Speaking out on the lawsuit against the massive merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), Paramount CEO David Ellison said that the legal backlash against the deal is “not really about market share” but rather stems from political motivations.
Noting in a New York Times guest essay published on Tuesday that the deal has “been reviewed and approved by regulators reflecting 65 countries, including the United States”, Ellison played down the competitive concerns raised by the state coalition and Writers Guild of America West and Writers Guild of America East, which also sued to block the deal, and said he believes the reaction comes from a “plainer worry”.
“The issue is whether I can be trusted as a steward of Warner’s CNN. There has been speculation about my politics, my loyalties, my intentions,” Ellison wrote. “Unfortunately, I can’t give anyone a view into my heart and mind, but I can share this: I have regularly voted for candidates of both parties; I hold some views that would be called conservative and others that would be called liberal, just like most Americans.”
Reporting has showed that Ellison and his father have made promises to the Trump administration about swaying the network in a more favorable direction, purportedly to encourage federal regulators to approve the merger, prompting backlash from Democrats such as Elizabeth Warren.
Backlash against Ellison, son of tech mogul Larry Ellison, one of the wealthiest people in the world, as a media owner began last summer after after his company, Skydance Media, went through an $8.4bn merger with Paramount Global. As the deal was closing, CBS abruptly announced it was canceling The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, which aired its last episode in May.
Once the merger was completed, Ellison appointed heterodox opinion writer Bari Weiss to run CBS News, a controversial move that has led to layoffs and editorial tensions at the network.
Without directly addressing any of the controversies around CBS News, Ellison wrote that he is committed to the independence that is at the core of the “founding principles” of CNN and CBS News.
“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,” Ellison wrote. “Great news organizations like CNN and CBS News are here to tell it straight down the middle. That requires newsrooms that reflect the whole world, not one side of it. And it requires independence. Our journalists will continue to answer to the facts and to all the people they serve – not to any party or cause.”
“These were founding principles for both CNN and CBS News,” Ellison continued. “For legends like Ted Turner and Edward R. Murrow, and it is exactly that kind of independence that has always fueled the greatness of ‘60 Minutes.’”
Ellison’s essay (“The Critics Are Wrong About My Politics”) comes at a pivotal time for his $111bn merger agreement to buy WBD, which is currently held up in a California court after a 12-state coalition sued to block the deal on anti-competitive grounds.
After district judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín agreed to temporarily block the deal, Paramount made the unusual decision to bypass the temporary injunction stage and hold up the merger until the case can go to trial – or until June 2027. The parties have both made proposals for when the case should reach trial, with Paramount asking for a November trial and the state coalition asking for a date in April 2027.
