Paramount CEO David Ellison will host an invitation-only dinner in Washington, D.C., next week honoring President Donald Trump’s White House and CBS News’ White House reporters ahead of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, according to a Breaker Media report.
The April 23 dinner will be held at the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace, which the State Department renamed after the president last year. It comes two days before this year’s correspondents’ dinner, which Trump is set to attend for the first time as president. Weijia Jiang, the current president of the White House Correspondents Association, is a White House correspondent for CBS News.
Ellison’s planned pre-dinner arrives as he seeks federal approval for this $110 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery and after he’s spent months touting his family’s relationship with Trump. Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, the younger Ellison’s father, is a longtime Trump friend, and David Ellison has met with Trump repeatedly since the president began his second term.
A Paramount spokesperson did not respond to an immediate request for comment.
Ellison’s management of Paramount since he merged Skydance with the storied company has included an expansion of its news operation, including the $150 million purchase of the Free Press and the subsequent installation of its editor in chief, Bari Weiss, as CBS News’ top editor. The goal, Ellison has said, is to appeal to an audience that would “define themselves at center-left to center-right.”
Since then, Weiss has faced criticism over coverage decisions favorable toward the White House, including the decision to temporarily pull a “60 Minutes” segment critical of the administration’s immigration efforts and the initial tone of its revamped “CBS Evening News” with anchor Tony Dokoupil.
The network has also invited Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and, according to Breaker, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller to sit at its tables during the April 25 dinner.
Hegseth has publicly sung Ellison’s praises, criticizing CNN’s Iran War coverage during a press briefing last month and saying “the sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better.”
