Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty Images
While addressing employees last month, CNN chief executive Mark Thompson wasted little time bringing up “the generously proportioned elephant in the room.” Paramount’s imminent takeover of parent company Warner Bros. Discovery had made for a “difficult period” at the network, and Thompson shared his staff’s anxieties. “I swear to God, I go home and try and relax and I can still feel the tension in the room because I’m in the room, and I’m no different from anyone else,” he said, according to a recording of his remarks.
Thompson’s comments came at the outset of a town hall for CNN’s global workforce of roughly 4,000 employees across more than three-dozen bureaus, many of whom are now well practiced in navigating corporate mergers. Paramount’s $111 billion acquisition of WBD, which was approved by the Department of Justice last month, marks the third time in the past eight years the network will be absorbed into a new entity. In 2018, AT&T bought CNN’s former parent company, Time Warner, before spinning off its media properties and merging them with Discovery four years later. But the Paramount deal is more politically fraught and operationally complex, bringing together major Hollywood studios (Paramount and Warner Bros.), streaming services (HBO Max and Paramount+), and news organizations (CNN and CBS News) under the same corporate ownership. Significant cuts and layoffs are expected as part of the consolidation, particularly with Paramount shouldering nearly $80 billion in debt.
Inside CNN, staffers fear that programming and personnel changes could be driven by politics as much as economics given how eager Donald Trump and his allies appear for Paramount CEO David Ellison to take control. In March, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said “the sooner” Ellison steps in “the better,” while FCC chair Brendan Carr framed CNN’s future ownership as part of how Trump is “winning” against the “fake news media.” The following month, the president spoke for nearly an hour at a private, Ellison-hosted dinner “honoring the Trump White House.” Meanwhile, Ellison’s father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, reportedly told Trump that the merger could lead to an overhaul of CNN. Paramount denied to The Wall Street Journal that the Ellisons made any “commitments” to government officials “regarding the future of CNN or any other news property, other than the goal to deliver truth-based journalism,” and a White House spokesperson said Trump “has consistently maintained that he was neutral to all parties throughout the Warner Bros. Discovery bidding process.”
Staffers are skeptical, with some anticipating that the new owners will try to placate the White House. “At the end of the day,” said one longtime on-air reporter, “Trump is going to want some heads on a plate.” Another employee suggested that any politically motivated firings will likely be a part of larger layoffs to avoid bad optics. There are also concerns about CNN’s editorial independence and whether Paramount’s takeover will shift the network’s framing or approach to stories. Thompson has tried to tamp down such worries, urging employees last month to “not jump to conclusions.”
“Let’s execute our strategy with confidence and gusto,” he said. “It’s so easy to just get a bit paralyzed and sort of lay off and think, Oh, we don’t know what’s going to happen and maybe the new bosses will want something totally different, so why don’t we just back off?” Instead, Thompson said, “we should go for it.”
While Thompson has tried rallying the troops, uncertainty in the newsroom reportedly played into chief legal affairs correspondent Paula Reid’s decision to turn down a contract renewal and decamp to MS NOW. Without clarity about their new owner’s intentions, CNN employees have been anxiously watching the chaos unfold at CBS News since Paramount bought the right-leaning website The Free Press this past fall and installed its co-founder Bari Weiss as the network’s editor-in-chief. On the same day Thompson spoke at the town hall, 60 Minutes veteran Scott Pelley angrily confronted the show’s newly hired executive producer, Nick Bilton, and accused Weiss of “murdering” the newsmagazine. Weiss, who has primarily been known as an opinion journalist, landed the CBS job without any broadcast experience and proceeded to upend the news division. Her heavy-handed approach at overhauling the top-rated 60 Minutes has led to accusations of bias, while her efforts to reshape the network’s third-place evening newscast with host Tony Dokoupil have been clumsy. Ratings for the CBS Evening News and CBS This Morning continue to slump.
Some at CNN hope the drama at CBS gives Ellison and other Paramount executives pause before promoting Weiss to oversee both news organizations — an especially daunting task given that the cable network is a significantly larger, global newsroom that operates 24/7. The New York Times reported last month that CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, who had been a correspondent on 60 Minutes before leaving the show in May, has told colleagues that he does not wish to work for Weiss. Upon leaving the newsmagazine in May, Cooper said the show’s editorial independence and trust with viewers has been critical to its success, and he hoped that “60 Minutes remains 60 Minutes.”
Multiple CNN employees told me they see similarities between Weiss and Chris Licht, Thompson’s predecessor whose stormy 13-month tenure at CNN ended in 2023. Much like Weiss at CBS, Licht seemed intent on making the network’s coverage more palatable to Republicans. He pushed CNN to book more conservative guests, while instructing staff to stop describing Trump’s election denialism as “the big lie.” His programming decisions were a flop, most notably an ill-conceived morning show and a Trump town hall that turned into a MAGA rally. And Licht alienated some veteran journalists at CNN with criticism of the network’s approach, while also appearing distant from the rank and file — not unlike Weiss at CBS. “People remember what happened to Chris Licht and they think, Oh, she’s toast at CBS and there’s no way she’ll get the keys now because she’s become such a problem,” said one CNN staffer. “The more anxious types in here are just like, No, the world is crumbling. There’s no reason that David Ellison wouldn’t do the stupidest thing possible and give Bari Weiss the keys to CNN.”
Weiss, by all accounts, is close to Ellison, and the two appear politically aligned, particularly when it comes to their steadfast support of Israel. In May, Ellison backed Weiss’s leadership of CBS News, calling her a “singular talent” who has been “empowered to run our newsroom.” But there are signs that Paramount may keep Thompson in a senior role; Ellison’s executives and advisers are “increasingly open” to the idea, according to the Financial Times. There have also been indications that Weiss isn’t a lock to take over CNN. People close to Ellison have expressed concern to him about giving her more responsibility, according to a person familiar with the conversations. Gerry Cardinale, a private-equity investor whose firm was involved in the Warner Bros. Discovery merger, said at an event last month that Thompson is a “phenomenal leader” and described Alex MacCallum, the network’s chief operating officer and digital leader, as “fantastic.” Cardinale suggested taking a methodical approach with CNN rather than immediately shaking things up: “I think we’ve got to spend time really getting in there and listening and talking to them before we can figure out ultimately, you know, how we can help.”
Thompson, MacCallum, and CNN’s chief financial officer, Adam Cohn, effectively made the case for their leadership in a presentation to Paramount executives in the spring, according to two people familiar with the meeting. Their message to executives was that CNN’s business strategy, built around increasing digital subscriptions as a buffer against the declining cable-television bundle, is working but that it needs more time. (CNN declined to comment on the specifics of the meeting.)
Given that Thompson cut his teeth in British journalism before ascending to the top jobs at the BBC, New York Times, and now CNN, it shouldn’t be surprising that he has reportedly told Paramount that he has no desire to cede responsibility. That came through at last month’s town hall, where Thompson described his “passion for CNN” and said he felt “very protective of it.” He invoked the legacy of the late Ted Turner while speaking from Techwood, CNN’s original campus in Atlanta, which he described as “ground zero” for the organization. But employees who sought reassurance or insight on the situation likely left disappointed. Thompson noted that he has had “productive, friendly, [and] respectful” conversations with Paramount executives, including Ellison. The executives were “fully engaged,” Thompson said, and asked “really smart questions,” but those interactions didn’t provide clarity. “I don’t know of anyone in either CNN or WBD who knows what Paramount’s plans are for anything yet,” he said.
Preliminary meetings between Paramount, CBS, and CNN brass are underway as the two sides hurtle toward the merger closing, which could come as early as this month but is expected by at least September 30. CBS News president Tom Cibrowski toured CNN’s production facilities in Hudson Yards and Techwood, according to Status, while the Times reported that CNN host Jake Tapper met with Ellison in Los Angeles. A CNN spokesperson said that Tapper was in Los Angeles “for a prescheduled shoot for CNN” and that he “didn’t make the trip specifically for the Ellison dinner.”
Stars like Tapper may get a private audience with Ellison, but your average CNN employee is unlikely to hear firsthand about how Paramount views the network. During the question-and-answer portion of last month’s town hall, a longtime employee said the impending merger had forced him to confront “the possibility of having to reconsider a job” he’s had for decades. “How do you talk to people in this room and in the company about that potential decision and where it’s going?” the employee asked. Thompson said he, too, was wary of any sweeping changes at the network. “I talked earlier about, in broad uncertainty, being in the same boat as everyone else,” he told the employee. “I think maybe you and I find ourselves in the same canoe on this one as well.” Then, in a message that seemed intended for CNN’s incoming stewards, Thompson cautioned against a major disruption to the network’s brand, which he said was built on “credibility and trustworthiness.”
“It’s our difference, honestly, with some of our colleagues in American TV,” he said. “They do some very good journalism, but you can’t look at some of our most famous and traditional competitors and say they take the exact same editorial approach to this question as we do. So I think it’s incredibly important.”
Thompson said that approach “makes business sense” for CNN and that “messing with it” or “trying to do too much to virtue signal [with] some new change in direction” could backfire. “I think messing with it is dangerous for audiences, both old audiences on which a lot of our economics all depends but also our new audiences,” he said, adding that he intends to “make that argument” to CNN’s soon-to-be new owners. “I think we have a very strong case for it,” he said.
As the town hall wound down, the final question came from an employee who asked if Thompson intended to “stick with us through this merger and beyond.” While he said he doesn’t intend to stay on “forever,” Thompson made it clear that he wished to remain “through this next chapter.”
“I’m totally committed to CNN and to its editorial values and standards,” he said. “And so if the circumstances are right, I would love to continue to see this kind of transition into the future.”
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