CNN invented 24-hour cable news. Its future is murky as Trump monitors sale
As the sale of Warner Bros. Discovery continues to unfold, one thing is clear for one of its key assets: CNN will be coming under different ownership. But where will that leave the country’s first cable news network?
It depends.
CNN and its hundreds of journalists have a lot riding on who wins a bidding war for Warner Bros. — and, possibly, on the whims of President Donald Trump.
Warner Bros. ownership
CNN has been part of the Warner family in some way since 1996, when Time Warner bought Turner Broadcasting System, the company owned by CNN founder Ted Turner.
In 2001, AOL and Time Warner merged under the Time Warner banner. AT&T bought Time Warner in 2018, rebranding it WarnerMedia before merging with Discovery Inc. to form Warner Bros. Discovery.
If Netflix purchases Warner
Netflix announced last week that it reached a deal to acquire Warner Bros. for $82 billion — but the streaming giant also announced that CNN would not be part of that deal.
Warner Bros. said its plan was to spin off its cable TV networks, which include CNN, Discovery, HGTV, the Food Network and TLC. That new company would be called Discovery Global.
The plan reflects a major shift in the enforcement of federal antitrust laws.
“Prior to the Reagan administration, or even prior to [former President Jimmy] Carter, none of these mergers would have been improved,” Jeff Cohen, founder of media watchdog group FAIR, told Straight Arrow News. “So, I don’t want to seem to be thinking that Netflix, a huge streaming service, taking over another company that has a huge streaming service is a good thing. But yes, clearly CNN would continue as it is.”
Meanwhile, CNN employees are left in limbo.
“I’ve been asked by many of you what today’s news means for us,” Mark Thompson, CNN’s chairman, said in an internal memo the day Netflix announced the deal, according to The New York Times. “And the answer is that it will enable us to continue to roll out our strategy to secure a great future for CNN by successfully navigating our digital transition.”
It’s not clear, however, how a new company would affect CNN’s journalism.
“Whether Netflix, or whether anything other than Paramount, I can’t really predict what that would mean journalistically,” Seth Stern, director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, told SAN.
If Paramount purchases Warner
Paramount, initially considered the leading suitor for Warner Bros., has now launched a hostile takeover bid that would mean something very different for CNN. Since its merger with Skydance Media earlier this year, Paramount is now run by Trump ally David Ellison, son of the fourth-richest man in the world, Oracle founder Larry Ellison.
“You’ve got an ownership group that is known to be compromised,” Stern said. “There’s no question about that. As part of the Paramount Skydance merger, Paramount paid a $16 million payment to the Trump administration to settle a lawsuit that was frivolous. The payment was essentially a bribe.”
Trump sued Paramount, the owner of CBS News, over what he alleged was deceptive editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential campaign. The settlement roiled CBS, and the executive producer of “60 Minutes” resigned in protest.
Trump’s hatred of CNN goes back years, and the younger Ellison reportedly promised the president sweeping changes if Paramount is the company to take control of the network.
“Trump’s already had discussions with both Ellisons about how CNN would be changed more to Trump’s liking,” Cohen said. “In a democracy, that’s not how things are supposed to work. In an authoritarian society, the leader gets to choose who runs the media. That’s not who runs the news media. That’s not supposed to happen here.”
After the Paramount Skydance merger, Ellison installed Bari Weiss, an opinion journalist who had been a vocal critic of legacy media organizations, as the new editor-in-chief of CBS News. The network also hired conservative Kenneth R. Weinstein as an ombudsman to review complaints of political bias in reporting.
CBS employees have expressed their concerns about the prospect of Paramount taking over CNN.
“A merger with CNN is the one thing that would make me genuinely worried about losing my job,” one CBS News staffer told The Guardian.
CNN is a left-leaning outlet according to AllSides, which rates the purported political biases of news organizations. But CNN’s outlook could shift if the Trump-friendly Ellisons take control.
“Paramount’s new ownership has, at least in its brief history, been keen to make those kinds of changes,” Stern said. “Whether it’s personnel or whether it’s content, whether it’s programming, whether it’s the amount of meddling in journalistic decision making from the corporate level. Either way, I don’t think that the news you would be getting from a Paramount-owned CNN would be news that you could trust.”
Cohen said it’s part of a bigger picture of media consolidation.
“Laws and rules that allow news media to be run by a few giant conglomerates, most of whom don’t care about journalism or the free flow of information — they only care about profit maximization,” Cohen said. “So, the fight over Warner Bros. and CNN just furthers that trend, and it would be especially dangerous if President Trump were able to tip the scales so that Warner and CNN would be taken over by Paramount.”
Trump involvement
Trump had made it abundantly clear he wants to see CNN in the hands of different ownership. The president told reporters on Wednesday that it’s “imperative” the network is sold.
“I think CNN should be sold, because I think the people that are running CNN right now are either corrupt or incompetent,” Trump said.
Trump’s administration that will have the final regulatory say on any sale of Warner Bros. Trump said he will “probably” be involved in the final decision.
“The Trump administration has exposed the shortcomings of corporate media as a whole,” Stern said. “But you know, there are levels, and Paramount’s ownership compounds the problems with billionaire ownership.”
Among the billionaires involved in Paramount’s bid is Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. His private equity firm, Affinity Partners, is backing the Paramount bid.
The White House has not commented on Kushner’s role in the bidding war. But Cohen sees it as part of a broader pattern. “There’s so much corruption in Washington today, especially with the Trump administration, that sure, it’s a conflict of interest, but we’re seeing conflicts every week,” he said.
Paramount argued its bid will have an easier path to regulatory approval.
“You know what you’re getting with Paramount,” Stern said. “You’re getting the Ellisons.”
They have shown, he said, their willingness to “throw their journalists under the bus and sacrifice the integrity of their newsrooms for their other business interests.”
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
