Overview
- Paramount Skydance founder David Ellison is moving to close a roughly $111 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery that would bring CNN into his media group in the coming weeks.
- Ellison has discussed giving CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss some level of oversight of CNN, with one idea being to pair her with a veteran television executive to handle operations.
- CNN chief Mark Thompson has told Paramount officials he will not share oversight of the network, creating a direct governance clash ahead of the handover.
- Top on-air talent have voiced resistance to a Weiss role; multiple reports say Anderson Cooper does not want to work for her and staffers have been openly anxious in senior offices.
- Ellison has publicly promised to preserve editorial independence, but his political ties and Weiss’s turbulent, staff-disrupting tenure at CBS raise legal and newsroom concerns that state attorneys general are still reviewing.