Speaking at a press conference last month, the US secretary of defence, Pete Hegseth, criticised CNN’s ‘fake news’ coverage of the US-Israel war on Iran.
‘The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better,’ he told the room of journalists.
If the Ellison family successfully acquire Warner Brothers in a planned $110bn deal, they will become the most powerful media magnates on the planet.
In 2025, the family’s company Skydance Media merged with Paramount Global and took control of CBS News. If the Warner Brothers deal proceeds, they will also control HBO and CNN.
David Ellison, Paramount’s chief executive, has insisted that CNN’s editorial independence will be maintained, but the Guardian columnist Margaret Sullivan tells Helen Pidd why this seems unlikely, based on his stewardship of CBS so far.
Margaret discusses the hiring of Bari Weiss and argues that Paramount’s decision to settle with Donald Trump for $16m over the CBS 60 Minutes Kamala Harris interview ‘set the tone for other settlements by media companies that have come afterwards’.
‘Donald Trump is trying to control the message, and how do you control the message? You control the media,’ Margaret tells Helen. ‘It’s a powerful force when you have the media on your side and, as you know, when democracies start to become more authoritarian and more autocratic, the first thing those leaders want to do is to diminish independence of the press.’
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