CNN Reason for Paramount/Warner Bros Lawsuits, David Ellison Claims

Posted in: TV, TV | Tagged: cnn, opinion, paramount

CNN Reason for Paramount/Warner Bros Lawsuits, David Ellison Claims

David Ellison is playing PR offense to save the Paramount Skydance/Warner Bros deal, claiming that concerns about CNN are behind the lawsuits.

Published Tue, 04 Aug 2026 08:08:09 -0500
by Ray Flook
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Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison wants 2026. The 12 states and the Writers Guild of America (WGA) want 2027. While we await Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín's decision on the trial date for the antitrust lawsuit filed by California Attorney General Rob Bonta (along with Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Washington) and the WGA to block the $110 billion deal for David Zaslav's Warner Bros Discovery, Ellison is going on the PR offensive. In an op-ed for The New York Times, Ellison is making the claim that "whether I can be trusted as a steward of Warner's CNN" is at the heart of the pending litigation. "There has been speculation about my politics, my loyalties, my intentions," Ellison writes, before reaffirming that CNN "will continue to answer to the facts and to all the people they serve – not to any party or cause."

"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; 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," Ellison continued.

"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, 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,'" he noted. Ellison would go on to claim that he hasn't publicly commented on the lawsuits in play to maintain a level of impartiality.

"I believe that anyone who oversees a news organization – I am chief executive of Paramount, which owns CBS – shouldn't put a finger on the scale, especially on matters involving his own company," Ellison wrote. "When California's attorney general, 11 other state attorneys general, and, a day later, the Writers Guild of America sued to stop the deal, I stayed quiet. I quickly learned such restraint has costs. While I was silent, others were happy to write my story for me. No more." From there, Ellison makes the argument that American viewers have lost faith in national news – and this is where the red flags come into play. "The temptation is to say the problem lies elsewhere. Our obligation is to look inward and say: We can do better. We are in a moment when Americans trust few institutions, but journalists haven't always helped their case by refusing to engage with critiques," Ellison argued.

Except, here's the problem. When you have the Trump Administration telling Americans that the news is lying to them without any facts to back up those claims, then you get folks not trusting the news. When you have a 24/7 propaganda machine that calls itself a "news channel" in FOX News, then you get folks not trusting the news. When you have folks in power keeping reporters from asking the hard questions, then you get folks not trusting the news. Ellison is right that CNN should look internally, but his willingness to quickly sweep aside the much larger outside factors speaks volumes

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