David Ellison defends Paramount’s Warner Bros. Discovery bid amid CNN-control concerns

CNN staffers push back on David Ellison's proposed editorial board amid the looming Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger, with one calling it "useless at best."

Paramount has discussed establishing an independent editorial board for CNN to ease well-established fears that the network’s sale wil reduce it to a mouthpiece for David and Larry Ellison—and by extension, President Trump. Paramount already owns CBS News, a relationship that has resulted in the ascension of The Free Press’s Bari Weiss and the crippling of 60 Minutes. Now, the $81 billion deal to buy CNN parent company Warner Bros. Discovery—which would give them a near monopoly on mainstream media—has been paused after 12 states filed an antitrust lawsuit to be heard in March of next year. Larry Ellison reportedly met directly with Trump last November, and earlier this year was hit with allegations of “credible concern that Paramount leadership has offered, solicited, or effectuated a corrupt exchange: more favorable coverage of the Trump administration and its allies in exchange for favorable treatment by Trump administration antitrust and media regulators.” Trump has been critical of CNN for the greater part of a decade. Everything the Ellisons have done so far at CBS News, from uplifting Bari Weiss to pushing the network in a more pro-Israel direction—has been to gain Trump’s blessing for this massive deal. It’s no wonder people are concerned—and unconvinced—about some independent editorial board actually doing anything to stop that from continuing. And while some referenced conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch creating a similar committee when he purchased Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones in 2007, others have noted that that too was simply all for show.

A court date has been set in 2027 for the cases seeking to block the Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. Discovery merger

For months, the biggest media story has been Paramount’s attempt to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery for $111 billion. The deal is now tangled up in the courts as attorneys general […] The post David Ellison broke months of silence on CNN’s future. His biggest critics won’t be reassured. appeared first on Poynter.

"I believe that anyone who oversees a news organization — I am chief executive of Paramount, which owns CBS — shouldn’t put a finger on the scale, especially on matters involving his own company," Elllison wrote.

Paramount CEO David Ellison says the real fight over his $111 billion Warner Bros. Discovery merger is whether he can be trusted as a steward of CNN news.