Paramount-Skydance turmoil hits CBS News

CBS News is discovering, again, that “editorial independence” is not a constitutional right; it is a line item that gets renegotiated whenever a conglomerate needs a signature from Washington.

In a Guardian column, media critic Margaret Sullivan describes a network in visible distress after a change in ownership and a looming set of corporate ambitions. Anderson Cooper has reportedly decided to leave 60 Minutes, while Stephen Colbert diverted an interview with a rising Democratic politician to YouTube rather than CBS’s own late-night platform. Sullivan also cites internal turmoil in the news division: an evening-news anchor presenting a softened version of CBS’s own reporting on ICE arrests, and a producer’s farewell note blaming the erosion of editorial autonomy.

The connective tissue, according to Sullivan, is not mysterious: corporate dealmaking that depends on regulators, and a management class eager to signal political compliance. Paramount Skydance—run by David Ellison and backed by his father, Oracle founder Larry Ellison—wants to buy Warner Bros Discovery, owner of CNN. Any such transaction would likely face scrutiny from the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC’s chair, Brendan Carr, is Trump-appointed and, Sullivan argues, has shown a willingness to treat the agency as a political instrument rather than a boring technocratic referee.

This is the part where the industry insists politics has nothing to do with it, while simultaneously acting as if politics is the only thing that matters.

Sullivan frames the pattern as “media capture”, citing University of Pennsylvania scholar Victor Pickard: ownership, market structure, and control mechanisms that make self-censorship rational. When the state holds discretionary power over mergers, licenses, and regulatory approvals, executives do what executives do: they manage risk. Journalism becomes one more variable to hedge.

The details Sullivan highlights are almost comically on-brand for late-stage corporate media. Colbert previously called Paramount’s settlement of what Sullivan describes as a frivolous Trump lawsuit a “big, fat bribe”; soon after, CBS decided not to renew his contract. Cooper’s public explanation—more time with his children—coexists with reports of dissatisfaction with the show’s direction under CBS News editor Bari Weiss, who, Sullivan writes, reports directly to David Ellison. The implicit lesson to staff is not delivered in a memo. It is delivered in career trajectories.

There is a simple diagnostic here: if a private company’s “independence” collapses when a regulator’s pen hovers over a deal, the problem is not merely the company’s cowardice. It is the regulatory choke point that turns speech into a bargaining chip.

Sullivan warns that if Paramount Skydance ends up controlling CNN, the same pressures could migrate across brands. That is less a prediction than a description of incentives. Consolidation concentrates not only capital but also vulnerability: fewer owners, larger transactions, higher regulatory exposure, and more reason to treat newsrooms as reputational liabilities.

In this model, audiences are not the customer. They are the collateral.