What the Paramount–Warner Deal Means for The Bulwark
The need for independent, anti-authoritarian media is greater than ever.
Hey fam –
I wanted to talk to you about the news from late last month that Larry and David Ellison won the bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery. When the deal closes, the Ellisons’ media empire will include not only Paramount and CBS News (which they took over last year) and a sizable stake in TikTok (in an arrangement finalized in January), but also such familiar names as HBO, DC, and, yes, CNN.
This story is a perfect encapsulation of so much that’s wrong with the media (and the world) in this moment. It’s a story about government corruption, wealth concentration, and the failure of capitalism. It’s a story about how America is turning into Hungary.
But it’s complicated and I want to have a real conversation about the particulars. So I hope you’ll bear with me.
This purchase exists on three levels.
The first is political. WBD is being sold to Paramount, instead of Netflix, for one reason only: because the president of the United States made it clear to all parties that he would intervene to make it impossible for Netflix to gain regulatory approval and to make it easy for Paramount to gain approval.
President Trump was also clear as to why he had this preference: WBD owns CNN. Trump wants CNN to be run by someone favorable to him. Remember that as soon as the Ellison family finalized its purchase of Paramount, it immediately turned CBS News into a sub rosa state news service by installing Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief.
How craven has CBS News been? Recently Trump’s FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, praised Weiss and CBS News, saying “they’re doing a great job.”
An endorsement like that from an apparatchik like Carr would embarrass an actual journalist and be cause for self-reflection and reformation.
For Weiss and the Ellisons, it was validation and proof of concept.
So Paramount will next do to CNN what it has done to CBS News. And it will do this not because it makes any business sense—the ratings at CBS News are in decline—but because it is politically necessary in order for the rest of the Ellison family’s businesses to thrive.
The second level of the Paramount-WBD deal is commercial. And here, too, it makes little sense. Since its formation in 2022, Warner Bros. Discovery has lost money in all but two quarters. The company is saddled with crippling levels of debt. And Paramount just paid such a premium that it will extend the leverage of that debt load from 3x to 6x.
If you cared only about dollars and cents, this is a bad deal.
Which brings us to the third level.
The third level of the deal is the Ellison family’s desire to create a stranglehold over American media, culture, and politics.
We are in a period of technology and media consolidation. We have collapsed the number of large streaming businesses to three—Netflix, Disney, and now Paramount/WBD. The Ellisons see streaming as a winner-take-all industry and they have bought a ticket to the semifinals.
You may also remember that a few months ago Larry Ellison parlayed his relationship with Trump into a state-backed purchase of TikTok at the greatest fire-sale price you’ve ever seen.
It is only on this third level—the consolidation of technology and media and the creation of an entrenched class of oligarchs who form a parasitic relationship with the government in a competitive authoritarian setup—that the Ellisons’ purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery makes sense.
And on this level it makes all the sense in the world.
America is ruled by a gangster government that ignores the rule of law and has made open-air corruption the centerpiece of its priorities.
This evolution has transformed the American economy from something like a free market into a system that more closely resembles Communist China or fascist Hungary. Businesses can thrive only if they stay on the right side of the strongman. Wealthy individuals will be persecuted if they do not ally themselves with the strongman. The strongman has an interest in consolidating key industries—especially media and technology—in the hands of oligarchs who are beholden to him. In return for their service, his oligarchs are rewarded with obscene levels of wealth.
Which is why in nearly every case where a liberal society has fallen into authoritarianism, the business class has gone along with the strongman. They see authoritarianism not as a threat but an opportunity.
And what these people—both the strongman and his lords—hope is that the arrangement becomes a flywheel in which they can work to combine the power of the federal government with the power of media and technology to continue the ruling party’s dominance.
Indefinitely.
History suggests Trump, the Ellisons, and their confederates have a good chance of succeeding. Viktor Orbán has used this combination of state and private power to rule Hungary for sixteen years. He copied the playbook of Vladimir Putin, who has controlled Russia since 2000. The Chinese Communist Party has been running the show since 1949. Authoritarianism is a powerful construct and once in place, it is hard to overthrow.
The best time to topple an authoritarian regime is before it has fully consolidated power, when it is still in the “competitive” phase.
Which is what we’re trying to do here at The Bulwark.
The history of every resistance movement demonstrates the importance of independent—dissident, even—media.
It requires media orgs built not to call balls and strikes or pantomime false neutrality, but to crusade for liberalism and against authoritarianism.
It requires media that can operate without being hostages to larger corporate interests.
It requires media that builds a community directed toward the defense of liberalism and answering directly to that community.
Which is what we’ve built here.
I feel bad for the journalists at CNN, just as I felt bad for journalists at CBS News, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. But it was always going to end this way for them. Their positions were compromised from the start.
We’ve been creating something new at The Bulwark, an outlet designed to meet the demands of today’s political and media environment. Sign up for Bulwark+ today and you can have a year-long membership at 20 percent off the normal price:
If you can help us build something stronger, better, and more consequential—a media company that’s a bulwark of liberalism—I hope you’ll consider joining us.
–JVL