go as well. That’s our intention.”

JoongAng Holdings Vice Chairman Hong Jeong-do, left, and CNN CEO Mark Thompson speak during the JoongAng 60th Anniversary Global Media Conference held at Lotte Hotel in central Seoul on Sept. 18. [JOONGANG ILBO]

Thompson sat down for an interview with the JoongAng Ilbo and the Korea JoongAng Daily after taking part in the JoongAng 60th Anniversary Global Media Conference at the Four Seasons Hotel in central Seoul on Thursday. The following are excerpts from the interview, edited for length and clarity, where he discussed the survival tactics of journalism in the face of the imminent threat — or maybe opportunity — posed by AI, and other steps needed for the digital transformation.

Q. How would you say the digital transformation that you led within The New York Times is different from the project that you are pursuing now at CNN?

A. In 2015, most people didn’t think it was going to happen because we hadn’t proven that we could do it yet. It was still uncertain at that point. People listened very politely, but a lot of people thought that it wouldn’t happen, that it was crazy.

In some ways, I’m back where I was in 2015 or maybe even earlier. I’ve been at CNN a few weeks short of two years, so for me, it’s more like the autumn of 2014, when we had a lot still to do to build momentum. These models take time. It was only in 2015 that we reached our first 1 million subscribers. Now the New York Times has nearly 12 million subscribers, so it went on growing, but the first stage took a long time.

And at CNN, we’ve hired a lot of people; we’re beginning the work. In a few weeks' time, we’re going to launch our 'All Access' service, which is going to enable people to subscribe not just to our website but to access everything. They’ll also be able to watch unlimited U.S. CNN, almost all of the U.S. cable services, the international services and our 24/7 headline service and newfeeds. So it's going to be both the full TV and video experience with Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer, as well as being the complete website. That’s going to be a big step for us.

The price will be reasonable. It’s going to be much less than a Netflix subscription will cost or the full price of a New York Times subscription. Initially, it's going to be available only in the United States, but our ambition is that it will become a complete global service in phases.

A sign for The New York Times hangs above the entrance to its building in New York May 6, 2021. [AP/YONHAP]

A journalist records video near a CNN sign on an athletic field outside the Clements Recreation Center where CNN and the New York Times hosted the Democratic presidential primary debate at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio, on Oct. 14, 2019i. Mark Thompson was appointed as chair and CEO of CNN by David Zaslav, head of the network's parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, which made the announcement on Aug. 30, 2023. Thompson replaced Chris Licht, who was fired in June, and a four-person team that had been running CNN in the interim. [AP/YONHAP]

You’ve been reiterating the importance of using AI. Can you share some examples of where CNN used AI and achieved a successful outcome for the newsroom?

AI can be a productivity tool, potentially, in newsrooms to quickly summarize things and [other things]. We’re experimenting with AI summaries, but we see lots of applications.

One application last year was during Mr. Trump’s Stormy Daniels trial in New York. It was not televised, but there was a transcript every day from the court proceedings, which we got at about 5 o’clock in the afternoon. And what we did is we worked with ElevenLabs — they helped us turn that written transcript into an audio drama with synthetic voices. So these voices, which were based on samples from human beings but generated by AI, played the part of the prosecutor and the witnesses and all the rest of it. And then we used the court images and photographs of the various characters, the witnesses, and turned this into a complete piece of television in a way.

So that will be an example of an experiment, but we're going to do many, many kinds of experiments. We have a challenge, which is to try and capture the whole world and then put it in a viewpoint which is only about this big [gestures at a hand].

Mark Thompson, CEO of CNN, speaks in an interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily at the Four Seasons Hotel in Jongno District, central Seoul, on Sept. 18. [PARK SANG-MOON]

What is your take on the thought that the younger generations are only interested in shorter-format content, including journalism?

I often hear it said that "young people, they're not interested in long-form journalism," but is that really true? They're listening to Joe Rogan in America, who's doing interviews that last sometimes three hours, and they're listening to the whole thing.

When people moan and say young people haven't gotten the attention for you, I want to say, “Have you thought about changing what you do so they find it more interesting?” The fault might be on our side.

You emphasized, during the JoongAng Ilbo conference, that a company needs to hire more young people in order to engage with younger people. Is the CNN actually adopting this method?

We're absolutely beginning to. It’s not been the tradition, but we are hiring young people. A lot of these people, by the way, are not going to be necessarily in journalism but in digital products and data science. We are trying to and we are moving on the digital side to a so-called mission-led way of working.

Representatives from different departments in a big organization work together and collaborate in a team, which is the traditional way of trying to do a digital project. But then you have a very autonomous team with a team leader, and they have their own objectives and a lot of freedom to actually make decisions and get the job done on their own. The reason you want them making decisions rather than senior people like me is because they're much closer to the audience, and, well, just generally closer to the problem, and they can test and learn their way to solutions.

So I think it's almost like the role of senior people in the news organization is to throw down challenges to these teams and get them to come up with a solution to the challenge. I think the most dangerous thing is when people like me tell people what the answer is and then ask them to implement it.

Oscar-winning film director Bong Joon-ho, left, and CNN CEO Mark Thompson speak during the JoongAng 60th Anniversary Global Media Conference held at Lotte Hotel in central Seoul on Sept. 18. [JOONGANG ILBO]

What about political polarization and the issue of YouTube journalism? What is the role of legacy media in this environment?

You’re not entirely alone in that issue. First, obviously, political division is not a new thing. In Europe, in the 1920s and the 1930s, when politics in many countries became more extreme — Germany famously, but also many other countries ended up with somewhat more authoritarian regimes and, in some cases, fascist regimes, but also with very big communist and socialist minorities.

People blamed the radio, and they thought that the radio was a dangerous new medium that was helping more extreme politicians get their message across. And often these politicians were thought to be masters of the new medium. Mussolini and Hitler were both thought to be very good on the radio. Nowadays, we think of radio as being one of the safer [mediums]. It may partly be that [YouTube] is a new form of media because initially, people may not quite know how to parse and they may be too credulous and trusting.

But I think that it’s true that digital media appears to be almost like an accelerant. It happens very quickly, and if there's a wave of anger or revulsion or something, that very quickly gets whipped up into big drama.

Mark Thompson, CEO of CNN, poses for photos before an interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily at the Four Seasons Hotel in Jongno District, central Seoul, on Sept. 18. [PARK SANG-MOON]

And what is the stance that legacy media, like CNN, can take during such times?

We have to live through this period, and one of the things that we as core media need to do is to keep a sense of proportion and not add panic. A few days ago, we had this terrible shooting in America of Charlie Kirk. And we felt at CNN that we should be very measured in the way we approach it and never forget this is a human tragedy. It was a young man who was a political activist. And he had strong political opinions, but you’re allowed to. In fact, your right to have strong political opinions and talk about them is protected in the U.S. Constitution.

So we thought a respect for that and a respect for his grieving family was the way, and that it wasn’t the right moment to lean into rage or panic. I think just trying to be mature and not adding to a kind of sense of heightened panic — that's what responsible media should do. And that takes a bit of discipline because I think many people think that maybe, actually, panic sells. But I think we’re in the business of trying to give people information and kind of calm context so they understand what's going on.

President Trump is suing The New York Times in a Florida Court for $15 billion in compensation. CNN also seems to be frequently brought under fire by the Trump administration, so does this news intimidate you or the company at all?

The freedom of speech has very strong protections in the U.S. Constitution, the first amendment particularly, in the first article of the bill of rights, with very strong protections for freedom of speech. What’s really important is that it’s not just the press's right to publish without the government intervening at all, it’s also about the public's right to read and watch and listen to whatever they want. It's the public's right as well as the press's right. And we believe that that principle is very deep in American culture as well as in the Constitution, and that has always been defended strongly by the courts up to and including the Supreme Court, including this Supreme Court.

We’re obviously aware of hostility. I want to say, to be honest, that our attitude to this administration I want as far as possible to be the same as our attitude to every other administration, which is that we're there to treat them with respect to make sure that we actually allow them to get their point of view across.

We interview and talk to people who reflect their perspective but it's our job to hold them to account, and no political party always likes to [be held to] account. And you know you know the expression “shooting the messenger;” sometimes when there is bad news or they feel they're being asked questions, it's very tempting for politicians of left as well as right, to say, “Well how dare you ask me that question,” or “You're obviously hostile” or “You're using hate speech.”

I think we just need to keep calm and do our jobs basically, but we don't believe that we are or should be in a kind of fight or a struggle with any politician. I think political parties and the political leaders will do what they need to do and want to do, and sometimes, obviously, they've got to do politics with their supporters. Let them do that. I'd rather just get on with our professional job as journalists.

A June 25 CNN report on Iranian nuclear facilities, which U.S. President Donald Trump called "fake news" [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Trump also called a June 25 CNN report that the U.S. strikes on Iran did not destroy nuclear sites “fake news” and criticized the journalist who made the report. CNN stood by her and the report. What was this decision based on?

I was aware of the sourcing on that story and I want to tell you that this was a report by the Defense Intelligence Agency, which is the Pentagon's own intelligence service, making an early assessment [that was] caveatted because it was an early assessment of the how much damage was likely to have been done by the U.S. bombing raid on the Iranian nuclear facilities. And it said that the damage was likely to be fairly moderate, and so maybe these facilities have not been destroyed; we simply reported what we were told by multiple people who had been at that briefing. So this is not one person, it's multiple people and these were people from across the political spectrum, elected and nonelected, and so a lot of people were talking about what they'd heard, and all said the same thing. We felt very confident in the story, and we reported the story, and I think we genuinely don't know what the truth is.

CNN’s videos are getting tens of millions of views on streaming platforms such as TikTok and YouTube. How does this viewership that takes place outside of the CNN website or other platforms help CNN?

In some ways, it does help. It gets our journalism in front of very large groups of people and it means the CNN brand is available for people who wouldn't normally see it. So they begin to know, and maybe some of them will notice the brand, but it doesn't currently make as much money.

And I think one of the things we have to do is start getting experts on how to take that initial interest and encourage people to understand it comes from CNN. And if they concentrate on where it comes from, perhaps we can guide them more effectively to come to our digital properties and consume more. I think, this is in the jargon, these platforms help with the “top of the funnel,” trying to get new users who maybe aren't familiar with your brand, and to try and get them habituated to, and maybe ultimately become regular users of CNN, so that we go on replenishing our audience.

We want people to feel we're useful enough that they make us part of their lives. The world is full of very casual digital consumption. What we really want is a habit of consuming CNN amongst millions of people.

Mark Thompson, CEO of CNN, speaks in an interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily at the Four Seasons Hotel in Jongno District, central Seoul, on Sept. 18. [PARK SANG-MOON]

If you were 25 years old in 2025, would you have still gone into television or journalism?

It’s very hard to know that, but to me, personally, I talked about briefly in the conference, I genuinely believe that what we can do can be a public service. And I’ve been motivated by that than anything else. I think that good journalism can be really worthwhile and valuable because it informs the public. Now we're going to do that in 2025 in very different ways than when I joined the BBC at the age of just 22, and in those days we were doing it in 1979 in a way very similar to 1969, even in 1959. The "how" has changed, but I think the basic mission I'd still be very interested in being involved in. But you might do this entirely, as you know, working in digital products or working as an influencer. The pathway might be very different from joining the BBC as a graduate trainee.

I launched a streaming service at the BBC and I think to this day, it’s the most successful general streaming service from a legacy player. I joined it wanting to change it in a way, and that, I think, is my character, that kind of restlessness.

If you had to make a show about Korea, what would it be?

It’s complicated because we are creating a number of programs about Korea for the rest of the world.

Korea is a relatively small country in East Asia and Southeast Asia with very big, populous countries around you. The story of this small country and its impact on East Asia and the world, and the talent, characters and culture are very interesting because it’s still very deeply attached to its history in some ways, but it's incredibly forward-looking. I used to come to Korea to see about the early adoption of new media technologies. This is the place where you saw blocks of apartments with super high-speed broadband before anywhere else in the world had it.

We were talking about this earlier, taking global talent and global ideas and making them Korean, and then that becoming something the whole world sees — I think that aspect is what one of the most open and ambitious cultures in East Asia is doing. This hemisphere of the world is going to write much of the history of the 21st century, and within that, Korea is going to play a big part. I think it’s very exciting.

BY YOON SO-YEON, CHOI JI-YOUNG [[email protected]]