David Ellison, the chief executive of the newly formed media conglomerate Skydance, denied that he has “politicized” the company despite the close connection he has forged with Donald Trump’s White House over the 20 months of his administration.
“We have a good relationship with this administration,” Ellison acknowledged to reporters at a Tuesday press briefing focused on the now-consummated merger of Paramount Skydance and CNN parent company Warner Bros Discovery.
“I also had a really good relationship with President Biden. I have a good relationship with [Republican South Carolina senator] Tim Scott, and I have a good relationship with Governor Gavin Newsom. I think it is important to talk to everybody on both sides of the aisle … When you’re operating within a business-friendly administration, you should always have those relationships.”
“We want to speak to everybody,” Ellison added. “We do not want to politicize the company.”
Asked about his conversations with Trump about CNN, Ellison did not directly discuss his communications with the president, the network’s most prominent critic. But he said he wanted to clarify that “we have not talked to any political leader of any party about news, other than to say that we want to be in the truth business and we want to be in the trust business. And we believe in complete editorial independence.”
Amid concerns about whether Ellison might move CNN in a more rightward editorial direction, he said that both the cable news network and CBS News would be “completely editorially independent”, echoing a message he delivered earlier in the day during a town hall meeting with company employees.
Ellison also gave an endorsement to the two leaders he has tapped to continue running the two news networks networks he now controls, CNN chief executive Mark Thompson and CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss.
On Monday, Thompson told staffers in a memo that he would remain at the merged company, while Skydance also confirmed that Weiss would remain in her role.
“We’re thrilled, obviously, with Mark,” Ellison said. “We’re thrilled with Bari.”
Asked about a potential merging of CBS News and CNN and any cuts – or “synergies” – that might stem from that, Ellison said he and his leadership team would spend the next several months “basically getting under the hood on all of that”. Most of the $6bn in expected savings from the merger would not come from job losses, he said.
Ellison was not asked about Weiss’s performance as the editorial leader of CBS News. When asked specifically about Weiss’s performance by a Guardian reporter in June, Ellison ignored the question.
