“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. 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.”
“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,” writes MAGA oligarch David Ellison in an NYT op-ed, and yeah, no shit the opposition is about CNN because he ruined CBS News and nobody wants to see the same thing happen to CNN.