Just hours after Netflix ceded the fight for Warner Bros. to Paramount, CNN‘s CEO Mark Thompson tried to alleviate anxieties over the pending new owners in a staff memo: “Despite all the speculation you’ve read during this process, I’d suggest that you don’t jump to conclusions about the future until we know more.”
Newsrooms, though, are notoriously made up of skeptics, for good reason in an environment of layoffs and buyouts, and, more recently, corporate efforts to woo President Donald Trump. Despite Thompson’s message, the mood among many at the cable news network on Friday was “beyond bleak,” per one source.
Paramount has yet to comment on its specific plans for the network after emerging as the winner for WBD, but in the months since Warner Bros Discovery put itself up for sale, there has been rampant speculation about what life will look like if the David Ellison-led company owned CNN.
Fears only accelerated after the Wall Street Journal reported in December that Ellison made assurances to Trump that he would make major changes to the network, long a target of the president’s. Ellison’s appearance at Trump’s State of the Union address, as a guest of one of his most stalwart congressional supporters, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), probably didn’t help soothe fears of the network’s future editorial direction.
“There should be a lot of concern and consternation,” said Frank Sesno, professor at the George Washington School of Media and Public Affairs and former Washington bureau chief for CNN.
When Sesno was at the network, he went through two mergers, when Time Warner acquired the network in 1995 and then when AOL bought Time Warner in 2000. Each time, he said, the question was whether corporate interests align and whether that values journalism.
This time is different, he said.
“Does CNN’s unique global presence matter?” Sesno said. “Given all the politics, and the sturm and drang around the Ellisons, and what we know and what was said, there is reason to be concerned.”
As the bidding process was playing out last year, much of the D.C. consensus was that Paramount would emerge the winner, leaving the company with two major news organizations, CBS News and CNN. In the eyes of one veteran, that development could prove to be worse for CBS News than CNN, in part because the latter is heavily unionized, at a time when Paramount will be under pressure to massively reduce costs.
Sesno said that the three major areas of concern are the editorial direction, how Paramount combines resources to save money, and the organizational structure. He said that most concerning are the political pressures, as “the Ellisons have made no pretense of being chums with Donald Trump and Donald Trump made no pretense of who he wanted to see victorious in this merger.”
Yet Another Period Of Uncertainty
CNN finds itself in yet another period of uncertainty, with its parent company already sold twice in the past decade.
During his first term, the Justice Department sued to block AT&T’s purchase of CNN parent Time Warner, the companies sought to mount a defense of retaliation due to Trump’s hatred of the news network. The DOJ denied it, and the judge declined to allow such an argument. Although AT&T prevailed, the suspicion of Trump’s influence lingered.
What’s different about Trump 2.0 is the extent to which efforts to lobby the president for favorable treatment are much more blatant. Trump himself had said that he would be involved in whether the deal gets regulatory approval, breaking from a presidential tradition of keeping arm’s length. Although he later said that he would leave it to the DOJ to decide, earlier this week he was demanding that Netflix fire Susan Rice, one of its board members.
The anxiousness over the situation also stems from the way that Skydance’s purchase of Paramount Global went down last year. As they sought to get the deal through regulatory approval, the previous Paramount owners settled Trump’s lawsuit against CBS for $16 million, even though the litigation, over the way that 60 Minutes edited an interview with Kamala Harris, was seen by many legal experts as baseless.
As it sought the FCC’s greenlight, Skydance committed to an ombudsman to take newsroom complaints. The new Paramount then hired Bari Weiss, founder of the center-right opinion site The Free Press, to take charge of the news division as editor in chief.
A number of her changes outlined in her strategy have been directed at regaining a footing as viewer habits shift to streaming and social media, the same challenge that other legacy news outlets have tried to address.
But Weiss also put a heavy emphasis on rebuilding trust, a problem that certainly bears out in polls.
The Problem Of Trust
Sesno said that he agrees that is a major problem for news organizations, not just those that may be perceived as leaning to the left but to those leaning to the right.
Where he cautions is over the implication that “in order to build trust, you need to avert your gaze from holding everyone’s feet to the fire.”
“We have a false equivalency here that creates confusion in the public’s mind and oversimplifies the problem and the challenge that confronts people seeking to do journalism in the way that it is meant to be done,” he said.
The actions to address the problem of trust can in turn create plenty of consternation in news divisions: The assumption often is that it means a shift rightward, something that in turns triggers extra scrutiny from audiences on the left, who may be the more loyal viewers.
As CBS News has laid off employees and offered buyouts, some have gone out with stinging rebukes of the new strategy. According to the Guardian, producer Mary Walsh, departing after 46 years this week, wrote to staffers that “maybe it’s for the best. We’ve been told to aim our reporting at a particular part of the political spectrum. Honestly, I don’t know how to do that.”
In announcing the merger on Friday afternoon, Paramount’s release touted of being able to “offer complementary portfolio of cable networks spanning entertainment, sports and news will significantly improve cash flow, unlock efficiencies, and strengthen our ability to manage linear market pressures.” There were no specific commitments for CNN.
“I’m very worried about the people there,” said Jim Acosta, the former CNN anchor and chief White House correspondent who left last year and launched his own media company. “From everything I hear many of the staffers at CNN work with perpetual job fear. And now this …”