David Ellison Can’t Be Trusted with CNN

Ellison hopes you aren't paying attention as his handpicked CBS News boss directs reporters to add “facts” that did not exist, and fires talent whose only flaw was a commitment to the truth.

Jennifer Schulze is a longtime Chicago journalist. She’s on Bluesky @newsjennifer.bsky.social. Subscribe to her Substack, Indistinct Chatter.

The blindness of the very rich is on full display in David Ellison’s New York Times op-ed pitching the mogul’s effort to buy CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.

Ellison begins by saying, “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.” Then, without irony, he leaps right in.

David Ellison wants you to believe that he’s just a guy trying to save mainstream media from itself. Never mind that his first network- CBS- is a raging dumpster fire with non-stop controversies, continued examples of meddling in editorial content to make it more Trump friendly and historic declines as the audience runs away as fast as it can from its ideological ‘fixes.’

The CBS Dumpster Fire

Why is CBS a dumpster fire? Because, like his guest essay, Ellison seems to think his good advice is for others. He installed Bari Weiss, an inexperienced newsroom leader, but a person with strong political opinions, who immediately put not just her finger but her whole self upon the scale, directing reporters to add “facts” that did not exist, and firing talent whose only flaw was a commitment to the truth.

Other outrages include:

• A growing number of respected journalists including Scott Pelley and Cecilia Vega have made credible claims that Weiss tried to change their scripts to reflect Trump talking points, including about the grisly border agent shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

• Weiss took a sledge hammer to the thriving 60 Minutes show, firing at least six high profile correspondents and editors in what’s been called “Bloody Thursday.”

• Experienced journalists have been replaced with people with zero broadcast news experience including two new correspondents for 60 Minutes — Ross Douthat and Sir Trevor Phillips — who are well known right-wing opinion writers, but not news reporters.

• Journalists not yet targeted by Weiss have been sidelined. Weiss let Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu select the reporter for his interview, skipping over 60 Minutes veteran Leslie Stahl. Now Sir Trevor has been assigned a story on British politician and Trump pal Nigel Farage that long time foreign correspondent Holly Williams had been working on.

• A tabloid reporter from the Daily Mail with an obsession covering Hunter Biden’s laptop (!!) is now part of the network’s investigative team.

• Just this week, Judd Legum’s Popular Information reported on how CBS went in the tabloid gutter with a piece that was filled with smears and inaccuracies about an alleged petition drive to force New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani from appearing at this years’ 9/11 commemoration.

Even a partial list of some serious missteps at CBS make it clear that Ellison and Weiss can’t be trusted with CNN. Cue the Paramount PR campaign to help make the case for Ellison’s $112B WBD merger that includes ownership of CNN. Ellison kicked off the effort with his NYT piece.

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Ellison’s PR Push to Win CNN

In the essay, Ellison is complaining that his critics don’t know his heart and mind, as if knowing him would make everything okay. Trust in the media is actually earned by doing credible, honest, hard work over time. But I guess we can’t expect a scion of the very rich to understand that. Still, he claims his heart is not partisan, and that great news organizations are “here to tell it straight down the middle.”

The thing is, CBS didn’t need to push to the center. That’s where it was before Ellison and Weiss meddled, moving its content and its staffing to the right. Those partisan changes haven’t made CBS a better news organization, but they do keep Donald Trump happy so he will continue to bless the Ellison family’s multi-billion dollar business plans. Trump has already signed off on the now paused Paramount SkyDance-WBD merger but 12 State Attorney’s General and The Writers Guild are fighting it in court. A trial date on the anti-trust issues is set for March 2027.

It’s that ongoing court fight that prompted Ellison’s propaganda-filled piece in the NYT. One line really jumped out at me: “journalism from real reporters matters more than ever.” You really have to wonder what being raised a billionaire in America does to people. Does Ellison really hold this view while simultaneously overseeing a news network where nearly 200 journalists including top investigative reporters and editors at 60 Minutes have been pushed out? The new hires at CBS News and 60 Minutes are about as far away from real reporters as you can get.

Ellison’s MAGA Turn

Ellison’s own track record also makes a mockery of his nonpartisan claims. This is the very same person who in the past year hosted a special dinner honoring Trump, had front row seats to several Trump spectacles, went to secret meetings with Trump and whose dad is one of Trump’s biggest supporters.

Plus, there are multiple reports about how both Ellison’s have promised to make substantial Trump friendly changes to CNN, including firing news anchors that Trump dislikes. (Sounds familiar doesn’t it? Trump hated late night host Stephen Colbert and Ellison fired him.)

I think this is the perfect time to once again employ Rachel Maddow’s mantra — “watch what they do — not what they say.” That has long applied to Donald Trump and MAGA. But it is now also critical when it comes to David Ellison. Don’t fall for any of Ellison’s propaganda in this NYT piece or beyond.

His PR staff can string together all the sentences in the world to make Ellison seem like something he’s not. But like Trump, we are paying attention to what he’s actually done at CBS. And that tells us he cannot be trusted with CNN, either.