Ex-CNN reporter Saima Mohsin suing network for racial discrimination, unfair dismissal
A former CNN reporter is suing the network for unfair dismissal and racial discrimination after an assignment in Israel that she claims left her with an “invisible disability.”
Saima Mohsin, 46, was reporting from Jerusalem on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2014 when her cameraman ran over her left foot, causing such severe tissue damage that the journalist struggled to sit, stand, walk or work full-time, according to the Guardian.
She allegedly asked for alternative assignments and support for rehab, but CNN refused.
And when Mohsin asked for a presenting role that reduced the amount of time spent traveling, she claims she was told: “You don’t have the look we are looking for.”
Her contract was terminated three years later, as per the Guardian.
Because of the network’s response to Mohsin’s life-changing injury, she brought an employment tribunal claim, which is set to be heard in a London court Monday.
In her complaint, she alleges that she was unfairly dismissed from her role at CNN, and that the network discriminates based on race and disability.
She also claims there’s a gender pay gap in the Warner Bros. Discovery-owned newsroom, and that managers denied her high-profile, on-air opportunities in favor of white American correspondents despite Mohsin being ready to go live on the ground.
The network opposed Mohsin’s claims on territorial grounds, arguing that the terms of Mohsin’s contract don’t allow her to bring a case in London, according to the Guardian.
“I worked hard to become an international correspondent and loved my job with CNN. I risked my life many times on assignment for CNN believing they would have my back. They did not,” she told the outlet.
According to Mohsin’s LinkedIn page, she worked for CNN for more than five years, first as the network’s Pakistan correspondent before serving as the international correspondent.
A CNN spokesperson declined The Post’s request for comment.
Mohsin, a British Pakistani journalist, now presents for London-based Sky News on a freelance basis, and has made a program for ITV about the pain of living with invisible disabilities.
She told the Daily Mirror earlier this year that after sustaining the injury in 2014, she would stand “on one leg like a flamingo” on camera, but was eventually bedridden as the pain got worse and her foot turned black, according to an Instagram post Mohsin shared of the newspaper page.
Since 2019, Mohsin has worked with a pain specialist who has helped her treat her crush injury and gotten a blue badge — London’s version of America’s handicap parking permit, which she says “was a big market in learning about invisible disability and admitting that, yes, I do have a disability.”
“We worked out that my ligaments and tendons had been stretched by the tire going slowly over my foot. I’d lost elasticity and structure, had a lisfranc (mid-foot) injury and complex regional pain syndrome,” she told the outlet.
The Post has reached out to Mohsin for comment.
Mohsin’s case comes at a time when CNN is still recovering from The Atlantic’s scathing profile about then-network boss Chris Licht that portrayed the CEO as a thin-skinned executive who isolated himself from his workforce and struggled to move out of his beloved predecessor’s shadow.
Licht has since been axed — along with the PR execs who oversaw the devastating, 15,000-word report — and has been temporarily replaced by three in-house chiefs.
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said the search for a new head honcho could be a long one, as he needs a chief executive who can resuscitate the beleaguered news channel.
