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<\/p>\nSean Bell is a writer and journalist based in Edinburgh.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Shortly before CNN\u2019s<\/span> launch in 1980, founder Ted Turner \u2014 displaying what could politely be described as impressive foresight \u2013 instructed that a special video be prepared. The tape, which was leaked <\/a>online by a former CNN intern in 2015, portrays members of the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine bands performing a melancholy rendition of the hymn \u201cNearer, My God, to Thee.\u201d As the legend goes<\/a>, this somber sign-off was meant to be the last thing broadcast by CNN should the end of the world become assured. In light of recent events, CNN employees may be considering digging it out of the archives.<\/p>\n CNN has beheld a pale horse; the rider\u2019s name is David Ellison, and Bari Weiss follows closely behind. After confirmation last week that Warner Bros. Discovery, of which CNN is a subsidiary, would accept Paramount Skydance\u2019s $111 billion takeover bid, the network is set to be swallowed by the father-and-son oligarch duo of Larry<\/a> and David Ellison<\/a>, whose naked alignment with the Trump administration predicated their earlier absorption and regime-friendly retooling of CBS News<\/a>. (Larry, the Oracle CEO<\/a>, was also pivotal earlier this year in the purchase of TikTok\u2019s U.S. operations<\/a> from its Chinese owner, installing a new CEO<\/a> who earlier took credit for the app designating the term<\/a> \u201cZionist\u201d as \u201chate speech.\u201d) Many now look to CBS as a preview of what is to come. Speaking to the Daily Beast,<\/a> a senior CBS News staffer said, \u201cIt can \u2014 and will \u2014 always get worse,\u201d and added CNN staffers were right to be fearful, as \u201cit is hell over here.\u201d<\/p>\n When it became apparent that the Ellisons\u2019 bid for Warner Bros. would win out after Netflix declined to further raise its offer, Weiss was attending a Free Press debate between Ross Douthat and Steven Pinker on God \u2014 an event that would move even the most militant atheist to sympathize with the Almighty \u2014 but giggled trollishly<\/a> on X: \u201cI hear there\u2019s some news?\u201d At CNN, reports indicate the mood is less chipper. \u201cNo one wants to work for the Ellisons,\u201d one CNN employee told NBC News.<\/a> \u201cIf Bari is going to be running CNN, expect people to leave.\u201d<\/p>\n This is further proof that there is seemingly no amount of money or power that can force any journalist not married to her<\/a> to like or respect Weiss, a tool in every sense of the word, whose blatantly ideological interventions and ham-fisted incompetence since being installed at CBS<\/a> have repeatedly provoked contempt<\/a> from her underlings. But competence was never part of Weiss\u2019s job description \u2014 her role was to act as sugar in the gas tank<\/a> of a news network against which Donald Trump has long held a grudge. Now, CNN \u2014 which has long been even higher on Trump\u2019s enemies list \u2014 also faces being press-ganged into a circus where a clown is also the ringleader.<\/p>\n Still, this would not be the first time CNN employees have been forced to tolerate an idiot boss, and if the Ellisons plan to copy their CBS blueprint and disfigure another network into something less objectionable to the average American fascist, they will find some of the work has already been done.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Prior to CNN\u2019s then-CEO Jeff Zucker\u2019s forced resignation<\/a> in 2022, the Warner Bros. Discovery board was already grumbling about the network\u2019s perceived liberal bias and brought in Chris Licht as Zucker\u2019s replacement. Licht entered the job determined to tone down CNN\u2019s anti-Trump coverage and win back Republican viewers. The latter of these ambitions has been a spectacular failure \u2014 as of March 2023, CNN\u2019s prime-time ratings had tanked by 61 percent<\/a> compared to the previous year \u2014 while the former led to an infamous CNN town hall with Trump himself, ahead of which Licht reportedly told the president to \u201chave fun.\u201d The result<\/a> was a ritual humiliation which obliterated what little support Licht had among CNN staff and presaged his departure after little more than a year in the job.<\/p>\n Now, CNN \u2014 which has long been even higher on Trump\u2019s enemies list \u2014 also faces being press-ganged into a circus where a clown is also the ringleader.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Writing in The Nation in 2023, Jeet Heer observed<\/a> that \u201cwhether out of genuine conviction or out of a desire to please the plutocrats who own Warner Bros. Discovery, Licht has mastered the art of deploying centrist rhetoric for reactionary ends.\u201d This strategy \u2014 of attempting to meet MAGA where it is, or at least nearer to halfway<\/a> \u2014 is bafflingly popular<\/a>, not just with establishment media organizations but among prominent mainstream Democrats<\/a>, despite the fact it has never been shown to work. After all, why would Trump and the Ellisons tolerate media that is merely amenable when they can force it into groveling supplication?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The Warner Bros. deal now must get past antitrust regulators<\/a>, but any challenge would be at the discretion of the courts and Trump\u2019s Justice Department. Anyone putting their faith in this possibility should remember the Justice Department\u2019s erstwhile antitrust chief Gail Slater was forced out of her role<\/a> last month after frustrating the Trump administration with her resistance to corporate mergers. This may account for why Paramount, even before the deal was closed, declared<\/a> its \u201cconfidence in the speed and certainty of regulatory approval for its transaction.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n By signing up, I agree to receive emails from The Intercept and to the Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Use<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n Always right on time, numerous Democrats<\/a> are now expressing grave concerns over what this next major act of consolidation would mean for the media landscape. But if America genuinely had a problem with such monopolies, media empires from Rupert Murdoch<\/a> to William Randolph Hearst would never have come into being; instead, American capitalism operates on the belief that a cyberpunk dystopia ruled over by vast, unaccountable mega-corporations constitutes an environment of healthy competition, provided there is more than one mega-corporation at any given time.<\/p>\n You do not need to be a fan of CNN to consider its embattled future a grim prospect, any more than you need to be a fan of the Washington Post to be dismayed by its gutting<\/a> at the hand of boorish gazillionaire Fauntleroy Jeff Bezos. Both are indicative of a prevailing philosophy shared by the uber-wealthy and the far right. If media has influence, they want to control it. If media no longer has influence \u2014 or worse, has the kind of influence they don\u2019t care for \u2014 it can and must be destroyed, or else reshaped in their own image and for their own ends.<\/p>\n\n
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