Trump buddy Larry Ellison (one of the richest people in the U.S.) and his son David are a hair’s breadth away from being able to decide what many Americans learn about what Trump is doing to America.
The only thing stopping them is California attorney general Rob Bonta’s lawsuit, joined by the attorneys general of 11 other states and the Writer’s Guild of America. Bonta’s coalition is attempting to derail the Ellisons’ proposed $111 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, alleging it violates a century-old antitrust law.
Lawyers for Paramount and the state of California are meeting today to discuss a possible path for settling the suit. But it’s far from clear they’ll come to an agreement, or, even if they did, that it would protect the public’s right to know.
Bonta and California are appropriately concerned about what the Ellisons’ plan might do to jobs in Hollywood’s TV and film industry. But the stakes are much larger for America as a whole.
Trump’s game plan is for the Ellisons to control a giant media monopoly — including CBS News, CNN, Comedy Central (home to Jon Stewart), HBO (John Oliver), and even TikTok (where 1 out of 5 Americans now get their news) — to silence criticism of Trump.
The Ellisons have already gobbled up CBS and CBS News. If they get Warner Bros. Discovery, they’ll also own CNN, Comedy Central, and HBO. Larry Ellison’s company, Oracle, leads an investor group that holds a majority 80.1 percent stake in TikTok’s U.S. operations.
In normal times, in a normal administration, under a normal president, this concentration of media ownership would be merely troubling. But these aren’t normal times, and this media monopoly would be catastrophic to the public’s right to know about Trump and his authoritarian moves.
Trump has repeatedly revealed his thirst to silence critics, and the Ellisons have revealed their eagerness to help him.
When the Ellisons gained ownership of CBS, they dutifully got rid of Stephen Colbert by not letting CBS renew his contract, and they ripped the guts out of CBS News and its flagship “60 Minutes” — firing Scott Pelley and other senior producers who refused to walk the Trump walk.
One departing producer there explained in a farewell memo to colleagues that she could no longer work where stories are “evaluated not just on their journalistic merit, but on whether they conform to a shifting set of ideological expectations — a dynamic that pressures producers and reporters to self-censor or avoid challenging narratives that might trigger backlash or unfavorable headlines.”Anyone who believes that the Ellisons will treat CNN (or Comedy Central or HBO) any better than they’ve treated CBS News hasn’t been paying attention.
CNN has long been a target of Trump. The White House has called the network’s reporting biased and inaccurate on its new “Media Offenders” webpage.
Last December, when a CNN reporter asked Trump a question he didn’t like, he shot back: “You know you work for the Democrats, don’t you? You’re basically an arm of the Democrat Party.”
The Ellisons — per et fils — have promised Trump that if he lets them take over Warner Bros. Discovery, they’ll defang CNN.
The Wall Street Journal reported that David Ellison promised Trump he’d make “sweeping changes” to CNN if he were to acquire its parent company.
Several insiders told The Guardian that a White House official discussed with Larry Ellison potential programming changes at CNN, including firing reporters such as Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar, whom Trump is said to loathe.
Months ago, Trump said it was “imperative” that CNN be sold as part of a possible Warner Bros. Discovery deal. “CNN should be sold because the people that are running CNN right now are either corrupt or incompetent,” he told reporters at an event at the White House.
“I think any deal, it should be guaranteed and certain that CNN is part of it or sold separately,” Trump continued, “but I don’t think the people that are running that company right now and running CNN — which is a very dishonest group of people — I don’t think that should be allowed to continue. I think CNN should be sold along with everything else.”
At a press briefing in March, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth complained about a CNN report that the Trump administration had underestimated Iran’s ability to disrupt global oil traffic by closing the Strait of Hormuz. “Patently ridiculous,” Hegseth told reporters, adding that “the sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better.”
Does anyone need more evidence that Trump has been pushing Ellison’s bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s parent, in order to silence criticism?
Trump’s game plan all along has been to neuter CBS News, CNN, and other news sources that have reported critically on him.
As I noted at the start of this post, Paramount’s lawyers are today meeting with Bonta and his team.
David Ellison is threatening to begin moving Paramount’s operations out of California starting in October if Bonta refuses to settle his antitrust lawsuit that’s now blocking Paramount’s proposed merger with Warner Bros. Discovery. State officials and labor groups like the Writer’s Guild have called the move a pressure tactic or blackmail, which of course it is.
The problem is, there’s no necessary connection between an agreement that may satisfy Bonta and the state of California and one that would be in the interest of the American public.
Presumably, California is concerned about the impact of the proposed merger on jobs, especially in Hollywood, rather than its impact on the public’s right to know what the Trump administration is up to. That’s understandable.
Yet a Trumpian media monopoly that preserved Hollywood jobs but gave Trump more power to silence criticism would be a dangerous loss for America.
Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.