CNN's newsroom is in full meltdown. Paramount Skydance, the media conglomerate run by David Ellison and financed by his father, longtime Trump supporter and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, is acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN's parent company, in an $80.5 billion deal. The network's staff, from top anchors to low-level producers, learned the news and responded with something between dread and hysteria.
Their fear? That the new owners might expect CNN to appeal to more than the left-of-center audience it has cultivated for years. The horror.
According to the New York Post, CNN president Mark Thompson fired off a memo late Thursday after it became clear that PSKY had emerged victorious over Netflix for the acquisition. His message to staff tried to pump the brakes on the spiraling anxiety:
"Despite all the speculation you've read during this process, I'd suggest that you don't jump to conclusions about the future until we know more."
Thompson also reminded his people that they still have a job to do, noting the network is "near the start of what is already an incredibly newsy year at home and abroad, one that will culminate with critical U.S. midterm elections and who knows what else."
It is a telling sign when a network president has to send an emergency memo telling journalists to keep doing journalism instead of catastrophizing about their own futures. But that is where CNN finds itself.
The real source of anxiety has a name: Bari Weiss. After Paramount Skydance acquired CBS last year, it tapped the 41-year-old to root out liberal bias at that network. She now runs the CBS news division. People close to the Ellisons' media operation say she will play a key role in the combined CNN-CBS news division going forward.
For journalists who have spent years treating their editorial slant as the objective center of American discourse, the arrival of someone specifically tasked with identifying and correcting bias is existential. It is not that Weiss is coming to turn CNN into something radical. It is that she might hold up a mirror.
CNN staffers, according to the Post, believe President Trump "will be on the phone daily orchestrating coverage with the Ellisons and Weiss." That tells you far more about the CNN newsroom's worldview than it does about any actual plans. The idea that editorial balance can only be the product of political conspiracy reveals how deeply embedded the assumption of liberal normalcy has become at the network.
A person inside Paramount Skydance described the vision plainly:
"Yes, I know people are scared but we're looking to produce a news product that appeals to 70% of the country that is either center left or center right. Why be scared of that?"
That is the question CNN's talent should be asking themselves. The goal is not MAGA television. People close to the Ellisons' operation say they expect a centrist CNN to emerge from the acquisition. A news product that speaks to the broad American middle rather than a narrow ideological slice.
The fact that this prospect terrifies a newsroom tells you everything about where that newsroom has been operating. If "centrist" sounds like a threat, you were never in the center to begin with.
Ideology aside, there is a harder reality bearing down on CNN's staff. PSKY is carrying $15 billion in debt attached to the cable properties from the merger. Cost-cutting is coming.
CNN still makes money. Its projected adjusted operating profit for this year sits at $600 million on $1.8 billion in revenue. Those are not bankruptcy numbers. But they are also not the kind of numbers that protect every anchor chair and producer desk when new ownership arrives with a mountain of debt and a mandate to streamline.
The merger creates a combined CNN-CBS news operation, which means redundancies are inevitable. If you already have Bari Weiss running CBS's news division, what happens to Mark Thompson? If CBS has strong producers, what happens to CNN's? The same question applies to on-air talent. Names like Kaitlan Collins, Jake Tapper, and Anderson Cooper are all in the conversation about who stays and who goes.
According to the Post's Charles Gasparino, PSKY is only now beginning to examine the books. Management was somewhat caught off guard by Netflix's quick exit from the bidding on Thursday night, leaving the new owners to start planning the combined news division in real time.
The merger still requires approval from the Department of Justice, among other regulatory hurdles. Nothing is final. But the direction is clear.
CNN's staffers are not panicking because they think the network will become unwatchable. They are panicking because they sense the era in which one political perspective could masquerade as neutrality is ending. A news product built to reach 70% of the country necessarily means including the perspectives of people CNN has spent years dismissing, talking down to, or ignoring entirely.
The network that lectured America about disinformation for a decade is now terrified that someone might come in and simply broaden the aperture. Do not silence them. Not fire everyone. Just make room for the rest of the country.
That is what passes for a crisis at CNN.