The Patriotic Press
Pete Hegseth just confirmed what the Ellison takeover of CNN is actually for.
Pete Hegseth held a press briefing at the Pentagon on Friday morning, and he had some thoughts about CNN.
He was responding to a CNN report published Thursday that cited multiple sources saying the administration had misjudged Iran’s willingness to shut down the Strait of Hormuz. The New York Times had published similar reporting days earlier. Hegseth called CNN’s story “fake news” and “fundamentally unserious.”
And then: “The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better.”
He kept going. He complained about CNN’s chyrons (“Mideast War Intensifies”), then offered his own alternatives for what he called “an actual patriotic press.” His version of “War widening” was “Iran shrinking, going underground.” A former Fox News host, now running the Pentagon, told reporters he knew how headlines worked because “I used to be in that business.” The Defense Secretary was writing chyrons from the podium. Six American service members had been confirmed killed in a refueling aircraft crash in western Iraq that same morning.
CNN’s response was five words: “We stand by our reporting.”
I wrote about this administration’s contradictory war framing earlier this week, so none of the bluster surprises me anymore. But a sitting Defense Secretary, during an active war, publicly endorsing a specific corporate acquisition of a specific news outlet because it published a specific story he didn’t like? That’s worth stopping on. Because Hegseth didn’t just bash CNN. He told you what the Ellison deal is for.
“Editorial independence will absolutely be maintained”
Here’s a timeline. Read it all the way through.
In December, the Wall Street Journal reported that Paramount CEO David Ellison had offered assurances to Trump administration officials that he would make “sweeping changes” to CNN if his company acquired its parent, Warner Bros. Discovery. Days later, Trump said publicly that “it’s imperative that CNN be sold.” David Ellison’s father Larry (the Oracle billionaire and close Trump ally who’s bankrolling much of the deal) reportedly spoke with a White House official around the same time about removing specific CNN hosts Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar.
And we already know what Ellison’s version of “editorial independence” looks like in practice, because we’ve been watching it play out at CBS News since last fall. Ellison bought Bari Weiss’s Free Press for $150 million and installed her as editor-in-chief of CBS News. What followed: a 60 Minutes segment on CECOT pulled after the Trump administration declined to comment (effectively handing the government a veto over critical stories). Anderson Cooper leaving after nearly 20 years, with sources saying he “wasn’t comfortable with the direction the show was taking under Bari.” Eleven of 40 CBS Evening News staffers taking buyouts. One departing producer, Alicia Hastey, writing in a farewell memo that stories were being “evaluated not just on their journalistic merit, but on whether they conform to a shifting set of ideological expectations.”
Then, on March 5, Ellison went on CNBC and said this about CNN: “Editorial independence will absolutely be maintained. It’s maintained at CBS. It’ll be maintained at CNN.”
It’s “maintained at CBS.” Right.
I’ve seen this move before. When Washington Post CEO Will Lewis pushed out executive editor Sally Buzbee in 2024 and replaced her with a loyalist, he told staff: “The Executive Editor is free to publish when, how, and what they want to. I am fully signed up to that.” As I wrote at the time, anyone paying attention could see what he was doing. You promise independence right after you’ve installed the people who’ll make the choices you want. The promise isn’t a safeguard. It’s cover. Message sent. Message received.
Ellison is running the same play. The European Council on Foreign Relations published an analysis comparing Ellison’s takeover of CBS News to the early stages of Viktor Orbán’s media consolidation in Hungary, describing the pattern as “a politically aligned buyer, a regulator that clears the path, and a newsroom that understands what incentives now govern its future.” Orbán told American conservatives at CPAC Budapest in 2022: “Have your own media.”
Most people making the Orbán comparison have framed it as a warning about what could happen. After today, it’s a description of what’s happening. If the deal closes, the Ellison family will control CBS, CNN, HBO, TikTok’s U.S. operations, and dozens of other properties. Bernie Sanders looked at the list and called it “oligarchy.” It’s getting hard to argue with him.
Still too much
The thing that gets me about Hegseth’s outburst is this: CNN isn’t particularly adversarial toward this administration, especially on the topic of the war.
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