During his symbolic first stop at the CBS News offices after closing the Paramount-Skydance mega-merger last month, David Ellison – the network’s new owner – said “all the right things” during his meet-and-greet with staff.
Barely a month later, whatever goodwill the chief executive had built up had evaporated entirely, with multiple network staffers telling The Independent that Ellison had “lost the trust” of the newsroom, who now see him as nothing but a “liar” as he takes steps to appease the right and President Donald Trump.
“He lied to us,” one long-time CBS News employee bluntly stated.
According to sources, Ellison’s lack of credibility with the “Tiffany Network” news staff comes down to the “broken promises” he delivered following a politically-strained merger process that saw Paramount’s former leadership agree to pay Trump $16 million to settle a “meritless” lawsuit over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris.
Once the $8.4 billion deal to merge Paramount with Ellison’s Skydance was closed, the 42-year-old media mogul – whose father is Oracle founder, Trump ally, and one of the world’s richest men Larry Ellison – vowed that he would not “politicize” the new Paramount or its news network.
“Of course we believe in the independence of journalism, we believe in basically being in the trust business, we believe in being in the truth business,” he declared on his first day as the new chairman of Paramount Skydance. “But also, I’ve watched others wade in to the political spectrum and, I just want to be transparent, I have no interest in doing that.”
The last few weeks, according to sources who spoke to The Independent, have shown that Ellison’s pledge about having “no interest” in playing politics with the newsroom is ringing hollow.
Earlier this month, it was reported that Ellison was on the verge of purchasing The Free Press for “well above” $100 million and installing its stridently pro-Israel, anti-woke founder Bari Weiss into a senior leadership role at CBS News. Weiss, who was an opinion columnist for the New York Times before launching her “heterodox” media empire, would potentially be named the network’s editor in chief or co-president as part of the deal.
“The idea that the overvaluation of a rag like The Free Press is going to give Bari Weiss riches beyond her wildest dreams… is adding insult to injury to most of the real journalists at CBS News,” one network journalist told The Independent. “One, she’s not a journalist, as far as we’re concerned. And two, the idea that she’s going to carry some sort of editorial stick for us is hard to swallow.”
The Independent has contacted representatives of Paramount, Weiss and Ellison for comment.
Additionally, following up on Ellison’s vow to the Trump administration in order to secure approval for the merger, CBS News announced that it was bringing on former Trump appointee and conservative think tank leader Kenneth Weinstein to root out “complaints of bias” as the network’s ombudsman.
“Everyone seemed to be blindsided by it,” one veteran staffer told The Independent, adding that Weinstein “is not a journalist” but rather a “political operative.”
The hiring of Weinstein, who has a lengthy history of praising Trump and donating to Republicans, came on the heels of the network seemingly capitulating to the administration by implementing new rules for interviews on its Sunday news show, Face the Nation.
After Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem complained that one of her answers on a Face the Nation interview was “shamefully edited,” CBS initially defended the decision to trim the interview “for time” before Paramount executives effectively sided with the White House amid ongoing public pressure. Going forward, all interviews on the show will be broadcast either live, or live to tape, and in their entirety.
Ellison is also facing an investigation by House Democrats into the merger process and whether there were any violations of anti-bribery laws.
Besides examining the Paramount settlement with Trump, Democrats are questioning Ellison about the president’s claim that they reached a “side deal” to air $20 million of pro-Trump advertisements on CBS, as well as the pre-merger concessions regarding a CBS ombudsman, and a promise to eradicate all DEI policies at the new Paramount. The lawmakers are also seeking answers about decision-making behind the cancellation of prominent Trump critic Stephen Colbert’s top-rated CBS late-night show.
To add to the turmoil for the news network, Ellison and his senior leaders have vowed to cut $2 billion in operating costs at Paramount, which they’ve acknowledged will lead to painful layoffs of thousands of employees across the company in the near future.
At the same time, Larry and David Ellison are preparing a majority cash bid to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery and combine it with Paramount, creating an immense media powerhouse and potentially merging CBS News with CNN – which would drastically reshape the news landscape.
The prospect of Weiss overseeing CBS News – and maybe even CNN, one of Trump’s most reviled media outlets – along with a Trump loyalist serving as an ombudsman, and an executive leadership that seems largely sympathetic to the president has not been well-received in the newsroom.
More than anything, though, it has led to a souring of their opinion of Ellison as the company’s leader.
“He’s a liar, okay,” the network journalist said. “I mean, we all know that David Ellison is a liar and he just can’t be trusted, and he can’t be entrusted with the legacy of CBS News.”
The journalist added that Ellison is “essentially going to hand the keys to the kingdom to Bari Weiss and to anyone and everyone who is an ideologue that supports his and his father’s world.”
Other CBS employees, meanwhile, told The Independent that the widespread feeling within the network is that most of the staff no longer feel Ellison is an honest broker and that he has lost any and all credibility.
“I think people now just can’t trust him,” a network insider stated. “The first thing he said is he wasn’t gonna politicize this thing, and it feels like that’s what he’s doing. And he may not know that that’s what he’s doing, but that’s what he’s doing.”
Leaving an even more bitter pill in the mouths of the network’s news staff is the possibility that not only could Weiss – an opinion writer and pundit with no experience managing a news organization of CBS News’ size – be their boss, but that she could land a hefty payday while hundreds of staffers receive pink slips.
“We’re gonna lose true journalists in cuts to pay, in part, for her garbage website,” the network journalist said. “The fact that we don’t have money to pay journalists, but we have money to pay Bari Weiss between $100 and $200 million is indicative of what the Ellisons’ true goal here is. And it’s not journalism.”
