Days after Warner Bros. Discovery agreed to a deal with streaming giant Netflix, the future of Warner Bros. Discovery is in the spotlight amid a hostile takeover by Paramount Skydance, which is seeking to acquire the storied media conglomerate that owns CBS, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and major movie studios.
Paramount bid $108 billion, compared to Netflix’s bid of $82.7 billion. Netflix’s move has sparked antitrust concerns, with progressives like Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren saying it would limit access for consumers and Hollywood filmmakers. The White House also said it would closely monitor the agreement.
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But Paramount’s bid for Warner Bros. Discovery was derailed by numerous conflicts of interest, ties to President Donald Trump’s administration and related concerns about free expression.
These come on top of recent changes at CBS News, including the hiring of a conservative opinion writer as top boss and increased pressure on late-night show hosts and others to report critical of Trump.
kushner dispute
Paramount’s bid was funded in part by Jared Kushner’s investment firm Affinity Partners, along with funding from Saudi and Qatari sovereign wealth funds. Kushner is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, and served as an adviser during the first Trump administration.
“If you were teaching a class on conflicts of interest in business schools, this would be Exhibit A,” Nell Minnow, president of Portland, Maine-based ValueEdge Advisors, told Reuters.
President Trump told reporters on Monday that neither Paramount nor Netflix are “friends of mine” and that he had not spoken to Kushner about the deal.
But just last week, President Trump told reporters that he would be involved in determining whether the Warner Bros.-Netflix merger goes through.
“I will be involved in that decision,” Trump told reporters as he arrived at the Kennedy Center for the annual awards ceremony.
The conflict over hostile takeovers is not limited to the relationship with Mr. Kushner. Paramount is currently owned and led by David Ellison, the son of billionaire Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle and a close ally of the president.
press press
Weeks before Paramount’s merger with Skydance, the company’s CBS News Network settled a lawsuit filed by Trump over an interview with then-Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris that Trump claimed was fabricated.
The network said the allegations were baseless, but settled anyway for $16 million. Following the decision, Bill Owens, the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” the show that was at the center of President Trump’s attacks, resigned. National Public Radio, citing two CBS staffers, said Mr. Owens had “lost his independence from the company.”
Days later, fellow CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert called the settlement a “bribe,” and shortly after that, the company announced that The Late Show, which he has hosted since 2015, would be canceled in 2026.
Although the show was in the red, the timing of the decision to cancel it was widely seen as political.
The Paramount-Skydance merger was approved a few weeks later. Since then, CBS News, which the president has long accused of being unfair, has made decisions that critics say increasingly align with Trump’s preferences.
That included the appointment of Ken Weinstein, an ombudsman tasked with overseeing impartiality and adjudicating allegations of bias. His appointment itself is seen as partisan. Mr. Weinstein was once nominated as a candidate for ambassador to Japan during the Trump administration’s first term, but he has no background in the media.
In October, Paramount acquired the right-wing publication Free Press for $150 million and made its founder, Bari Weiss, editor-in-chief of CBS, despite having no television experience.
“They hired opinion columnist Bari Weiss to run their news network, paid her well for her services and kept a lot of journalists they fired (money that could have been spent), not because her successful run of Substack makes her eligible to run a broadcast news giant, but because her politics align with theirs and, to a large extent, Trump’s,” Seth Stern, advocacy director at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, told Al Jazeera.
Since her appointment, a number of prominent anchors and producers have resigned. Claudia Milne, who oversaw standards and practices, and co-anchor John Dickerson, who has been with CBS Evening News since 2009, both announced they would be leaving, as did the show’s other anchor, Maurice Dubois.
On Wednesday, CBS News announced that Tony Dokoupil will anchor its flagship evening newscast. Mr. Dokoupil is a co-anchor of CBS Mornings and joined the network in 2016.
In August, Margaret Brennan, host of another prominent CBS show, the Sunday public affairs show Face the Nation, interviewed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. The interview has been edited, which is standard practice given time constraints. After the administration filed a complaint, the network changed its policy.
But that instruction didn’t apply to 60 Minutes. In October, longtime CBS News personality Norah O’Donnell asked the president about pardoning Binance founder Chao Changpeng. In 2023, Mr. Zhao pled guilty to money laundering charges and now had transactions related to the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company, World Liberty Financial.
The network chose not to air the segment, but Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer pointed out that it paralleled the very same claim President Trump made in response to the Harris interview, claiming he was “docked.”
The network also cut the president’s remarks about reconciliation.
“The fact is, 60 Minutes paid me a lot of money, and I don’t have to wear this because I don’t want to embarrass you, and I’m sure you don’t either,” Trump said.
The network responded to the president’s request. That part of the interview was not broadcast.
The president continues to put pressure on the network, but he also praises the new management’s apparent friendliness.
President Trump’s comments exploded on social media after “60 Minutes” aired an interview with Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has become critical of the president in recent days.
“But my real problem with this show, not some low-IQ traitor, was that Paramount’s new ownership of 60 Minutes would allow a show like this to air. They’re no better than the old ownership, which paid me millions of dollars for false reporting about me, your favorite president!” he wrote in Truth Social.
“Political maneuvering”
Paramount’s bid for Warner Bros. Discovery also includes CNN, another major news network.
The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that David Ellison told the president during a visit to the White House that if the merger went through, Paramount would make “fundamental changes” to CNN, a frequent focus of Trump’s ire.
On Wednesday, President Trump addressed the possibility of a sale, saying, “I think CNN should be sold.”
At CNBC, David Ellison floated the idea of merging the networks and their respective reporting operations.
“We basically want to build a news service of scale that appeals to 70 percent of Americans who are in the middle class, based essentially on the business of trust, the business of truth,” Ellison told the network’s David Faber.
However, media experts are cautious about such a move.
“It’s no exaggeration to say that Netflix’s acquisition of Warner Bros. would raise legitimate antitrust questions, but Paramount’s alleged political move to bring CNN and CBS under the same corporate roof, with an implicit promise to make both stations’ coverage more friendly to the current administration, is even more worrying,” Rodney Benson, a professor of media, culture and communication at New York University, told Al Jazeera.
“This would dramatically increase the concentration of news organizations under the control of a single owner with close ties to the ruling party. It’s a choice between two bad alternatives, but as it currently stands, a Paramount takeover would be objectively worse for American democracy and press freedom.”
The Guardian also reported that Larry Ellison once cut down anchors who criticized the president, including the cable network’s prime-time show host Erin Burnett. Mr. Ellison has no direct involvement with Paramount Skydance.
“Abandoning the credibility of CNN and other WBD (Warner Bros. Discovery) holdings may benefit the Ellisons as they seek to curry favor with President Trump, but it is not in the long-term benefit of anyone else, including shareholders,” Stern added.
Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. did not respond to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment.
CNN would not face similar concerns if Netflix were the buyer instead. The focus will shift to concerns about the merger’s potential impact on the film and television production industry, particularly its potential to limit competition.
Netflix has not expressed interest in acquiring other traditional cable assets such as CNN, TNT or TBS. They will instead be spun off into an independent company called Discovery Global.
