Larry Ellison won. Will climate journalism lose?
The great infotainment wars aren't just a Hollywood story or a media story. They're a climate story.
“You cannot lose if you do not play.” — Marla Daniels, “The Wire”
When news broke Thursday that Paramount had won the bidding war to buy Warner Bros. — beating out Netflix in the battle to control the legendary Hollywood studio — one of my first questions was: What will this mean for CNN’s climate journalism?
By way of background, Paramount — itself a storied movie and television studio — was purchased last year by Skydance Media, a company run by film producer David Ellison and backed by his father Larry Ellison, Earth’s sixth-richest man and a friend of President Trump’s. Paramount owns CBS News, and after David Ellison took over the company, he installed anti-woke opinion writer Bari Weiss as the network’s editor in chief. Shortly after that, CBS gutted its climate reporting team as part of a massive round of layoffs across Paramount, as I reported at the time.
Now the Ellisons are poised to control Warner Bros., which owns CNN.
That’s a scary prospect for lots of reasons.