CNN has a new owner: Skydance.
After a tumultuous, roughly yearlong process, Skydance-owned Paramount closed its $81 billion buyout of Warner Bros. Discovery on Tuesday. And beyond Hollywood, the mega merger brings two titans of the American TV news landscape — CBS and CNN — under the same roof.
On the eve of the deal's completion, Skydance confirmed that CNN's Mark Thompson will stay on as editor-in-chief of the network — separate from CBS, where Bari Weiss remains at the helm. But how the combined company's news operations will look farther down the road is yet to be seen.
Politics are also top of mind. The billionaire family of Skydance CEO David Ellison has a cozy relationship with President Donald Trump — who has been far from shy about targeting coverage he deems unfavorable from both CNN and CBS. Last month, his administration moved to bar CNN from the White House. And the network's new ownership arrives as coverage ramps up less than a month ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Ellison has pledged to maintain editorial independence. Under a recent settlement with states that challenged the merger, the company agreed to establish new monitoring of CBS and CNN by forming a "News Editorial Independence Board" within 180 days of completing its Warner acquisition.
Still, Skydance's corporate leaders are to choose who sits on this board. Critics are bracing for potentially deepening editorial turmoil — and warn of consequences of industry consolidation overall.
CNN's editor-in-chief remains in top spot
Skydance announced on Monday that Thompson — who has been CNN's chair and CEO since 2023 — would continue to lead the network. In a memo to staff published by Business Insider and other outlets, Thompson said he had "real confidence" Ellison and other Skydance leaders "will fully support the principle and practice of the kind of independent news that CNN has always stood for."
Thompson, a former chief executive of the BBC and The New York Times, acknowledged that some details of how CNN will operate have yet to be finalized — but said he planned to lead the network “as an independent Editor-in-Chief with the same responsibilities and prerogatives that I have now.”
Paramount-owned CBS News and its hallmark "60 Minutes" program have already seen editorial turmoil since coming under Skydance ownership last year. For critics of those changes, news of Thompson staying at CNN marked a meaningful safeguard — but some experts cautioned that time will tell.
“Both CNN and CBS News will ultimately sit under the same corporate ownership, and ownership can exert influence in ways that are much more subtle than directly telling an editor what stories to cover," said J. Christopher Hamilton, an associate professor at Syracuse University. Decisions about everything from budgets to personnel "can gradually affect the editorial character of a news organization.”
The long-term question “is whether that independence remains intact when it becomes costly or uncomfortable for the parent company,” he added.
Charles Schreger, an adjunct professor at NYU's Leonard N. Stern School of Business, expects Thompson not to be influenced by politics — and said that he doesn't think Skydance would keep the executive on if the company didn't "have the intention of letting him operate (CNN) in a neutral way.”
New editorial monitoring
According to court documents, the new editorial independence body will include five “active or retired” journalists with at least 10 years of experience.
Still, those members will be appointed by and report to the combined company's board of directors. Ellison is remaining chairman of what is now the combined Skydance.
“While it is termed independent, it is going to be filled with members appointed by Paramount,” said Megan Duncan, an associate professor of journalism at Virginia Tech's School of Communication. She predicts that will “lessen the teeth of this board."
The settlement outlines some additional criteria for board members, including that no more than two members be affiliated with the same political party, and that no government employees be appointed to the board or have oversight over who is on it.
According to court documents, the board's responsibilities include establishing a set of “guiding editorial principles” based on CBS and CNN's standards and practices, resolving “any disputes” between both employees at the two networks and corporate management and “monitoring adherence to ethical journalism.”
Members are to serve for terms of three years, although the board of the combined Paramount-Warner can still remove them for cause.
‘Disappointed that we could not do more’
Top state prosecutors like California Attorney General Rob Bonta — who led the coalition of 12 states that initially sought to block the Paramount-Warner merger — said when announcing the deal on Sept. 21 that the board will help "ensure independent, objective, fact-based reporting at CBS News and CNN."
Still, others wished the settlement could've gone further, including Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, who wanted a full divestiture of CNN and CBS and said he was “deeply disappointed that we could not do more.”
Meanwhile, while joining the rest of the states in the wider settlement, Colorado and Washington notably declined to sign off on the proposed editorial board terms.
As part of a separate settlement with Hollywood writers, the Writers Guild of America said that Paramount had also agreed to prohibit writer layoffs at CBS News Broadcast for the next five years.
Ellison, meanwhile, previously promised that editorial independence “will absolutely be maintained” under Paramount ownership.
"It's maintained at CBS. It'll be maintained at CNN," Ellison told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" in March, while noting that his company wants to speak to "the 70%" of viewers who he said identify as center-left or center-right. And in an August op-ed published by the New York Times amid the height of Paramount's antitrust battle with 12 states, he reiterated that "our journalists will continue to answer to the facts and to all the people they serve — not to any party or cause."
Trump and CNN
Last month, Trump barred CNN — as well as Politico and MS NOW — from the White House due to what he called unfavorable coverage and "fake news." All three outlets have since filed a joint lawsuit, and are continuing to fight their case in court.
CNN has long attracted ire from the Republican president, and members of his administration have also made their opinions clear about the network's future ownership. Shortly after Trump joined Israel to launch the war against Iran earlier this year, for example, the White House attacked CNN for its coverage — and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told reporters that "the sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better."
CBS has faced its own attacks from Trump. Skydance's 2025 acquisition of Paramount was approved by the Federal Communications Commission just weeks after the company agreed to pay Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit over editing at the network's "60 Minutes" program.
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AP Reporter Laurie Kellman in London contributed.
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