Acosta and Couric Warn of a ‘Propaganda Giant’ at CBS and CNN.
On May 27, 2026, former CNN anchor Jim Acosta sat down with Katie Couric on her podcast and delivered a warning: the Ellison family’s expanding control of America’s legacy networks, he said, amounts to “the makings of a propaganda giant in this country.” Couric agreed.
The trigger was corporate, not abstract. Skydance’s acquisition of Paramount closed in August 2025, putting CBS News under David Ellison. Paramount Skydance then won a roughly $110 billion bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s parent — backed by the Ellison fortune. Acosta’s charge: the new owners are “trying to turn them into propaganda arms of the Trump administration.”
The reaction from media critics on the right was swift — and not about the merger itself. NewsBusters and others argued that two anchors with their own documented histories of friendly coverage lacked the self-awareness to warn anyone about propaganda. This is a story about a real media consolidation, and about who gets to call it one.
- ~$110BWBD dealParamount Skydance bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN's parent — CNN Business, NPR
- Aug 7, 2025merger closedSkydance–Paramount merger completed; David Ellison chairman and CEO — PRNewswire
- 200+journalistsCNN staff who signed a letter protesting the takeover terms — Honolulu Star-Advertiser
- $16MsettlementParamount's payment to settle Trump's '60 Minutes' suit, before FCC approval — CNN Business
On the May 27 episode of “Next Question with Katie Couric,” Acosta — who left CNN in early 2025 to launch a Substack venture, “The Jim Acosta Show” — framed the Ellison family’s growing footprint as an existential threat to independent journalism. With CBS already under Paramount Skydance and CNN’s parent in play, Acosta argued the country was watching the construction of a single, ideologically aligned media bloc.
“We already have one Fox,” Acosta said. “We don’t need another one.” Couric pressed the comparison: “Well, we have Fox News — wouldn’t you call that?” The exchange landed as a shared lament between two anchors who spent decades inside the very “tried and true” news divisions now changing hands.
“…what is essentially the makings of a propaganda giant in this country.”
Jim Acosta · Next Question with Katie Couric, May 27, 2026
“…trying to turn them into propaganda arms of the Trump administration.”
Jim Acosta · Next Question with Katie Couric, May 27, 2026
The corporate backdrop is documented and large. The Skydance–Paramount merger closed on August 7, 2025, creating Paramount Skydance (ticker PSKY) with David Ellison as chairman and CEO. The FCC had approved the deal on July 24, 2025 — weeks after Paramount paid $16 millionto settle President Trump’s lawsuit over a “60 Minutes” edit, a sequence critics flagged as a regulatory quid pro quo and the company framed as unrelated.
CBS News then reshaped its top ranks. On October 6, 2025, Paramount named Bari Weiss editor-in-chief of CBS News after buying her outlet, The Free Press, in a deal reported around $150 million. Months later the company moved on CNN’s parent: Paramount Skydance won Warner Bros. Discovery with a roughly $110 billion bid — $31.00 per share in cash, with about $47 billion in equity backed by the Ellison family and RedBird Capital. WBD shareholders approved the takeover on April 23, 2026, with the close expected in the third quarter of 2026.
David Ellison chairs and runs Paramount Skydance, which owns CBS News. Larry Ellison— Oracle co-founder and a Trump ally — helped finance the empire; reporting alleges he promised personnel changes at CNN to help win approval, an allegation the company has disputed. Bari Weiss is editor-in-chief of CBS News. CNN passes to the same ownership once the WBD deal closes.
NewsBusters’ Tim Graham — the primary outlet on this exchange — turned the warning back on the messengers. Writing on May 31, 2026, Graham argued the pair “lack self-awareness”in calling pre-Ellison CBS and CNN “tried and true news divisions” with no propaganda problem of their own.
Graham’s receipts: Acosta’s on-air gush about a president having his “best week ever”and his “I should pinch myself” moment at Barack Obama’s inauguration, and Couric’s friendly — critics said “giggling” — sit-down with Hillary Clinton on “60 Minutes.” The argument is not that the merger is harmless; it is that the two anchors never applied the word “propaganda” to coverage they liked.
“They lack the self-awareness to warn anyone about a 'propaganda giant.'”
Tim Graham · NewsBusters, May 31, 2026
Long-time propagandists Katie Couric and Jim Acosta say they are very concerned that CNN and CBS News are about to become propaganda outlets. Hysterical stuff.
David Ellison has publicly insisted the opposite of Acosta’s charge. In Variety, he said he intends to keep CNN independent and in the “truth business,” rejecting the premise that the networks will become administration mouthpieces. That assurance has not quieted the newsroom: a reported 200-plusCNN journalists signed a protest letter, and the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported allegations that Larry Ellison promised to fire CNN anchors as part of securing the deal — a claim the buyers contest.
Hysterical Hegseth wants state media. His comment on CNN at Pentagon press briefing: "The sooner David Ellison takes over that network the better."
Reflecting on the future of journalism and her own years at '60 Minutes,' Couric has voiced concern about who will now own the institutions that built American broadcast news.
President Trump has publicly welcomed the Ellison family's takeover of CNN and CBS and has been openly critical of both networks' prior coverage of his administration.
Paraphrased commentary · not a verbatim post
No Trump Truth Social post specific to the Acosta–Couric exchange exists; we do not fabricate one.
Fox News commentary seized on the irony. Greg Gutfeld and “The Five” have made Acosta a recurring target since his CNN exit, casting the propaganda warning as a complaint from someone who, in their telling, practiced advocacy under a news banner for years. The clips below capture that running argument — a record of how the right framed the moment, not a neutral verdict on the merger itself.
Two things are true at once, and the documents support both. The Ellison family is, in fact, assembling control of CBS and — pending the WBD close — CNN, with a Trump-aligned financier in the background and a regulatory approval that followed a $16 million settlement payment to the president.
And the two anchors sounding the alarm spent careers inside those same institutions producing the kind of friendly coverage they now decline to label propaganda. Readers can weigh a real consolidation and a real credibility gap without being told which to feel first.
