Warner Bros. Discovery CEO Endorsed Donald Trump Without Endorsing Donald Trump

Let's get real about what the head of CNN's parent company meant in his Sun Valley Conference remarks.

Earlier this week at the Sun Valley Conference, an annual gathering of media and tech moguls, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav was asked about the upcoming presidential election. Here’s what he had to say, per Bloomberg:

Asked about the upcoming presidential election, Zaslav said it mattered less to him which which party wins, as long as the next president was friendly to business.

“We just need an opportunity for deregulation, so companies can consolidate and do what we need to to be even better,” he said.

To the average person, “friendly to business” might not mean much, but to people who pay attention to politics and have even a passing familiarity with the way the Biden administration has wielded its antitrust powers, the message can be heard loud and clear: Zaslav, the head of CNN’s parent company, would very much like for there to be a Republican in the White House come January.

Did he endorse Trump? Not by name, but there’s effectively no difference.

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David Zaslav, President and C.E.O. of Warner Bros. Discovery, speaks to reporters as he arrives at the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference on July 9, 2024 in Sun Valley, Idaho. The annual gathering organized by the investment firm Allen & Co brings together some of the world's most wealthy and powerful figures from the media, finance, technology and political spheres at the Sun Valley Resort for the exclusive weeklong conference. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

Zaslav knows firsthand how much of a thorn in his side a Democratic Department of Justice can be. In April, two of Warner Bros. Discovery’s board members resigned amid DOJ antitrust investigations. By speaking out at Sun Valley, Zaslav was making a conscious choice to wade into partisan politics.

Peter Kafka makes this argument at Business Insider:

To be clear: What Zaslav is saying is what many business leaders — particularly in media and tech — say all the time, but relatively quietly: They don't like Joe Biden's antitrust regime, which has led the US government to question and in many cases try to block all kinds of mergers and acquisitions — from Microsoft's $69 billion deal to buy Activision (which eventually went through) to Adobe's $20 billion deal to buy Figma (which didn't go through) to Meta's $400 million deal for Within, a VR company (which eventually went through, too).

And Zaslav's primary benefactor — billionaire investor John Malone, who put Zaslav in the position to run WBD and sits on its board — has been banging the consolidation drum for years.

John Malone is a big-time donor to Republican causes who, in a November 2021 CNBC interview, said that he wanted CNN to become “more like Fox.”

Kafka continues, making the point that a Trump administration would essentially be a mergers & acquisitions/deregulation free-for-all:

And it's conventional wisdom that if Donald Trump wins the upcoming election, he'll usher in an era where just about any M&A deal you can dream up can go through (as long as Trump doesn't have a problem with one of those companies — ask AT&T and Time Warner, whose deal was held up in court for years during Trump's first administration.)

But it's one thing to think that kind of thing, and to talk about it with other moguls and people who like them. But if you're the high-profile leader of a very high-profile media conglomerate — which includes a very high-profile news organization — you may not want to weigh in on the election while standing in front of a press gaggle. Especially when you've spent the past few years dealing with self-inflicted PR wounds. (WBD didn't respond to my request for comment.)

Are we going to pretend these corporate attitudes don’t affect coverage at all?

On X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, CNBC media reporter Alex Sherman wrote, “David Zaslav publicly says what many media CEOs say privately.

This brings us to the heart of the matter: media objectivity and the subtle yet profound ways in which corporate interests shape news coverage. When the CEO of a major media conglomerate openly wishes for a business-friendly administration, it's impossible to ignore the potential implications for journalistic independence. A media company's economic priorities can influence editorial decisions, consciously or unconsciously, leading to a landscape where certain political narratives are amplified while others are downplayed or ignored.

I bring this up every single time I write about Zaslav, but there’s a 1996 interview between the BBC’s Andrew Marr and Noam Chomsky that I think is relevant here about how the press can operate as a “censoring organization.”

The last time I brought this up was because Zaslav used his industry heft to have an unflattering GQ article about him edited post-publication, but it’s worth mentioning again. Essentially, Chomsky says in the 1996 BBC interview that the press is a naturally self-censoring institution because the people who control the levers of power ensure that they’re staffed top-down by people who reinforce the positions put forward by those who do the hiring. This makes perfect sense. John Malone brings in David Zaslav to carry out his vision. David Zaslav hires people under him to carry out his and Malone’s shared vision at the individual WBD properties, and so on. That’s basic delegation. It’s not explicit, but there’s a downstream effect to all of this, even if it’s unintentional.

MARR: How can you know that I'm self-censoring? How can you know that journalists are...

CHOMSKY: I don't say you're self-censoring. I'm sure you believe everything you're saying, but what I'm saying is if you believed something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you are.

This dynamic creates a feedback loop where media content is filtered through layers of economic and political interests before it reaches the public. It's not that individual journalists are consciously censoring themselves, but rather that the institutional culture and economic imperatives shape the scope and framing of news stories.

Given Zaslav’s remarks and his position of influence, it’s crucial to scrutinize how these economic imperatives could affect CNN’s (and other news organizations’) coverage, especially in the run-up to a highly contentious presidential election. The concern is not just about overt bias, but about the subtler, structural biases that emerge when a media organization’s leadership has clear political and economic preferences.

In light of this, it’s worth questioning how media consumers can navigate this landscape. Being aware of these dynamics is a start, but it’s also essential to seek out diverse news sources and support independent journalism that strives to operate outside these corporate constraints. Only by doing so can we hope to get a fuller, more nuanced picture of the political and economic forces shaping our world.