Paramount Chief Executive Officer David Ellison defended the company’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery in a recent New York Times guest essay, arguing that legal challenges to the transaction are based on an outdated view of the media business and misplaced concerns about his politics.
On Tuesday, Ellison said he had avoided commenting because Paramount owns CBS News and he believes anyone overseeing a news organization should avoid improperly influencing coverage. But he wrote that silence had allowed others to define his views and intentions.
“No more,” Ellison wrote.
The essay marked Ellison’s most direct public response to lawsuits filed by 12 state attorneys general and the Writers Guild of America seeking to block the deal. The antitrust lawsuits filed in California with the backing of several other states argue the transaction would reduce competition in theatrical film distribution, cable network licensing and labor markets for writers.
In his lengthy essay, Ellison countered that Paramount and WBD would remain smaller than major technology-backed rivals. He said the combined company would account for less than 20 percent of all U.S. television viewing time, or about 13 percent if YouTube user-generated video is included, based on monthly data reported by Nielsen, which has been called into question for some time.
Ellison said the merged companies represent 18 percent of the domestic box office over the past 12 months and 22 percent on average over the past two years, an attempt to downplay concerns that a merged Paramount-WBD will have outsized control over theatrical experiences and could worsen domestic and international film distribution to that effect. He also suggested that the deeper concern behind the opposition is “the news,” particularly whether he can be trusted to oversee CNN while Paramount already owns CBS News.
“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,” Ellison wrote. “I can’t give anyone a view into my heart and mind, but I can share this: 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.”
The essay also addressed declining public trust in journalism: Ellison cited Gallup data showing trust in news at 28 percent and said media companies need to earn credibility through their work.
“Trust can’t be argued back,” he wrote, affirming his belief that “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,” he said.
Some might point to moves made at CBS News in the year that Ellison has overseen Paramount, particularly the company’s hiring of former New York Times columnist-turned-newsletter publisher Bari Weiss, who did interfere in the editorial operation of the network’s flagship magazine program “60 Minutes” and had a hand in firing some long-time, well-liked correspondents.
Weiss said her intention with the changes was to reorient CBS News down the middle, with the mission of delivering straightforward, objective reporting that asked tough questions, challenged narratives and held power to account on all sides. But some viewed the changes as catering to conservative whims and wishes rooted in Ellison and Paramount’s playbook of making concessions to the Trump administration in order to Skydance’s acquisition of Paramount approved last year.
Ellison acknowledged there was work to be done to win back news and entertainment audiences, but he said the matter was one that required broader industry efforts, and not something specific to anything Paramount did in the past or WBD might do in the future.
“Trust can’t be argued back, but it can be earned back — story by story, day by day,” he wrote. “In an age when so much of what fills our screens is machine-generated or engineered to enrage, journalism from real reporters matters more than ever. That is the work I intend to pay for, patiently, for a long time.”
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