When John Dickerson announced he was leaving CBS in October 2025, it was less than a month after David Ellison took control of Paramount, CBS’s parent, and appointed Bari Weiss to overhaul the news division.
Weiss was, more or less, an opinion writer with no television news experience. Evening news anchor Dickerson, a CBS fixture for 16 years, said at the time he would be gone by year’s end.
Everyone in the media business understood what it meant. The people who embodied the old CBS News were in danger of losing their jobs. Dickerson packed up before he would presumably be told to clean out his desk.
Now it’s happening again, almost a year to the day. On Monday, Christiane Amanpour announced she is leaving CNN after 43 years, just weeks after Ellison’s Skydance closed its takeover of CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery.
Her statement said she was leaving after “many months of thought and a few sleepless nights.” CNN chairman Mark Thompson says they’ve discussed her exit for months. Nobody is saying it’s about Ellison.
Of course they aren’t. Because it is, and anyone who thinks otherwise isn’t paying attention. As the old saying goes, fool me once, shame on you — if you thought Ellison would touch CBS. Fool me twice, shame on me — if you believe Ellison won’t touch CNN.
Amanpour is not a nonpartisan bystander to the story, and she made her views known earlier this year about the new ownership. In May, she said she was concerned about CNN’s future “based on what’s happened to the other things” Ellison has taken over, “like CBS News.”
Amanpour is the ShakeAlert before a severe earthquake arrives. It’s coming, and, like CBS News, it will be destructive for CNN.
Ellison has promised CNN editorial independence. But he made promises about CBS, too. Reporting during the merger fight said he offered Trump administration officials assurances of sweeping change at CBS News, even as he told the public something else. CBS staffers felt betrayed.
They were not only betrayed. They were slaughtered by a greedy, conservative billionaire who only cares about kowtowing to Donald Trump and couldn’t care less about a free press.
Look at how deplorable CBS became. Weiss has reportedly pushed CBS reporters to chase “thin theories” about Democratic Senate candidates. Semafor reports she directed “serious resources” toward linking Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed to the Muslim Brotherhood and had staff pursue a rumor that Texas’s James Talarico was in a mental health facility.
CBS staffers told reporters that her ideas routinely come from social media influencers and opposition research placed in conservative outlets. This is what “independence” looks like under Ellison.
Is anyone else out there enraged about this reporting? Weiss is despicable, but I’m sure her boss, Ellison, is quite pleased. And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but enjoy Ted Turner’s CNN for as long as you can, because it’s about to get torn apart, with money at the root, as usual.
The combined company Ellison is running is carrying enormous debt, and Ellison has promised investors billions in annual savings. Every media merger in history ends the same way: the big salaries go. The new company ethos is cut, cut, cut.
At CNN, that means the biggest names on the roster. Amanpour may simply be the sharpest tool in the shed. She’s reading the writing on the wall, leaving of her own accord, and implicitly warning that the knives are coming out.
The next question is who becomes the next Bari Weiss, because the aforementioned Thompson, with four decades of broadcast experience, is surely on the chopping block. There’s no doubt in my mind.
I’m speculating, but it’s informed speculation based on the CBS blueprint, that Ellison could install an outsider with no newsroom background and a mandate to disrupt and please the right-wing base.
Imagine someone like Breaking Points’ Saagar Enjeti, a populist who built an audience by telling people the cable news establishment is rotten. Ellison could pitch that as a new type of “balance” in news presentation.
But someone like Enjeti — and that person is coming — would be like a bulldozer and wrecking ball at CNN.
CNN has spent years trying to showcase a range of voices, and it has not gone smoothly. Scott Jennings is not only a jerk, but he’s been a disaster — mmm, well, maybe not so much, because he sure lights up social media.
He’s the network’s most polarizing panelist. Whether you find him entertaining or, like me, annoying, think about how he looks to a new owner who wants a more right-leaning product. If Ellison wants a face for the new CNN, I wouldn’t bet against someone like Jennings.
Can you imagine? Well, yes, I can.
If we base what will happen to CNN on what happened to CBS, then first comes the promise of independence. Then come the cost cuts — they will be far-reaching — followed by a new boss with a so-called “fresh perspective,” and then the numerous departures of the network’s most trusted voices.
Dickerson was the first at CBS. Amanpour is the first at CNN.
Amanpour’s parting advice to her colleagues was simple: “Always be truthful, not neutral.” CNN’s days of being neutral and truthful are numbered.
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