American Economic Liberties Project’s Alvaro Bedoya (AP, 9/21/26): “Today, billionaires have yet again bribed, censored and bullied their way to the top.”

Paramount’s purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, which faced legal action and concern that Paramount boss David Ellison may be consolidating too much media power, is now going forward. A dozen states brought litigation that tied the merger up in court, but they announced a settlement this week. According to California Attorney General Rob Bonta (AP, 9/21/26), Paramount has “pledged to increase film production in the US, commit millions of dollars to a fund to support workers displaced by the merger,” and establish “new monitoring of the editorial independence of the company’s news operations.”

This merger will further shrink news ownership, as the deal allows Paramount, which already controls CBS News, to acquire CNN, the third largest US news site. What’s more, Ellison is the son of—and is bankrolled by—one of the richest Americans, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, who is friendly with President Donald Trump (All Things Considered, 10/6/25) and an ardent supporter of the Israeli military (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 11/5/17).

David Ellison’s changes at CBS News don’t bode well for CNN‘s independence. Bari Weiss, the infamous conservative pundit whom he installed as CBS News editor-in-chief, put the brakes on a 60 Minutes report about Trump administration deportations (AP, 12/22/25) and allegedly tried to manipulate reporting on the Minneapolis anti-ICE protests to fit the administration’s narrative (Guardian, 6/8/26). Weiss oversaw the firing of veteran 60 Minutes staff like Scott Pelley (New York Times, 6/7/26), replacing them with conservative voices like former Times columnist Ross Douthat (New York Times, 7/28/26).

‘Editorial Independence Board’

“Connecticut wanted and demanded full divestiture of CNN and CBS News,” said Connecticut Attorney General William Tong (Hollywood Reporter, 9/21/26). “We wanted to save ethical and independent journalism and news.”

While Bonta was apparently mollified by the promise of “editorial independence,” no reasonable person should get too excited about the “monitoring” that will supposedly ensure it. According to the settlement (Hollywood Reporter, 9/21/26):

The Editorial Independence Board shall be made up of five (5) established journalists (active or retired), each of whom shall have practiced journalism for a minimum of ten (10) years (including with credentials for at least three (3) years)…. No more than two (2) Editorial Independence Board Members may be affiliated with the same political party.

This monitoring board’s members will be appointed by Paramount’s board of directors—an immediate first problem in terms of potential bias, and in terms of true independence. The agreement does not define what “credentials” will be required, either; there is, thankfully, no standard process in the United States for accrediting journalists.

The political affiliation requirement for these “Editorial Independence Board Members” is particularly concerning. Journalists do not generally consider themselves to be “affiliated” with political parties, but the corporate media system has a stubborn attachment to the two-party system, in which inclusion of Democrats and Republicans is believed to guarantee balance. (The limit of two per party suggests a vision of two journalists from each, with a fifth “neutral” member to break ties.)

But in 2026, a journalist who registers as a Republican is identifying with a party that is increasingly a cult of personality: The 2020 GOP platform, after all, boiled down to “whatever Trump says.” And what Trump says is that journalists are the enemies of the people; when they criticize his government, they’re committing treason. Having people on a journalistic independence panel who accept this view of journalism is not a guarantee of balance but of subservience.

A political shift

Semafor (9/23/26): “The possibility of [Musk] having even partial ownership in CNN and CBS would likely raise alarm bells in Washington.”

There’s more: As Deadline (9/21/26) pointed out, the deal doesn’t “restrict a combination of CBS News and CNN,” nor does it

give the board oversight over who runs the respective news entities, something that has been an issue as CEO David Ellison tapped Bari Weiss to lead CBS News after Skydance’s purchase of Paramount last year.

In other words, the settlement sounds an awful lot like the public is losing another national media outlet to Trump’s anti-press war.

As if things couldn’t get bleaker, Semafor (9/23/26) reported that Ellison and other company honchos “discussed asking Elon Musk to become part of a syndicate of equity investors into Paramount.” The New York Post (9/23/26) said this move “could fuel the burgeoning panic among CNN staffers.”

Bringing Musk in on the deal clearly suggests a political shift, as Musk’s ownership of X, formerly Twitter, has turned the social network to the right (Conversation, 3/20/23; Bloomberg, 6/12/24). Musk has also moved to invest “$100 million to $120 million” to support Republicans this November (New York Times, 7/30/26).

This is also a sign of the incestuous investment nature of these top tech oligarchs when it comes to consolidating media. Semafor said Ellison’s father has “personally guaranteed more than $40 billion of the equity financing for Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros.” Larry Ellison also “invested $1 billion in Musk’s 2022 deal to take X,” Semafor said, while Oracle became a major stakeholder in TikTok after the US government forced its sale from its Chinese owner (Democracy Now!, 6/23/26). The joke that America is just three corporations in a trenchcoat is starting to look real.

‘Enforcing real editorial standards’

A board that “will apparently act as a sort of ombudsman that will arbitrate disputes between employees and management…could make life miserable for editors,” writes the Wall Street Journaleditors (9/21/26). Or, given that the board will be entirely appointed by management, it could be a PR exercise to ratify corporate policy.

Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, always eager to see another regime-adjacent oligarch consolidating American media, praised the deal in an editorial (9/21/26):

Mr. Ellison installed Bari Weiss as head of CBS News to grease the wheels for Trump Administration approval. But his courtship of the White House magnified Democratic opposition. Saving CNN from Mr. Ellison became the real motivation for Mr. Bonta and the AGs. Irony alert: Mr. Ellison in 2024 gave a Democratic Super PAC backing the Biden-Harris campaign nearly $1 million.

Mr. Ellison placated the AGs by agreeing to establish an “editorial independence board” to ensure “accuracy, independence, fairness and journalistic integrity” at CNN and CBS News. Isn’t this what news editors are supposed to do?

The Journal presented David Ellison’s past contributions to Democratic causes as evidence of some kind of evenhandedness on his part, or possibly hypocrisy on Bonta’s part. But Ellison’s administration of CBS News is evidence enough that the public should be worried about right-wing partisan manipulation of the news.

“Isn’t this what news editors are supposed to do?” Yes, but the people doing their jobs at 60 Minutes got replaced by Douthat, whose “baby bust obsession is clearly grounded in xenophobia and white nationalist anxieties” (FAIR.org, 7/31/26).

The editorial board of the California Post (9/22/26), the new LA-based extension of Murdoch’s New York Post, had an even more pathetic take, saying “Bari Weiss—a liberal who left the New York Times for being too ‘woke’—took over CBS News and began enforcing real editorial standards.” The West Coast Post gloated that “the same could happen at CNN, which has been laughably left-wing in recent years.”

It’s little surprise that Weiss’ heavy-handed pro-Trump interventions at CBS would pass for “enforcing real editorial standards” at the right-wing Post. As for CNN, you can judge for yourself how “laughably left-wing” it has been in recent years.

‘Tell it straight down the middle’

“Journalists haven’t always helped their case by refusing to engage with critiques,” says Paramount CEO David Ellison (New York Times, 8/4/26) as he fails to explain how putting propagandist Bari Weiss in charge of CBS News squares with his promise that “great news organizations…are here to tell it straight down the middle.”

It’s easy to imagine these editorialists snickering as they type such fairy tales, and David Ellison himself attempted to convince audiences he wouldn’t interfere with CNN’s independence in a New York Times op-ed (8/4/26):

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.

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.

The problem is that news organizations absolutely should not “tell it straight down the middle” when that middle lies between the pro-corporate status quo and a white nationalist fever dream. And Ellison’s administration of CBS News, and especially 60 Minutes, has resulted in the firing of seasoned staff in exchange for regime-friendly hacks, allowing Weiss to shift the editorial view closer to that of the Republican administration. Regardless of the settlement terms, there’s simply no reason to trust that this won’t happen with CNN.

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