What scares me most about Paramount buying Warner Bros Discovery

From enshrining political favoritism in the process of approving big media deals to the death of incisive journalism at CNN, there's lots to worry about in this $110 billion deal.

Watching CNN shift into overdrive covering military strikes in Iran and war in the Middle East, I couldn’t help wondering something incredibly important:

Will we see coverage like this in a few months, when Paramount has completed purchase of the company which owns CNN, Warner Bros Discovery?

That’s one of my biggest fears when considering the impact of Paramount swallowing Warner Bros Discovery in a deal that creates massive debt, consolidates media power in an unproven owner, will likely bring a rightward shift in news coverage and leaves the new bosses with a substantial obligation to a highly transactional Presidential administration.

In fact, too much about this deal feels like a doubling down on the conditions which created a failing WBD in the first place. It may be tough to remember now, but back in 2022, when AT&T spun off Warner Media and enabled its merger with Discovery Networks, we heard many of the same platitudes that Paramount CEO David Ellison is unleashing now.

Back in 2022, there was talk about the need for the company to get bigger, enabling competition with giants like Netflix and Disney. There was talk about uniting disparate media platforms in a shiny new service – in that case, Discovery Networks downmarket cable channels shoehorned in with HBO Max’s premium TV content strategy. There was talk about making CNN more “centrist” – seemingly by tamping down its criticism of Trump and MAGA conservatives. And there was a shrugging off of the mountain of debt incurred in the deal, more than $50 billion. With a B.

Media observers from that time know what happened next. WBD instituted loads of layoffs and cost-cutting while getting rid of some people at CNN considered to be obvious Trump critics and instituting some changes – like shuttering a long-developed subscription streaming service called CNN+ and changing the name of the streamer HBO Max to Max – that they would reverse in years to come.

And the changes as CNN likely only alienated viewers who liked aggressive coverage of Trump, pushing their ratings lower and damaging their brand with the channel’s core audience. Instead of just contending with conservatives labeling CNN a liberal channel, now they also had to deal with liberals who felt the channel was unfairly muzzling or tempering incisive coverage of MAGA and Trump.

Now we’ve got Paramount poised to purchase the company in a deal valued at around $110 billion (bear in mind, the original deal to create WBD was valued at just $43 billion and created more debt than that.) If media reports on the Paramount deal for WBD are to be believed, the purchase will create $79 billion in debt.

Which brings us to my fears about this deal. Buckle up; there’s a lot of them and they’re all pretty depressing.

Worry #1: Will Paramount temper CNN’s coverage of politics and Trump?

Exhibit A here, of course, is what’s happening at CBS News. Paramount installed an editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, who had no experience in TV news and little experience in hard news reporting. She’s not been shy about her pro-Israel stances – which are fine in an opinion columnist, but much more troublesome where you’re a news executive expected to guide coverage which is fair to all sides in geopolitical conflicts.

(New York Times reporter Ben Mullin posted the goodbye message Shawna Thomas sent staffers.)

The latest news from CBS is that Shawna Thomas, executive producer of CBS Mornings, is leaving the show at the end of the month. I’ve met Thomas before, and she’s a powerful, sharp producer who also happened to be one of the few Black women in a position of power in network TV news. While Weiss managed to strike a new deal with host Gayle King, avoiding the optics of displacing one of the network’s most popular personalities, there are still questions about where diversity stands at the network and whether people of color are getting demoted and displaced at a greater rate than their white counterparts.

There are also reports that Weiss has interest in hiring Sage Steele, a woman of color who is also a conservative and Trump supporter, to join CBS Mornings — continuing what seems to be a MAGA-friendly tone weaved into CBS News coverage, which can benefit both Weiss’ pro-Israel political ideals and Paramount’s business goals.

There’s loads of examples of behavior by Paramount and Weiss to appease conservative critics of the news coverage, especially Trump. CBS News hired an ombudsman with a history of supporting Trump who doesn’t issue public reports and has no background in journalism. Weiss’s decision to hold back a story on 60 Minutes sparked serious backlash, and more.

Ellison spoke with CNBC’s Squawk on the Street today and pledged that CNN would retain “editorial independence” if/when their deal closes. But then he added a curious detail: “who we really want to talk to is the 70% of Americans that really — around the world — that identify as center-left and center-right.”

Which is the kind of statement I would expect from a non-journalist who hasn’t spent much time thinking on these issues and has grown up in an age of politically-targeted news media. Actually, the goal of a traditional news outlet like CNN – which has always maintained it is not skewed towards liberals just because it covers Trump incisively – is to speak to EVERYONE, providing fair and ethical coverage that challenges every political position and assumption.

Think Ellison, Weiss and the leadership at Paramount are up for that?

Worry #2: A successful purchase by Paramount enshrines political preferences as the cost of doing business in Trump’s America.

FCC chairman Brendan Carr is already saying publicly that Paramount’s proposal to buy Warner Bros Discovery was somehow a “cleaner” deal than Netflix’s option, noting that he expected the deal to be approved “quickly.” Trump had said months ago that he wanted ownership of CNN to change hands, which wasn’t going to happen under Netflix’s proposal, and there’s reporting that the streamer’s co-CEO found his meetings with White House officials in Washington DC mysteriously canceled hours before they decided to withdraw from the fight over WBD.

But that’s not how these processes are supposed to work. Big media mergers and acquisitions are complicated deals. Institutions like the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission are supposed spend time analyzing the specific details of such proposals before deciding whether they meet safeguards established to serve the public.

And government officials shouldn’t be making comments about the fitness of the deals until that process is complete.

The rise of David Ellison and Paramount, which seems quite openly fueled by their alliances with Trump, signals that the most important factor for federal approvals sought by any major media company now, is keeping the president happy (just ask the leaders at Anthropic, whose CEO said in an internal memo one reason behind their conflict with federal officials was demands for “dictator-style praise” from Trump officials.)

For Paramount, that has meant dropping diversity programs, installing Trump allies in key jobs and pretending that their overhaul of CBS News is about reaching new audiences, rather than mollifying the President.

Already, I sense the vibe in some industry publications that concerns about diversity, fairness and straight-up honesty in media deals are the products of naïve, unrealistic thinking. One of the things which scares me the most about this moment is the thinking of people who will do just about anything for position and power – regardless of the ethics they must leave behind.

Worry #3: It’s not about the Fairness Doctrine, but runaway media consolidation

I’ll admit being one of those experts who wasn’t as sympathetic to complaints about consolidation in media 10 or 15 years ago. But now we have reached a point where a handful of companies control the most powerful communication tools in the country and many of them have shown a willingness to openly favor the White House on their platforms in exchange for good relations with the administration.

TV station owner Nexstar Media Group is progressing with plans to buy rival TEGNA to create the largest regional TV station ownership group reaching 80 percent of U.S. households and including The CW network and NewsNation.

In November, Trump opposed lifting caps on TV station ownership that would make this deal possible – perhaps because he feared they would help companies he dislikes, like Comcast and Disney. But he has more recently expressed support for the Nexstar deal; last year, Nexstar joined Sinclair Media Group in refusing to return Jimmy Kimmel Live to the air after Disney ended the show’s suspension.

Other wealthy business leaders who have also shown allegiance to Trump, like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, also control major communications platforms like X/Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon and the Washington Post.

I’ve seen lots of people lament the demise of FCC policies like the Fairness Doctrine, which once required broadcast stations in TV and radio to present contrasting views on issues. But, as we’re learning in the Trump era, laws and policies are often only as good as the officials appointed to enforce them.

When the federal government interprets laws and policies according to how it benefits the president rather than the people, this sets the stage for some terrible erosions in free speech and journalism independence.