Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison is vowing to keep up NCS’s independence after his firm’s all-but-inevitable takeover of the information community and dad or mum firm, Warner Bros. Discovery.
On Thursday’s episode of CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street,” the media mogul dismissed “fear” NCS can be compelled to take a tough right-wing pivot as soon as it’s acquired by his enterprise.
“Editorial independence will absolutely be maintained,” he mentioned of the outlet, which has lengthy been accused of liberal bias by President Donald Trump. “It’s maintained at CBS, it’ll be maintained at NCS.”
“Really who we want to talk to is the 70% of Americans that identify as center-left and center-right and we want to be in the truth business, we want to be in the trust business and that’s not going to change,” the son of high-profile Trump donor Larry Ellison went on.
David Ellison’s rationalization wasn’t precisely convincing to journalism followers, nonetheless, given the adjustments at CBS News which have gone down since Skydance formally merged with Paramount in August 2025 and led to the installation of journalist Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief.
Since Weiss took the helm of CBS final October, the outlet has been accused of shamelessly kowtowing to Trump and his administration.
Newsroom issues about CBS’s editorial independence appeared all however confirmed as Weiss aggressively slashed workers, handpicked a set of conservative on-screen expertise and launched a city corridor collection that includes MAGA allies like Erika Kirk and Vice President JD Vance.
In December, her management got here below additional scrutiny after deciding to shelve a “60 Minutes” story in regards to the abuse of migrants despatched to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT jail.
While Weiss mentioned the story was being held for “additional reporting” after Trump officers declined to go on the document, inner emails from the reporter who led the piece, journalist Sharyn Alfonsi, mentioned the choice primarily gave the administration a “kill switch” to bury any reporting “they find inconvenient.” The report finally aired this January.
Prior to Weiss’ tenure at CBS, Paramount settled a $16 million lawsuit from Trump final July, by which he accused the information channel of deceptively modifying an interview with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
The settlement was largely seen as a technique to appease Trump’s Federal Communications Commission as Skydance sought approval for its proposed merger with Paramount.