CBSNN

 

We'd better get used to that acronym.

Netflix and Paramount-Skydance, as you might recall, had been in competition for taking over Warner Brothers-Discovery, the parent company of CNN, whose ratings have slipped dramatically since Trump returned to power in early 2025 - most likely because of Scott Jennings and Jake Tapper.  Both companies expressed a desire to take over Warner Brothers-Discovery and CNN and seek to improve its stand in the increasingly irrelevant cable-news sweepstakes.  Then Netflix capitulated and withdrew its bid for Warner Brothers-Discovery.

So?  So, David Ellison and his father David - the benefactors of both Donald Trump - own Paramount-Skydance.  Paramount-Skydance owns CBS, which is run by Ellison beneficiary Bari Weiss.  

This news came out a day before Trump decided to blow up Iran.  So of course not too many people noticed.  But I did, and I credit former New York TV newswoman Sheila Stainback for bringing the news to my attention.  Note the word "former."  Sheila Stainback, who used to be an anchorwoman on the ten o'clock newscast on WPIX-TV in New York, quit the news business and turned to acting.  I learned about this news from her because I follow her on both Instagram and Threads.

These days, of course, a former TV journalist has more credibility than current TV journalists, and even non-journalists like actress Andrea Thompson, who was a CNN Headline News "anchor" for nine months, have more credibility than noted non-journalist Bari Weiss, who will likely become the editor-in-chief for the entire CBS-CNN news enterprise.  Given her inability to know the difference between reporting and editorializing (why else would CBS News anchor Tony Dokoupil verbally salute Marco Rubio on the air?), the potential for misinformation across two massive platforms (CBS News also included the CBS News 24/7 streaming channel) should be spectacularly gargantuan.

The combined news outlets will control, I have been led to understand, roughly two-thirds of  news reporting on legacy media.  And with a war between The U.S. and Israel and Iran well underway - which has led to the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - you can expect the Ellisons, one of the country's most wealthy Jewish families, and that yenteh Weiss to slant the news in favor of Trump and Netanyahu, two septuagenarians who cling to power to avoid going to prison, and frame the narrative to present the two globally isolated leaders as being quite noble.  I don't mean to be anti-Semitic in my characterizations of Weiss and the Ellisons, because, quite frankly, painting Trump and Netanyahu as the good guys in a war against a Muslim theocracy that is as wretched and as murderous as people say is not only a good way to rouse MAGA and Christian nationalists anticipating the Second Coming; it's also good for business.  They would have covered the Troubles in Ulster with a bias toward the British if they'd thought they could make a profit from it.

Also, you can expect more favorable coverage of Trump's tariff policy and immigration policy, less coverage at all of the Epstein files, and plenty of shady deals in the Middle East. Oh yeah, did I happen to mention that the Ellisons are being supported by significant investment from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, including the Qatar Investment Authority?  Everyone involved in this merger, like every defense contractor involved in this new war, is poised to make lots of money while the American people are poised to eat lots of crap.  After all, the only people that get hurt in situations like these are the innocent.

I haven't been able to write or report for the hyperlocal news site I worked for until this past June, which suits me just fine, and I don't care if I never work as a straight reporter ever again.  I'm comfortable mouthing off right here.  And I am please to join my fellow Fourth Estate alum Sheila Stainback into early retirement.