David Ellison's ‘confessional' in the NYT has Paramount-Skydance WBD merger up in the air

Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison speaks during the Bloomberg Screentime conference in Los Angeles, California, on October 9, 2025.

David Ellison, the CEO of Paramount Skydance, feels compelled to explain himself like a sinner in a confession booth for bucking conventional progressive norms in the mainstream media. Because of his offenses against the progressive orthodoxy that dominates news and entertainment, Ellison’s bid to merge PSKY with Warner Bros. Discovery is now being challenged on antitrust grounds by a dozen Democratic US state attorneys general.

Ellison makes the case in his Times op-ed that the only reasons these leftist AGs are suing is politics. They might lose a reliable cheerleader for their progressivism at CNN — the WBD cable news subsidiary Ellison wants to acquire — much the same way Ellison is rewriting the lefty script at the news network he currently controls, CBS.

“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.” Based on the facts, it’s hard to find fault in his analysis. First, if you know Ellison, you also know he’s not some right-wing ideologue — a point he tried to drive home in the piece. If you’re even a casual viewer of CBS, you would also know that under his leadership and through his appointment of heterodox though hardly right-wing journalist Bari Weiss to run CBS News, you would also know it’s not now and never will be MAGA central.

Yes, she is staunchly pro-Israel and hates all forms of wokeism, but that puts her in line with just about everyone except these AGs, and much of the progressive media ecosystem. This type of centrism isn’t what the likes of California AG Rob Bonta, who is leading the case, is aiming for. His office counters that the case “resulted from clear-cut antitrust analysis” and is “necessary to protect competition and consumer choice.”

The federal judge in the case has already indicated the court “cannot accept Defendants’ argument that the transaction will produce efficiencies in the streaming market.” But keep in mind that Bonta (like the Biden-appointed judge hearing the case) is a progressive and he’s looking to burnish his lefty bona fides, probably to run for governor in a state dominated by like progressives.

What better way to do that than cry foul over some merger, including one that won easy passage through the Trump DOJ Antitrust Division? As an added benefit, Bonta can point out how David Ellison’s dad, Larry, the Oracle co-founder, and the president are pals. Maybe Trump will set the new agenda of the combined CBS-CNN? That argument falls apart on so many levels. Why would Ellison risk alienating centrist viewers — the 70% of the country that’s center-left and center-right — by running Trumpian-infused agitprop? More centrist programming might just work in a media business that has seen audience declines over its progressive leanings for years now. Yet crying “Trump” to block this deal is n...