ABC News President Kim Godwin Targeting People Who Were Not Her 'Supporters' Or 'Fans' With Recent Layoffs, Source Says
ABC News president Kim Godwin may be getting personal with her recent round of layoffs.
In March, the executive announced the widespread termination of 50 employees at the company. However, according to insiders, the firings may be due to a lack of personal loyalty to Godwin rather than unsatisfactory work.
“It feels personal,” the insider at ABC claimed. “They’re targeting people to figure out who’s leaking, and the layoffs are a part of it. They’re trying to make an example of them."
According to a source close to the situation, some feel as if the businesswoman was focusing in on “people she thought were not on her team, or people she suspected either wanted her job or [were] trying to take her down."
To make matters worse, the names of the laid off employees were then published in the media right after they were let go. “It was like a ‘This is a nail in your coffin’ type of thing. All of the people that are gone are the people who she suspected weren’t her supporters and fans," another insider explained.
When the public discovered who ended up getting the boot, people felt as if someone was out “to humiliate these people — and they’ve accomplished it.”
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"The news division was treated differently than the rest of the company. It was vindictive, targeted and mean," said another.
Despite multiple people accusing her of being sinister with her actions, others say Godwin's behavior has been nothing of the sort. “Kim is a God-centered woman. It’s just not true. The decisions made were not in that vein,” one source insisted. “She was supposed to be a change agent. A big reason they brought her in was to clean up the snake-pit culture."
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Perhaps her most headline-making firings were announced in January when Godwin and the network broke ties with GMA3 co-anchors Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes after their office affair was exposed.
“We ended up where we needed to be, and I’m very comfortable with that decision,” she later told Vanity Fair of the firings.
Page Six was the first to report the alleged motivation behind the layoffs.