David Ellison, the billionaire media mogul, feted President Trump and top members of his administration at a private dinner in Washington on Thursday as his company, Paramount, seeks federal sign-off on a $111 billion deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery.
The gathering, at the U.S. Institute of Peace, included top executives and journalists from CBS News, which Paramount owns. Bari Weiss, the network’s editor in chief, joined Mr. Ellison at Mr. Trump’s table, and Norah O’Donnell, the former “Evening News” anchorwoman, also attended, according to two people briefed on details of the closed-door event.
Among the guests was Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general. Mr. Blanche oversees the Justice Department, whose antitrust division is set to review the Warner Bros. acquisition. The deal would place CNN and HBO, among other outlets, under Mr. Ellison’s control. Paramount’s chief legal officer, Makan Delrahim, also sat with Mr. Trump, the people said.
The president spoke for nearly an hour to the guests, a group that included Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller, a deputy White House chief of staff.
Journalists who cover the White House regularly spend time with senior administration officials, and evening events are part and parcel of the reporting process. On Saturday, much of the Washington press corps is set to attend the black-tie dinner of the White House Correspondents’ Association, where Mr. Trump is scheduled to speak.
But it is rare for a national media organization to sponsor an event intended to fete the powerful politicians who are covered by its news division, and rarer still when it has a major transaction pending before the federal government. Invitations to the event, which were distributed by Paramount and listed Mr. Ellison as the host, described the evening as “honoring the Trump White House.”
Several CBS News journalists said they were taken aback by the existence of the dinner. They described consternation within the CBS newsroom over the event’s potential to create a perception of coziness between the news division and the Trump administration. The journalists requested anonymity to share sensitive, private discussions.
Mr. Ellison is the son of Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of the software giant Oracle. Larry Ellison, who did not attend Thursday’s event, has appeared with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office. David Ellison has sat with the president at Ultimate Fighting Championship matches and attended this year’s State of the Union address.
Ms. Weiss, an opinion journalist who co-founded The Free Press, has been accused by critics of bending CBS’s news coverage in a more Trump-friendly direction. She says that her editorial decisions are her own, and that she acts independently of Mr. Ellison and Mr. Trump. Mr. Ellison has said he wants to avoid bias in news coverage.
CBS’s flagship news program, “60 Minutes,” has aired some tough pieces about the Trump administration in recent weeks, including a segment featuring Mr. Trump’s critics in the Roman Catholic Church that prompted a volcanic presidential response. Mr. Trump himself has delivered mixed reviews of CBS’s new iteration, sometimes applauding Mr. Ellison’s takeover of the network but also harshly criticizing “60 Minutes” reports that he considered unfair.
Paramount declined to comment. Representatives for the White House and CBS News did not respond to requests for comment.
Paramount beat out a rival bidder, Netflix, in February to secure the purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, a deal that would reshape the American news and information landscape. Warner Bros. shareholders approved the sale this week, but it has to pass muster with regulators at the Justice Department.
Mr. Trump’s table included the first lady, Melania Trump, and Ms. Weiss’s wife, the journalist Nellie Bowles, according to the two people briefed on the event.
Other CBS journalists who attended were Tom Cibrowski, the CBS News president; Jan Crawford, the chief legal correspondent; Nancy Cordes, the chief White House correspondent; and Weijia Jiang, a White House correspondent who is president of the White House Correspondents’ Association.
Several dozen protesters gathered outside the Institute of Peace, which sits along the National Mall, on Thursday to assail Mr. Ellison and the pending Warner Bros. sale. Some chanted, “Block the merger.”
Mr. Miller and Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, are expected to attend the Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday as guests of CBS News.
Aishvarya Kavi and Tyler Pager contributed reporting.
Michael M. Grynbaum writes about the intersection of media, politics and culture. He has been a media correspondent at The Times since 2016.
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