Many of us in the Wikipedia Community, and I'm very sure a big part of the world, have been following the deal between Cable News Network (CNN)'s parent company Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Skydance, which also owns CBS, very closely.^[1]

Networks changing hands aren't out of the ordinary in the American media landscape. However, concerns arising from the consolidation of the media may center on the CEO of Paramount Skydance, David Ellison — who already has a bit of an image problem.^[2]

Ellison is very friendly with the president, Donald Trump. The Wall Street Journal reported that Larry Ellison, his father, told Donald Trump that he could overhaul CNN if the deal passes. Paramount quickly denied the report.^[3][4]

However, after acquiring CBS, David Ellison's overhaul makes the denial much less convincing; he appointed Bari Weiss as the chief editor. Weiss accused the media of having a liberal bias.^[5] Ellison then appointed Kenneth R. Weinstein, a former Trump appointee, as Ombudsman of CBS.^[6] Later, Weiss started an overhaul of the legacy journalistic show 60 Minutes, where she fired the news presenter, Scott Pelley, and apparently pressured the 60 Minutes journalists to report on events that never occurred.^[7][8]

Since Paramount Skydance's takeover of CBS News, there has been pushback from CBS staff, former employees, and long-time editors.^[9] This pushback involved company layoffs and the 60 Minutes overhaul.^[10][11] This begs the question: Is this a media company where the editorial standards are being changed?

CNN's staff expressed a sense of fear and uncertainty about the deal, and the staff is especially concerned about the network's editorial autonomy. Many leaders in the network said that they will leave if the merger happens, such as CNN's Chief Legal Correspondent Paula Reid.^[12] A big pushback against this, legally, came from several Democratic lawmakers, state attorneys general, and, obviously, freedom and civil rights groups who believe that if the merger happens, it may change Paramount's stance about editorial independence.^[13] However, as of writing, Paramount is expected to settle the antitrust lawsuits brought by several states, which would pave the way for the acquisition. The states are demanding that any settlement deal to include guarantees to ensure CNN’s editorial independence. If a deal cannot be reached, the case is expected to go to court next March.^{[14] [15]}

At the moment, yes. The Request for Comment: Reliability of CBS News under Bari Weiss. Views are mixed, and there's a grain of salt to take from this discussion that Wikipedians are curious about the issue. It is not easy for an established source like CBS or CNN to be ruled as generally unreliable at any RfC in the Reliable sources Noticeboard for now. There was an earlier RfC on CBS, in which the majority of editors came to a consensus that CBS has not published fake news or a fabrication worthy enough to change its reliability. The same consensus was reached this time. Political and parent-company changes aren't new in the media industry; just because management changes hands often doesn't mean a change in reliability (Excluding things like government takeovers). It does not mean forever, though. When competition lowers, so do the quality and standards.

If the network is seen as reliable, it can be assumed that the expansion of the network's parent company is not a matter of concern. However, the very concern here is consolidation, an increase in power, and lower levels of competition. Aside from the fact that owning two giant and influential cable networks is already vastly different, it may just take out a big competitor from the market, and that's even worse. Competition is important, even if networks sway away editorially; you, as the network, would have to relatively hold some sort of standards to compete with other networks which people can choose over you. A company that has ties to the government owning networks is not a new thing, but every single time, the main problem in this madness of 'mediopoly' is rather the erasure of any competition, softening editorial independence, and normalizing that softness, as there's no one to compete against. While the current Paramount or CBS is nowhere near that, I find the recent events very alarming. There is no doubt that the attitude of the CEO David Ellison and his father may change after the deal is greenlit; that is not the first time it has happened in something like this, nor will it be the last.

Wikipedians came together to discuss these mounting reports of events that many media outlets reported on in an RfC in July of this year. A lot of users have said that the news was very concerning, there are two main opinions on this RfC. One side of users thinks that CBS is unreliable “simply” based on the editorial and management changes, while the other side thinks it is “too early” to evaluate CBS when it hasn’t published anything fabricated.

To give you a better understanding, I’ve gone ahead and asked two editors from opposite ends of this spectrum for their opinions: how they view these changes, what their main points are, and whether they have experienced any changes in their stance.

The first user I asked was Bluethricecreamman on their talk page. They were one of the people, and an editor, to argue during the RfC that CBS is “generally reliable at the moment.” So, I asked them what led them to that conclusion and whether they still stand by that position. Their reply was:

Yeah i stand by it. We need external coverage that they are pushing unreliable info to demote cbs. And if bias is coming into the reporting such that it is overly undue, that might be worth considering in the future. I think we can always reconsider anytime as necessary, the strength of wikipedia is how fast it adapts to new info and how quickly it can gauge information.

They said. This was the most common position expressed in the RfC, and ultimately the one that became the final conclusion. So, I pressed them further and asked what they think Wikipedians might think about CBS after the CNN merger, and whether their own view might change. They quickly replied:

We watch with earnest interest and hope for the best, though we are prepared for the worst. Our processes for consensus making will adjust (as always) according to however the cards shall fall.

I suppose that’s the wise answer you’d expect.

To see what the other side had to say, I went ahead and asked a Wikipedian from that side as well. The Wikipedian in question is Very Polite Person, who also happened to be the first Wikipedian in the RfC to call CBS “generally unreliable.” I asked him about his current views on the matter, several months after the RfC. He replied with:

My position was simple at the time, and I'm probably a bit less firm on it now. For me, reliability has to also consider broad perception of the leadership and ownership of an organization, and that is a transient factor. A source may be zero concern for me today, but a new owner and/or editor, depending on reputation and background of the actor, may be concerning tomorrow. CBS outside fringe political circles had a generally impeccable historical news reputation going back generations. Until these new changes, my memory is that reports of internal conflict and strife were incredibly rare at CBS News. Then, we have new severely partisan ownership stakes and an editor who came from a hyper-partisan publication and background. These parties have ties to the present administration.

I also asked him about the future of CBS and why he continues to hold this opinion. He replied:

Any media organization with ties to any governing body in any country is automatically suspect, no matter what politics are involved. Hence why I wrote: "needs additional corroborating non-CBS sourcing". It's a bit of binary for me on that. Who the nation is doesn't matter.

And here you have it, these are probably most general views on the matter. In a non-partisan and centrist style, I would also like to say, regardless of views, in the end there were no established sources or any proof that indicated CBS had fabricated a piece or was consistently and consecutively broadcasting fake news. A large part of the editors in the RfC have said that it's better to rediscuss this after there's enough evidence or enough time has passed to evaluate the effects of Bari Weiss's tenure at CBS.

It's not new, nor is it the first time a media conglomerate with influence from the government and key government-favoring appointees has merged other cable networks into its own. It sounds very far-fetch for now, but you just need to take a look at other examples to see a pattern. In this case, let's compare it to a very similar case from Turkey.

When the Demirören Group, Turkey's mega media conglomerate that has close ties with the government, came into the media industry after buying the daily Milliyet, it maintained a reliable line of broadcasting in its first years. However, as the conglomerate started eliminating competition by buying more and more outlets, and finally CNN Türk in 2018, it wasn't even noticed for a while; it took until 2021 for CNN to even investigate political bias on CNN Türk!^[16] a very shocking 4 years.

However, this might be even earlier for CBS. At the beginning of September 2026, CBS pushed a headline linking Abdul El-Sayed, a Muslim Democrat running in the 2026 Michigan Senate election, to the September 11 attacks, which was reportedly pushed by Bari Weiss.^[17][18] That sounds like something you would hear on Fox, not on CBS. Now, that's not where it ends beacuse Fox News did pushed a similar headline, very close to CBS as well, though no controversial headline reports for this one since you would expect from Fox here. Later, the Fox news even published a headline that protected CBS report, and victimized CBS, by saying that it faced heavy heat from the far-left here. Coincidentally, not long after, CBS staff accused Weiss of being responsible for the controversial headline as well.^[19]

So, with all this going forward, it doesn't seem wrong to assume that CBS just might become Fox News 2.0 after the CNN takeover.

As for her background, The Guardian reports:^[20]

Known for her attacks on liberal institutions and “cancel culture”, Weiss founded the Free Press with her partner Nellie Bowles in 2021 after she left the New York Times as a columnist, claiming she was heavily scrutinized for her conservative views and criticism of the left at the paper.

It's pretty unsettling to see a Chief-editor for CBS to be described as "known for her attacks on liberal institutions". She also called it Cancel culture, a very similar wording that is cancel culture which was recently cited again by an high-profile Trump-ally.^[21] So yes, I believe it's very possible that current CBS is on it's way to become a more softer version of Fox News.

CEO Mark Thompson has admitted to feeling tension about the merger on the horizon.^[22] It is speculated that Paramount wants to merge CBS and CNN into one bloc. A new wave of that concern came from CNN's Brian Stelter in a CNN article about the merger, as he says:^[23]

Any steps to merge CNN and CBS News — a long-discussed possibility — may be impeded by the fact that the CBS News workforce is heavily unionized while CNN’s is not.

It's unsurprisingly easier to control or pressure a workforce that's not as unionized, and perhaps that's exactly why the CNN staff have been very nervous about the merger. It is not to say that there isn't a possibility that Paramount will try to play both sides of the political spectrum after having CBS and CNN. Why try to occupy one spot on the political spectrum? That's only an opinion, but it wouldn't be far-fetched to believe that Paramount wants to play "good cop-bad cop" with CNN and CBS. By putting them on different sides of the political spectrum, you don't need to worry about losing any viewers who like to watch the "good cop", while pushing any agenda you want through your "bad cop" however you want. CNN and CBS both have massive reach and influence on how we consume media, so, with that said, it wouldn't be wrong to assume people will look beyond the parent company and only at the political spectrum. Though when I say this, don't forget that it will be very staged. One may assume that, especially if CNN is to be the "good cop", they will manufacture its editorial line to a point where it doesn't touch the government's nerves while looking like it does. Obviously, though, these are theories and opinions about what may happen, but if we were to see one thing from the authoritarian playbook, like in the case of Hungary, where Viktor Orbán's media conglomerate, Central European Press and Media Foundation, stepped up its game, and outlets were biased one by one with each outlet and merger, it is, at least I would say, more than likely we'll see a much more similar CBS and CNN after the merger. It's not hard to see that CNN, a broadcaster that can't even protect its sister channel CNN Türk from the political influence of an authoritarian, would be unable to hold against Paramount, or, in this case, Trump.

If the merger were to happen, and the scenario plays out as we speak, there seem to be some options for CNN and CBS audiences who do look beyond political position and the parent company itself. One option is audience migration. For example, after Weiss overhauled CBS golden-star show 60 Minutes, as I've already told in this piece, it was reported that the show hit the lowest ratings it had ever had in a quarter of a century.^[24] This is a classic Political Audience Migration. It happens when a network with an already established audience suddenly sways far from its original editorial policies and standards, such as Bari Weiss pressuring the CBS newsroom, whether it be because of the new boss, parent company or government pressure. In this classic case, the audience tends to find other channels of similar quality to the original network, which creates a great empty space for a new or established independent network to gain relevance or an audience that may benefit from this migration. However, this comes with its own risk, sometimes, and for now, as speculation, to keep the former audiences with them, the parent company may buy another established outlet, or the outlet that the audience may choose or has already chosen, which creates sockpuppet networks.

Boycotting is important. It has always pushed companies to change some of their policies. It's very helpful to put a leash on the merger, but it needs wide support, and now, that turns eyes to the public going forward. As the audience migrates, it must be a leash on CBS on how far they can deteriorate their editorial stance, unless they want to become FOX News, which, though, would beg the question: Is Fox News willing to share its audience with CBS?

Competition is generally good. Not always. Let's say, if you're to compete against a network, in this case Fox News, on pleasing a political side, you will inevitably get more extreme. This is definitely a scarier scenario for how things could play out. If Fox News and CBS were to compete for getting the most out of a right-wing audience in a case where CBS original audience were to migrate, we just might see a different CBS. In this piece, I speculated that, if it were to happen, CBS would be a softer Fox News at best; however, there's always a chance it may be an even more hardcore Fox News. Though it's hard to think that if this were even to happen, CBS would just change editorially in a single night. Fox News went through a lot of phases before being today's think tank, after all. However, there would be signs. I can only guess by observing the changes after the presumed merger; then it'll be more clear what kind of CBS and CNN we'll see.

Here's the quick opinion; I think CBS likely to become unreliable eventually, after the merger as media competition loosens and Paramount's influence intensifies. CNN's unionless workers may be crushed, merged, and reappointed. Furthermore, Paramount will likely try to manufacture CNN as opposed to CBS to get money out of both political spectrums. While these are all opinions, one thing is definitely real; Paramount will intensify political pressure after the CNN takeover. It's a scenario, a movie we've seen over and over again. It's the same scenario, with different actors each time, ending in the ultimate conclusion: media oligarchy.