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Lemon’s Lightning

More news and notes on the Lemon saga, the Barkley-Gayle question, and ‘CNN This Morning.’

Don Lemon seems to have been given every warning to self-edit before saying what’s on his mind, which, coincidentally, is the one thing that actually delivers ratings.
Don Lemon seems to have been given every warning to self-edit before saying what’s on his mind, which, coincidentally, is the one thing that actually delivers ratings. Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images
Dylan Byers
February 24, 2023

This week, while CNN C.E.O. Chris Licht was trying to bring a modicum of closure to the enduring Don Lemon “women-in-their-prime” fiasco, a national media micro-imbroglio that has become a microcosm of the network’s various challenges—tighter budgets, falling ratings, more fragile egos, ever newer data sets that a bygone era keeps ending—Charles Barkley decided to weigh in. The ever-candid Hall of Fame basketball player and star analyst of The NBA on TNT, who also happens to be up for a role on CNN, offered his own candid assessment of the news network’s current predicament in an interview with the New York Post.