Paramount’s new owner has big plans to reshape CBS News after the company settled with President Donald Trump over his 60 Minutes gripes—and they fall right in line with MAGA ideals.
Skydance CEO David Ellison—son of the world’s second richest person Larry Ellison—thinks CBS News has become “extreme, elitist, and performative,” a source close to him told the Financial Times. Ellison wants to pull the company back toward a “performance-based culture” that harkens back to “the days of Edward R Murrow and Walter Cronkite,” two CBS legends.
“Not quotas. Not ideology. Just objective journalism,” the source told the paper.
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Neither Paramount or Skydance responded to immediate requests for comment.
The revelations come as Ellison is set to complete the merger with Paramount after it secured the Federal Communications Commission’s approval last week, three weeks after Paramount paid $16 million to settle with Trump over his $20 billion lawsuit over a 60 Minutes interview Kamala Harris. The merger is expected to close on Aug. 7.
That regulatory stamp followed Ellison’s promise to the agency’s chairman and Trump acolyte Brendan Carr to hire an ombudsman to root out bias in the newsroom and to end all diversity, equity, and inclusion practices.
But it also comes as Ellison has considered hiring the avowed anti-woke journalist Bari Weiss and acquiring her anti-woke publication The Free Press. A source close to Ellison told the paper that, should Ellison hire Weiss, she would “be a key voice but not the only voice” in the room.
Still, it would all be part of a larger effort to tamp down on outspoken reporters and entertainers, the source told the paper. CBS announced earlier this month it would cancel Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show three days after Colbert likened Paramount’s settlement to a “big fat bribe.”
CBS claimed that canceling the highest-rated show in late-night television was “purely a financial decision,” and reports have pegged the Late Show‘s losses at around $40 million to $50 million a year. Ellison was not part of the decision to cancel Colbert’s show, according to FT, and a source close to him said the timing was “stupid.”
“People like Colbert and others act like they’re the IP, the value, when it’s the brand and journalism that matter,” the source said. "We need to get back to fundamentals. That’s what David and his team believe.”
Trump and Carr have reveled in Ellison’s new approach to CBS and Paramount. Trump claimed in a Truth Social post last week that the company has promised an additional $20 million in either advertising or public service announcements, and Carr praised the decision to hire an ombudsman ahead of the FCC’s approval.
“They’re hitting on issues that I think we need to see significant change on,” Carr said last week.
However, that $20 million side deal has prompted some fears that viewers will be served MAGA “propaganda.”
“You can call it PR or you can call propaganda. Either. Choose,” former CNN anchor Alisyn Camerota said on her Clarity podcast on Tuesday. “Doesn’t matter to me. And if you’re gonna have to watch MAGA ads, that affects all of us.”
