Well the cat’s outta the bag and the gloves are off. Paramount CEO David Ellison went public with his view that the Paramount-Warner Bros deal hinges mainly on CNN – which is exactly what I wrote last week in a New York Times op-ed.
It feels like an opening salvo in a negotiation.
“The issue is whether I can be trusted as a steward of Warner’s CNN,” he said in his own New York Times op-ed, in a highly unusual public confession.
He went on, explaining his politics: “I hold some views that would be called conservative and others that would be called liberal, just like most Americans; and when it comes to our news operations, I do not aspire to lead these companies to bend their newsrooms to my views. I believe that news should be based on facts and truth.”
That is not a specific commitment to maintaining CNN as it is, but it is a first step in moving toward a resolution by recognizing that this concern is what is motivating the state attorneys general in their lawsuit to stop the merger.
Ellison furthermore said this on on Paramount’s earnings call on Tuesday: “We’re absolutely open to finding a solution out of court, but we also really believe that we’ll win at trial. We believe that the facts and the law are are on our side…”
California AG Rob Bonta, for his part, said during a press conference last month that he is not considering a settlement and asked to respond on Wednesday issued a statement that “our challenge to the Warner Bros./Paramount merger is a clear-cut antitrust case. This merger is unlawful under federal law.”
The lawsuit itself barely raises the question of news, mentioning the network alongside other cable channels in an effort to illustrate the state AGs’ concerns over the power it wields in the cable business – not news. And in an interview with Politico Bonta said that if Paramount makes the offer to spin off CNN, “we’ll consider it. But it’s not our focus and it doesn’t come close to addressing our concerns.”
To be frank, we are all concerned about Larry and David Ellison holding such a massive concentration of power – including movie studios Paramount and Warner Bros., streaming services HBO and Paramount+, and notably CNN and CBS News. This would come on top of Larry’s 15% stake in TikTok’s U.S. operations.
We have rarely seen this much media power vested in a single family, though perhaps the Murdochs come close — and that’s not been great. Ellison is way too cozy with Donald Trump for anyone’s comfort; like the tech moguls, he seems ready to mollify Dear Leader to get his business done.
Which brings us to this: Ellison did not mention the player who has fueled the concerns of all and sundry, his CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss.
As has been widely reported on, including in this column, Weiss has done herself no favors with her slash-and-burn approach to remaking CBS News, abruptly firing respected veterans while also physically removing herself from the newsroom.
WaxWord has learned that Weiss moved her office from the main floor of the CBS building, where the newsroom lives and “CBS Mornings” is recorded to the sixth floor, with her coterie of lieutenants.
This has done nothing to shore up the trust she shredded when she summarily fired respected “60 Minutes” veterans Scott Pelley, Tonya Simon and Cecilia Vega earlier this summer and effectively chased out Anderson Cooper who begged to stay home more with his children.
Last week she and executive producer Nick Bilton announced a new lineup of reporters at “60 Minutes,” the star in the firmament of CBS News, including luring conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat and war reporter and author Sebastian Junger. They may be fine in replacing the veterans who came before.
But the point is Weiss still inspires suspicion rather than confidence. A CBS News insider countered that the new hires at “60 Minutes” are “a signal to the newsroom that ’60 Minutes’ is going to do hard, probing, revelatory work and do investigative journalism.”
But according to two of my sources, there is no decision internally at Paramount and CBS as to whether to combine CNN with CBS News. A source familiar with Ellison’s thinking said that “no leadership structure decisions around CNN” have been made.
That said, as I reported earlier, the view remains that if the two entites are combined, they will not be run by Weiss. That is a tacit recognition that she has not been successful thus far in finding a successful pivot for the news organization.
A senior source at CBS News told me: “Her scoping editorial is improving. But what’s gonna kill her is the management.”
This insider confirmed that Weiss has done nothing to rebuild trust in the newsroom after sending out her manifesto early this year, and instituted the brutal firings of respected journalists that drew an avalanche of public criticism.
Instead she’s up on the sixth floor.
As regards CNN, the concern is not only about Weiss’s politics. “It’s about skill set,” said this insider. “The question raised today is – are they separate entities but they collaborate on staffing and coverage? If it is combined, it will not be Bari.”
Mark Thomson is running CNN, and is unlikely to agree to report to Weiss, who has far less experience than he does.
So here are a few conclusions:
- David Ellison is open to negotiations around CNN, but doesn’t want to sell it.
- Bari Weiss would not run a combined CNN-CBS News operation.
- Paramount corporate leaders are still stymied for a solution to this news problem.
The $110 billion deal, as I wrote last week, seems to hang on this one division: news.
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