Would I Lie To You?

After torching CBS News, David Ellison wants us to believe he won’t do the same to CNN

David Ellison, owner of Paramount Skydance Credit: Getty Images

Trust is earned, not given. The billionaire owner of Paramount Skydance, David Ellison, would do well to internalize that axiom. Ellison finds himself on the losing side of a public relations battle in his efforts to merge his company with Warner Bros. Discovery. He now believes, as he has written in a guest essay published in The New York Times, that the real cause of the merger delay is CNN.

“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,” he wrote.

Well, yes… but it’s not just speculation; there is a long trail of evidence. After kowtowing to Donald Trump to buy Paramount, Ellison oversaw the demolition of CBS News as we knew it. A big part of that was taking a wrecking ball to one of the most watched and profitable programs in television history, “60 Minutes.” So yes, Mr. Ellison, America is rightfully concerned about your trustworthiness.

The world does not need another Fox News. Nor do we need some craftier, more sophisticated version of Fox, but with the heart and soul of that propaganda network. It would be a better place if we were completely Fox-free, but, realistically, it’s too popular and too profitable for that ever to happen. What we do need are more reliable sources in television news.

Since acquiring CBS a year ago, Ellison has watched ratings fall and anxiety rise inside the once-venerated network. Donald Trump hates CBS and “60 Minutes.” He feels the same way about CNN. When it comes to Ellison and his possible stewardship of CNN, another truism comes to mind: actions speak louder than words.

There is a legal reason for the delay of the merger. Twelve state attorneys general have filed suit to stop the $111 billion mega-merger. The Writers Guild of America has filed a separate suit. Both contend that the merger would restrict competition in the movie and television industries while limiting collective bargaining power.

A U.S. district judge has scheduled the trial for next March. Until then, the merger is on hold. So Ellison decided it was time to wage war in the court of public opinion.

Ellison’s public relations effort in the Times had little to do with assuaging concerns about market concentration and everything to do with claiming to be a champion of free speech. Besides the Warner Bros. film and television studios, HBO, and Discovery, the merger also includes cable news giant CNN.

“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 wrote.

His actions tell another story. Ellison paid $150 million to buy The Free Press website and hired Bari Weiss, its polarizing, right-leaning owner with zero television experience, to run his news division.

In the Times piece, the scion of billionaire Larry Ellison asked the public to believe he would allow CNN to function independently of his influence. The line from the musical “Hamilton” keeps running through my mind: “I’m a trust fund baby, you can trust me.”

“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.’”

Invoking “60 Minutes” is a dubious strategy. The news magazine has been ground zero for Ellison and Weiss’s hostilities at CBS News.

Since the Ellison takeover, four award-winning correspondents, Sharyn Alfonsi, Anderson Cooper, Scott Pelley, and Cecilia Vega, have left or been fired, along with executive producers Bill Owens and Tanya Simon. A host of producers, the backbone of “60,” are also out.

Alfonsi’s contract was not renewed after she publicly challenged the holding of her investigation into the Trump administration’s decision to deport hundreds of Venezuelan men to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison.

In an email to colleagues, Alfonsi called her firing “a deliberate choice to penalize a journalist for refusing to sanitize accurate reporting.”

Pelley was fired for accusing Weiss of “murdering” the news magazine. CBS didn’t give a reason for Vega’s firing. She said she pushed back against pressure to insert political bias and false claims into her pieces.

“I’ve gone head-to-head with editors for 25 years in this business. But never in my career, until now, have I felt that those edits, those suggestions, came from a place of misinformation or politics,” Vega said at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ annual conference.

Ellison’s leadership of CBS News was clearly a litmus test for Trump, whose Department of Justice had to okay the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger. Ellison must have passed muster because the DOJ approved it in June.

Just a reminder — the DOJ is constitutionally part of the executive branch under the president — but is supposed to have a high degree of independence. Trump, however, has turned it into an extension of his own legal team, installing his personal defense attorney, Todd Blanche, as its temporary head.

Each of the three firings of “60 Minutes” correspondents was abrupt and no doubt left several stories unfinished and un-aired. We found out about one this week when Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) released a 61-page report accusing several Wall Street banks of ignoring a multitude of suspicious financial transactions by Jeffrey Epstein.

Alfonsi confirms she was working on a piece about Epstein’s ties to Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and the government of the U.S. Virgin Islands. She interviewed Senator Wyden for the piece, but was fired before it was ready for air.

Could that piece and others end up on a new “60 Minutes” reboot on another network or platform? A lot of conflicting speculation and reporting about such a move has been swirling as of late.

To find out what is actually happening, we spoke with my old friend Bill Owens, the former executive producer of “60 Minutes” who resigned last year, citing a loss of journalistic independence for the program.

He said he made the rounds in Hollywood, but no one is willing to put up the money and take the risks for a new “60 Minutes.” At least not yet. As a personal note, allow me to add that if anyone can build a new “60 Minutes,” it’s Bill Owens.

There are no doubt concerns about businesses taking on such a project considering the White House occupant and his well-documented hatred of “60 Minutes.” But hope springs eternal. A special thank you to Bill and all of the staff who produced quality journalism and great storytelling for so many years.

In the meantime, Alfonsi and Pelley will be busy teaching the next generation of journalists. Columbia University’s journalism school just announced that the former correspondents will be journalists in residence for the 2026-27 school year. Those are some lucky students.

Alfonsi described her new role “as an extraordinary privilege, especially at a time when deep, rigorous, and fearless reporting has never been more vital.”

That is also true of independent journalism as a whole. Corporate America is turning its back on news that matters. Our need to know has never been more important as we watch the most corrupt administration in American history trample our democracy.

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Stay Steady,
Dan