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For many years, Donald Trump has trashed CNN and has taught his loyal followers to do the same.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, angry chants of “CNN sucks!” reverberated at his campaign rallies, and he still jumps at every opportunity to disparage star CNN journalists such as Kaitlan Collins.
He charges that the cable network is dishonest and biased against him, although in truth, the network goes out of its way to give voice to his lies with pro-Trump pundits like Scott Jennings.
But now, for Trump, a greater relief may be within his grasp.
On Thursday, his rich and powerful friends at Paramount Skydance moved closer to acquiring CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.
It’s not yet a done deal and there are regulatory battles ahead, especially as state attorneys general get involved, but, for Trump and his allies, the signs are encouraging.
In simplest terms, Paramount managed to send another suitor packing. Netflix already had the approval of the Warner Bros board, and it looked for a while as if the entertainment giant would withstand a renewed bidding war.
But on Thursday, Netflix dropped its bid. The decision-makers walked away, saying it would have been nice to make the deal but not an absolute necessity.
We don’t know exactly what went on behind the scenes, but it certainly appears that Trump had a hand in the way this has played out so far.
Netflix CEO, Ted Sarandos, went to the White House just days ago to meet with top Trump aides. It’s hard to know to what extent influence was exerted, but something changed.
Meanwhile, Trump remains chummy with those who control Paramount Skydance – its CEO, David Ellison, and his father, Larry, the Oracle co-founder and one of the richest people on earth, sometimes described as a “centibillionaire”.
These involvements are troubling, said Courtney Radsch, who directs the Center for Journalism and Liberty at the Open Markets Institute, a non-profit that advocates for democratic governance and commercial competition.
“There certainly appears to be an unprecedented level of politically motivated involvement as Trump seeks to defang major news networks,” Radsch told me in an interview on Friday.
That defanging was under way long before this development. Trump has been busy suing news organizations, including Disney-owned ABC News, and happily taking their settlements as he crows about his victories. His mutually beneficial relationships with billionaires, including the Washington Post owner, Jeff Bezos, have chipped away at editorial independence, as when Bezos spiked a Post editorial endorsement of Kamala Harris just days before the 2024 presidential election.
And consider what has happened at CBS, whose parent company is none other than Paramount Skydance. The network’s storied news division – once home to icons of integrity such as Walter Cronkite and Edward R Murrow – is newly run by Bari Weiss, a broadcasting neophyte who has earned Trump’s praise.
Under her direction, CBS News has taken a rightward turn, becoming something of a Fox News Lite.
Trump probably would like nothing more than to see Weiss – or someone just as pliant – expand her empire, thus bringing CNN to heel.
What’s the ultimate goal here? Nothing less than control of the news media for partisan political purposes, much in the manner of authoritarian governments around the world and throughout history.
A case in point: Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister, who undermined independent journalism as he moved the country away from democracy and toward its current state of authoritarian rule.
“Trump wants to control the news and his justice department has been largely purged of anyone who might ask too many questions of a deal like this,” said Craig Aaron, the co-CEO of Free Press, a media-reform organization that has published the “media capitulation index” which ranks the independence, or lack thereof, of media organizations (not to be confused with the Weiss-founded publication the Free Press).
That index, notably, gave Netflix high grades for relative independence, and Paramount very low grades.
Those who oppose media consolidation didn’t like either the Netflix or the Paramount acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery, since it undercuts competition and puts more power in fewer (richer) hands.
But at least in the Netflix plan, CNN would have been spun off into a separate organization, a preferable outcome for editorial independence.
The Ellisons already have shown what their control of a news organization yields – a Trump-friendlier, more political CBS News. One journalist who recently left the network lamented in her farewell note to colleagues that editorial decisions increasingly are based on a “shifting set of ideological expectations” that cause self-censorship.
In the not-so-distant past, a monster deal like this one could easily get tripped up over antitrust concerns and regulatory roadblocks. That’s still possible.
But given the political forces at play – included a weaponized and corrupted justice department – Paramount Skydance is likely to prevail.
In an America that looks ever more like an oligarchy, that means Trump will, too.
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Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture
