Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison is arguing that an antitrust lawsuit that threatens to derail his company’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery comes down to his perceived politics, and the merger’s potential impact on CNN.
Writing in a New York Times op-ed published Tuesday, Ellison said he believes the suit and criticism of the deal are not about market share, but about his pending ownership of WBD’s CNN.
“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,” he wrote.
“I believe this fight is not really about market share,” he continued, noting the deal has been approved by regulators around the world. “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.”
“Unfortunately, I can’t give anyone a view into my heart and mind, but I can share this,” Ellison asserted.
“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.”
Ellison voiced commitment to producing news that’s fair, “straight down the middle,” and reflects a wide range of perspectives, comments he has made in the past, too.
“And it requires independence. Our journalists will continue to answer to the facts and to all the people they serve — not to any party or cause,” the exec added.
The media maven, who is the son of billionaire Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, cited a Gallup survey that says just 28% of Americans trust the news, a new low.
“Trust can’t be argued back, but it can be earned back — story by story, day by day. 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,” he noted.
Ellison also reiterated the commitments that he is making to keep film and TV production flowing if the deal goes through, and noted that the competition from technology giants has battered legacy Hollywood studios.
“Hollywood is losing ground to technology platforms whose algorithms reward the loudest voices,” he wrote. “The work is leaving, especially from California — where I grew up and where I’m raising my family — draining the deepest pool of creative talent ever assembled.”
The CEO restated his commitment to producing 30 theatrical films a year, 170 TV series annually and invest more than $30 billion a year in content creation should the Paramount-WBD merger go through.
The op-ed came as Paramount has been embroiled in a legal battle against 12 attorneys general, who are pushing to stop the deal. Regulators in the US and Europe have already greenlit the merger, which would bring Hollywood studios Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. under the same roof, as well as news outlets CBS and CNN.
“A deal this size is lived out in public, and I have felt every bit of that,” Ellison concluded. “I don’t ask to be taken at my word; the commitments are in writing, and the work will be on screens where anyone can judge it.”
Aside from the lawsuit filed by 12 US states, Paramount also faces a suit from the Writers Guild of America and calls from British actors Benedict Cumberbatch, Alan Cumming and Benedict Wong to push the UK government to block the deal.
