David Ellison Is Lying in the Paper of Record

Paramount’s purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery has not gone according to plan. It’s been a bumpy ride from the start, as they had to outbid Netflix just to take the pole position, and then David Ellison assumed he and his father’s positive relationship with Donald Trump would lead to a speedy approval. This always seemed somewhat foolhardy, as it’s not only the DOJ that has to weigh in on a deal of this size. Their plan to complete this deal by fall of 2026 was wildly optimistic, and now that won’t happen as Paramount itself decided to hit pause until summer 2027 or a trial date, whichever comes first. They’ve had to change their lead litigators on the merger, and now Ellison has taken to the pages of The New York Times to “set the record straight.” And hoo boy; it’s a doozy. Let’s run through it together.

Many people have weighed in on Paramount’s agreement to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery — media analysts, power brokers, political commentators, competitors and, of course, lawyers. For a transaction of this size, that is expected and appropriate. The one person you haven’t heard from is me.

But we have heard from him. We know what media proxies are, David. When your lawyers speak to the press, when Paramount issues press releases, or when your dumb buddies write editorials in Variety, we're hearing from him. This is like saying no one was fighting a war until the king stepped onto the battlefield. But hey, if you want to enter the fray personally, let's go.

There is a reason for that. 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. So, when California’s attorney general, 11 other state attorneys general and, a day later, the Writers Guild of America sued to stop the deal, I stayed quiet. I quickly learned such restraint has costs. While I was silent, others were happy to write my story for me. No more.

So he received pushback (which he just said was "expected and appropriate"), and his belief that someone who runs a news organization "shouldn't put a finger on the scale" went out the window. Cool.

The states claim this deal will give one company too much influence over theatrical releases and cable operators, while the W.G.A. argues that our combined market power will hurt writers. Both suits imagine a Hollywood that no longer exists — an industry ruled by a handful of legacy studios.

Add up every hour Americans spend watching television, and a combined Paramount-Warner would account for less than 20 percent of all watch time — competing every day against Netflix, Amazon, Apple, which are all companies whose resources dwarf ours. Include YouTube’s user-generated content in that math and our share would drop to around 13 percent. A combined company would account for just 18 percent of the domestic box office over the past 12 months and only 22 percent on average over the past two years. Those are not the numbers of a company that can dictate what audiences watch or what writers get paid.

This is the weird thing about Ellison's argument where he's trying to have it both ways. He's saying that a merged Paramount-WBD needs to exist because it's the only way to compete against Netflix, Amazon, and Apple as well as YouTube. However, don't worry, because this merged company still wouldn't be that big in the scheme of things. So which is it? Is this company so big that it can take on tech companies, or is it so small as to be inconsequential?

I believe this fight is not really about market share. If it were, it wouldn’t have been reviewed and approved by regulators reflecting 65 countries, including the United States, the European Union and China. I believe a plainer worry sits beneath the briefs and the news releases: the 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.

Can regulators in 65 countries be wrong? Probably! But the comms strategy here is so weird because Ellison wants to shift away from his stronger issue--staying competitive against tech companies (which are undeniably powerful and not exactly the most popular at this moment in time)--and switch to his weakest, which is the news.

Unfortunately, I can’t give anyone a view into my heart and mind,

It's your editorial, David! Yes, you can!

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.

Not to go down a political path, but it's so weird that conservatives believe they are centrists. I'm a liberal, and I own it. Do we really believe that a billionaire oligarch has the same political leanings as Joe Six-Pack? Does this seem like a guy who's really fighting for liberal views?

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. Our journalists will continue to answer to the facts and to all the people they serve — not to any party or cause. These were founding principles for both CNN and CBS News, for legends like Ted Turner and Edward R. Murrow, and it is exactly that kind of independence that has always fueled the greatness of “60 Minutes.”

There is much ground to recover. By Gallup’s latest measure, just 28 percent of Americans trust the news — the lowest ever recorded. The temptation is to say the problem lies elsewhere. Our obligation is to look inward and say: We can do better. We are in a moment when Americans trust few institutions, but journalists haven’t always helped their case by refusing to engage with critiques.

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.

For starters, news organizations aren't here to tell it "straight down the middle." They're here to follow the truth wherever it leads. Telling it "straight down the middle" is actually misleading people. If one side says Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza and the other side says Israel is defending itself, then is the middle that a little genocide is okay if it makes Israel feel safer? If one side says January 6th was a violent insurrection and the other side says it was a day of peace, then is the middle saying it was a rowdy picnic?

What's stranger is that Ellison says all this as if we're unaware of the handiwork of Bari Weiss at CBS News. He took someone who had never worked in TV news, had only worked in opinion departments, and entrusted her to oversee a massive journalistic operation. The results speak for themselves, with the declining viewership for 60 Minutes and CBS Mornings. This is in addition to Weiss herself constantly inviting scandal, whether it's bringing in fellow, inexperienced ideologues or spiking stories that would cast the Trump administration in an unflattering light. Ellison's takeover of CBS and eventually CNN isn't to honor Ted Turner and Edward R. Murrow; it's to compete with Fox News, and it's weird that he just won't say that. It's even weirder that his desire to compete is based on someone as manifestly unqualified as Weiss (who is conveniently omitted from this editorial).

Which brings me to what we aim to build. The Paramount-Warner deal began with the movies. I have loved film since I was old enough to sit still for one, and scenes from the movies have shaped who I am: a boy riding a bicycle silhouetted against the full moon, twin suns setting over the desert, jets dogfighting off the California coast. Behind each of those moments stands real money, real risk and hundreds of brilliant artists who tell stories and who count on movies to keep them employed.

That machinery is in trouble. Hollywood is losing ground to technology platforms whose algorithms reward the loudest voices. 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.

Setting aside that this essay wouldn't pass a high school English class (what is your thesis, David?), no one cares that he loves movies. Shareholders don't care. Audiences don't care. Workers don't care. It's great that you saw films during your ultra-privileged boyhood. If you're worried about jobs in California, then a company taking on $80 billion in debt isn't going to solve it. Don't lie in the paper about creating work when we all know this merger will kill tens of thousands of jobs.

I understand that promises from an executive in the middle of a merger invite skepticism. So judge us by the year we just had.

Since I took over Paramount, we have nearly doubled our theatrical slate from eight films last year to 15 and greenlit 40 new or returning series for Paramount+, our streaming service. You can expect 90 series from our television studios in 2026. We raised our content investment by $1.5 billion. We did that before the deal was signed and any lawsuit was filed, because making more is the whole point of the company we are building.

"So judge us by the year we just had," he says and then describes a bunch of stuff they're planning to do. This has always been one of my main issues with Ellison's takeover: he hasn't done anything with Paramount. He ran Skydance, which produced a bunch of action sequels, and before the ink was even dry on buying Paramount, he turned his attention to WBD. He hasn't built anything. And it's not like Paramount's 2026 has been anything phenomenal. They've had hits (Scream 7, Scary Movie 6), but they've also sent movies straight to the streamers that Paramount claims to be fighting, like Jack Ryan: Ghost War to Prime Video or Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender straight to Paramount+. Maybe they'll have a good rest of the year with Street Fighter, Ebenezer, and Mr. Irrelevant: The John Tuggle Story, but who can say? He's pointing to a track record that does not exist.

The commitments we have made for the proposed Paramount-Warner extend that trajectory: 30 theatrical films a year; 170 television series annually, for our own platforms and for our competitors’; more than $30 billion in annual content investment. I have learned better than to promise hits. In my own career, “G.I. Joe: Retaliation” met financial expectations, “Top Gun: Maverick” exceeded them and “Terminator: Dark Fate” fell short. I am proud of all these films, but nobody can dictate what audiences will love. What I can promise is the work, and more of it.

I think it's telling here that the three movies he names are all the same kind of movie: an action sequel. He's right not to promise hits, but it's revealing that he clearly doesn't have an interest (or at least the experience) in a variety of genres. This is not a guy who knows how to elevate voices, find talent, or discover the next big thing. Skydance produces a bunch of slopbusters for the streamers (who's excited for Matchbox the Movie coming to Apple TV this October!), and if he had any interest in producing movies like Sinners, Weapons, and One Battle After Another, movies that gave WBD a landmark year in 2025, he would have done it by now. It's not that he's never made a good movie (Top Gun: Maverick rocks) or that he has no eye for talent (I'm looking forward to Brad Bird's Ray Gunn, even though it's coming to Netflix). But it's obvious that Paramount-WBD will drill down into one kind of blockbuster.

A deal this size is lived out in public, and I have felt every bit of that. 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.

Hollywood’s story can have a happy ending only when we connect with our audience. It’s the audience — the American people — who have the final say in whether a movie succeeds or fails, whether a news organization thrives or withers and therefore whether our industry succeeds or fails. I want to build a company with the strength and resources to deliver for those audiences who turn to us, for the storytellers who rely on us and for the country that dreamed this all up.

It's nice to end on such flowery, aspirational language, but we actually can judge those commitments before they're even on screen. We know that $80 billion in debt results in massive layoffs. We know from the Disney-Fox merger that two major studios combining doesn't create more competition or jobs, but fewer types of movies getting made. We know from Bari Weiss' takeover of CBS News that a Paramount-owned CNN will have shoddier reporting and take up more right-wing causes. We know all of these things, and what frustrates David is that despite his wealth and power, we don't believe his lies.

I'll add one more thing: The New York Times has made it a frustrating habit to uncritically share anything a wealthy person wants to write in their pages. This editorial is filled with falsehoods, and the Times gives it their imprimatur when they provide space in their opinion section. If David Ellison wants his personal desires expressed in the newspaper, there's a section for that. It's the classifieds.