Pro-Israel billionaires behind TikTok, CBS takeovers now make hostile bid for CNN

Paramount-Skydance has launched a hostile takeover bid for Warner Brothers-Discovery (WBD), CNN’s parent company. Earlier this year, Skydance took over Paramount, the parent company of CBS. Paramount-Skydance announced the hostile bid this week, despite Netflix announcing a deal to purchase the media company for $72 billion last week. In a hostile takeover bid, the entity seeking to acquire a property appeals directly to the target company’s shareholders. This most commonly happens when the target company’s leadership have already rejected an offer. If Paramount-Skydance is successful in taking over WBD, the resulting firm will control two major media outlets where at least one-third of Americans get their news.

Paramount-Skydance CEO David Ellison is the son of Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of Oracle, known for his outspoken pro-Israel, pro-Trump views. After Skydance took over CBS, David Ellison installed Bari Weiss, a podcaster and self-described “Zionist fanatic”, to lead CBS’s news division. Weiss’ previous media property, the Free Press, was noted for its staunch pro-Israel viewpoint and its attack pieces on pro-Palestinian voices.

In recent years, CNN has moved towards politically “neutral” coverage, hiring both liberal and conservative on-screen commentators. Staffers at CNN are reportedly “unnerved” at the idea that, should Paramount-Skydance acquire CNN, they would have to answer to Weiss and the Ellisons and tailor their coverage of Israel and Trump accordingly.

President Trump has now weighed in, telling reporters today that CNN “should be sold”. The Trump administration would have to approve the sale as they did the Paramount-Skydance merger. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is working with the Ellisons to finance their takeover bid for WBD and CNN, with backing from the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar.

Ellisons’ push to take back the American media narrative on Israel

For the past two years, American mainstream news has been reliably deferential to Israel’s official narrative on the war in Gaza, despite widespread accusations of atrocities and even genocide perpetrated by Israel’s military. Despite largely favorable coverage, a majority of Americans now hold unfavorable views of Israel and its actions in the Gaza Strip. This is in large part due to unfiltered sharing of videos and on-the-ground reporting from Gaza through social media.

In a leaked call from November 2023, Anti-Defamation League director Jonathon Greenblatt told fellow Israel supporters that the American divide on Israel was no longer a “left and right” divide but a “young and old” divide. “We really have a TikTok problem, a Gen-Z problem,” Greenblatt said, referring to the video platform popular among youth where pro-Palestinian content was widely shared.

Earlier this year, the US government forced the sale of TikTok from its Chinese parent company ByteDance to a consortium of American companies. Larry Ellison himself played a key role in brokering this sale. Ellison’s Oracle Corp (whose ties to Israel go well beyond Ellison himself) will be in charge of the platform’s security and retraining its algorithm.