USA · Bias: Left-center
Warner Bros. Discovery (Paramount Skydance deal closing October 2026)
Ted Turner launched CNN in 1980 as the world's first 24-hour news channel — a format so novel that critics nicknamed it the "Chicken Noodle Network" and gave it months to live. Instead it invented the always-on news cycle everyone (including Fox) now runs on, and became must-watch TV during the 1991 Gulf War, when its reporters were the only ones broadcasting live from Baghdad. Forty-six years later it is a long way behind Fox News in audience, and it is about to change hands. OWNERSHIP AS OF SEPTEMBER 2026 Short answer to "who owns CNN": today, Warner Bros. Discovery. Within weeks, Paramount Skydance — which in practice means the Ellison family. The paper trail: on 27 February 2026, Paramount Skydance agreed to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN's parent, for $31 a share — about $110.9 billion (company announcement, February 2026). The US Justice Department cleared it on 12 June, the European Commission on 22 July with conditions, the UK on 6 August. Twelve US states, led by California attorney general Rob Bonta, sued to block it anyway; that suit ended in a settlement on 21 September 2026, and the deal is reported to close in the first days of October. Who holds the steering wheel: entities controlled by the Ellison family — Oracle co-founder Lawrence J. Ellison and his son David — hold roughly 77.5% of Paramount Skydance's voting Class A stock through a holding company, with RedBird Capital Partners holding the rest (Paramount Skydance securities filings, 2026). David Ellison is Paramount's chief executive. Sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE put in about $24 billion, but their shares are non-voting, with no board seats. The settlement contains something unusual, worth knowing before you read CNN in 2027: Paramount agreed to set up a news editorial independence board covering CNN and CBS News within 180 days of closing. Five journalists, active or retired, each with ten years' experience, no more than two "affiliated" with the same political party, appointed by Paramount's board. Their job is to handle disputes over "alleged reporting bias" and to monitor editorial independence, including from owners and shareholders (settlement terms as reported, 21 September 2026). Whether a board appointed by the owner can police the owner is a fair question, and one we intend to keep asking. Day to day, CNN is run by chairman and chief executive Mark Thompson, formerly of the BBC and the New York Times, who has told staff not to jump to conclusions about the new ownership (Deadline, February 2026). One number for scale: in the second quarter of 2026 CNN averaged about 711,000 primetime viewers against roughly 2.49 million for Fox News (Adweek/TVNewser). CNN is the famous one; it is not the big one. IS CNN LEFT OR RIGHT? Our reading: left of centre by American standards — but on our beat the more useful word is cautious. What we catch CNN doing, over and over, is not inventing a claim. It is writing a headline softer than its own reporting. Six dated examples from our archive: On 8 September 2026, CNN's story on Houthi missile strikes used "Iran-backed" three times and attached no equivalent label to Saudi Arabia. The AP copy that same morning labelled both sides. On 7 September 2026, CNN's headline called a Postal Service plan a "mail ballot rule." CNN's own first sentence said the filing showed a desire to "restrict mail voting." NPR and NBC got the verb into the headline. On 1 September 2026, CNN's Grand Canyon flood piece said the water came "with little to no warning." CNN's own timeline, further down the same article, recorded six alerts and roughly two hours. On 29 August 2026, every outlet headlined Trump's figure of 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil. CNN's reporters had something bigger in paragraph eight: a 100-year concession. CNN buried its own scoop. On 27 August 2026, Ratko Mladić died in prison, convicted of genocide in 2017. CNN's obituary headline called him a general "dubbed" the Butcher of Bosnia — no conviction anywhere in it. The BBC and Al Jazeera wrote "convicted war criminal." On 15 August 2026, credit where it's owed: CNN counted US Navy deployment lengths itself, put sailors and their families at the top, and printed the Navy's denial next to the complaints. Best work anyone did on that ship. IS CNN RELIABLE? CAN YOU CITE IT? For sourcing purposes, yes — with homework. CNN does original reporting, names its sources more often than not, and, as the examples above show, the facts that undercut its headline are usually sitting inside its own article. So: read past the headline, because the headline is often the weakest part of the piece. On the regulatory record, be careful what you expect. CNN is a cable network, not an over-the-air broadcaster, so the FCC's content rules do not reach it the way they reach a licensed local station; no American regulator issues findings on CNN's accuracy. CNN International carries UK obligations under Ofcom's broadcasting code, but we found no recent upheld Ofcom ruling against it when we checked in September 2026 — and an absence of rulings proves nothing either way. To be straight about our own standing: everything here is our reading, not a scientific score. We do not rate outlets on a scale. We read one story at a time and show you our working. WHAT PEOPLE ACTUALLY ASK Who owns CNN now, in 2026? Warner Bros. Discovery, until the Paramount Skydance purchase closes in early October 2026. After that, Paramount Skydance, controlled by the Ellison family. Is CNN owned by Larry Ellison? Not personally, and not alone. Company filings name Larry Ellison and his son David together as the controlling "Ellison Family" behind that 77.5% voting stake. David runs the company. Is CNN owned by a Republican? Larry Ellison has been a well-known Republican donor. David Ellison has said publicly that CNN's independence needs to be maintained (Deadline, March 2026), and the settlement creates a board meant to enforce that. We will judge it on the coverage, not the promise. Is CNN left or right? Left of centre by US standards, in our reading — though what we flag most is caution and soft headline verbs, not partisan claims. Is CNN reliable? Usable as a source if you read the whole article. On our beat its weak spots are framing and emphasis, not invented facts. WHAT CHANGED Last reviewed 22 September 2026: rewrote the ownership section after Paramount Skydance settled the twelve-state antitrust lawsuit on 21 September, clearing the Warner Bros. Discovery purchase to close in early October; added the CNN/CBS News editorial independence board, updated control, financing and audience figures, and added six dated examples from our archive.
For 12 years, CNN's chief news executive Eason Jordan sat on stories about atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein's regime — including a plot to assassinate Jordan's own royal family — because reporting them honestly would have gotten CNN's Baghdad bureau shut down and put its sources at risk. The motive, he argued, was protecting human lives and preserving the network's rare access inside Iraq. In April 2003, right after the U.S. invasion made it safe to talk, Jordan finally admitted it all in a stunning New York Times op-ed titled "The News We Kept to Ourselves." The confession blew up into a genuine scandal: critics accused CNN of trading its journalistic soul for a Baghdad dateline, and the episode remains one of the starkest admissions in modern journalism that "access" and "truth" don't always point the same direction.