Kara Swisher doubled down on her plans to leave CNN “as soon as I can” Tuesday, citing the news network’s parent company Warner Bros. Discovery’s merger with Paramount Skydance and its CEO David Ellison.
On Tuesday’s episode of “Pivot,” Swisher explained to her co-host Scott Galloway that because the Paramount takeover of Warner Bros. was moving forward she was not planning on being a contributor at CNN for much longer. Her hopes are she’ll be let out of her contract early.
“With the CNN thing, well you know my feelings on that,” Swisher said. “I’m leaving as soon as I can.”
Galloway cut in to re-confirm that she was planning to step away from the news organization.
“Let me try to outline it: I don’t want to work for the Ellisons, and I don’t want to work for their handpicked minions because I think they’re incompetent,” she added. “I just don’t see any way that these people make good decisions and I don’t trust them. That’s it.”
Swisher finished: “Anyways, there’s a lot of other options, and I’m under contract with them until the end of the year, and I’m hoping they’ll let me out early because I don’t want to affiliate with them. I left James Murdoch, too; this is not a new, fresh thing for Kara Swisher to flounce out and do better.”
This was not the first time Swisher said she was considering stepping away from CNN. Back in March, she said she’d leave the news organization if the David Ellison-led Paramount succeeded in closing its merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, claiming Ellison and his billionaire father Larry Ellison have demonstrated they have “no interest in journalism.”
“I don’t think they’ll be good owners,” Swisher said at the time. “They’ve already shown several times, including editorial choices … that they have no interest in journalism, and I refuse to work for an organization that doesn’t respect journalists.”
