On 13 March 2026, Pete Hegseth held a press conference about CNN’s coverage of the administration’s war on Iran and said the quiet part out loud: “The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better.” He was angry about a CNN report finding that the Pentagon and National Security Council had significantly underestimated Iran’s willingness to close the Strait of Hormuz. CNN’s spokesperson told The Hill the network stands by its reporting. NPQ’s Coty Poynter asks what that assertion is worth once you consider who is about to own it.

The deal, as of March:

  • David Ellison merged his studio Skydance with Paramount in August 2025 and is now set to merge with Warner Bros Discovery in a pending $111 billion deal, putting the family in position to oversee what the New York Times called “an empire that touches nearly every corner of news, entertainment and tech.”
  • That means a controlling stake in CNN — 3,000-plus employees, and Anderson Cooper, Jake Tapper, Kaitlan Collins and John King, all of whom have criticised Trump.
  • It also means stakes in Oracle (the source of Larry Ellison’s $175 billion fortune), data centres built with OpenAI, a stake in TikTok, CBS News under Bari Weiss, and cable across MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, BET, HGTV, Discovery, TLC, TBS and TNT.

The pattern is not hypothetical. In December 2025, Weiss pulled a 60 Minutes segment on Venezuelan men deported to El Salvador’s CECOT prison hours before air, telling staff it “did not advance the ball” — the segment’s own correspondent called it a political decision. That came after Trump’s $10 billion suit over the Kamala Harris 60 Minutes interview, which Paramount settled for $16 million in July 2025, arguably to smooth the Skydance merger that closed a month later.

Free Press’s December 2025 report, Chokehold, gives the taxonomy — the methods Nora Benavidez identifies as attacking the information ecosystem:

  • Threats of retribution against would-be opponents
  • Emboldening regulators to exact penalties
  • Supercharging the militarised police state
  • Leveraging heavyweight corporate capitulation
  • Ignoring facts, removing information, rewriting history, lying on the record

The fourth is where the Ellisons sit. As Benavidez puts it, “the biggest billionaire-owned media companies in the country curry favor with Trump to protect their own financial and business interests,” and many of the top 35 have traded journalistic independence for regulatory favours, settlements and political power. Trump’s administration approves the mergers; the Ellisons’ outlets promote Trump’s messaging.

The Orbán parallel is the frame the piece keeps returning to. In 2011, six corporations — AT&T, CBS, Comcast, Disney, News Corp and Viacom — controlled 90 percent of American media, and the mergers since have reshuffled the players without expanding independence. Free Press now tracks the 35 largest in its Media Capitulation Index. Orbán told CPAC in 2022 that the Republican path to power “required having their own media outlets”; the Hungarian journalist András Pethő’s verdict on watching the US from afar is that “the MAGA authorities have learned Orbán’s lessons well.”

The ground being vacated matters because it is already thin. Medill’s State of Local News project counts 212 counties with no locally based news source and 1,525 with only one — roughly 50 million Americans, one in seven, living with limited or no local news, mostly in poorer and rural counties. Where local news disappears, 51 percent of residents in news deserts rely on social media, influencers, friends and family, including a TikTok where the Ellisons hold a stake and could shape the algorithm.

Poynter’s remedy list is Free Press’s: rebuild the broken constitutional promises around free expression, reduce consolidation while investing in local, diverse and noncommercial journalism, and embolden institutions to protect people over profit. None of it is near-term. Which is why the piece lands on the independent newsrooms doing the work now — Common Dreams, Drop Site News, NPR, ProPublica among them — funded by people and unrestricted philanthropy rather than by capital: “We are here, and we are not going anywhere.”