Viewers who tuned into the Paramount+ livestream of UFC Freedom 250 on Sunday night, held to mark President Trump’s 80th birthday as well as the nation’s semiquincentennial, were treated to the surreal spectacle of mixed martial artists beating each other bloody in a massive cage installed on the White House lawn. But there was one bruising blow they missed: an advertisement blasting the $111 billion merger agreement between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery.
That’s because Paramount refused to air the ad, according to Freedom of the Press Foundation, the nonprofit advocacy group that submitted it to run during the event.
The rejected 30-second spot features Trump calling journalists “the enemy of the people” and suggested that Trump-allied Paramount chairman and CEO David Ellison could force CNN, the flagship Warner Bros. news network, to soften its reporting on the president and his administration.
The ad highlighted a New York Times story from April about Ellison throwing a private party in Trump’s honor as Paramount awaited approval of its proposed takeover, which the Justice Department cleared on Friday. It also quoted Scott Pelley, the correspondent recently fired from 60 Minutes amid a backlash to changes at Paramount-owned CBS News that were overseen by Ellison and network editor-in-chief Bari Weiss. Pelley alleged that new executive leadership wanted him “to inject falsehoods and bias” into his reporting in an effort to “curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration.”
The FPF ad warns that if the Paramount-WBD deal goes ahead, CNN journalists could soon face a similar corporate mandate, noting Trump’s support for the acquisition and a comment from defense secretary Pete Hegseth in March: “The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better.” (Ellison’s father, Larry Ellison, billionaire founder of the software company Oracle, also supports Trump and has played a key role in establishing the family’s media empire, including their majority stake in Paramount.)
“Let’s stop Trump’s censorship and block this merger,” the ad’s voiceover concludes. A link onscreen directed to a FPF web page for sending letters to congressional representatives demanding an investigation into “Trump-Paramount corruption.” (Disclosure: WIRED global editorial director Katie Drummond is on the FPF board of directors.)
“Ellison won’t air criticism of himself, his company, or his buddy Trump,” said Seth Stern, FPF chief of advocacy, in a statement about the rejected ad. “These antics are bad for press freedom, bad for the public, and bad for Paramount—just look at CBS’s recent struggles under Ellison’s watch,” he continued, alluding to ongoing turmoil at the network since the Ellisons’ Skydance Media closed its acquisition of Paramount last August. “Billionaires who don’t respect the First Amendment should stay out of the news business.”
FPF alleges that Paramount declined to air the ad due to a conflict of interest. Stern dismissed that rationale as hypocritical given the close ties between the media giant, the Ellisons, and Trump, saying that Paramount “apparently sees no conflict of interest in promising the Trump administration editorial concessions in exchange for merger approvals, in throwing fancy dinner parties honoring Trump while he attacks CBS and CNN journalists, or in airing a UFC event which functioned as an hours-long commercial for Donald Trump and Truth Social.”
Neither the White House nor Paramount replied to a request for comment. CNN declined to comment on the matter.
David Ellison’s appearance alongside Trump at Sunday’s UFC event (Paramount secured exclusive broadcast rights for the sport in a seven-year, $7.7 billion deal last year) had the air of a victory lap. But state attorneys general can still sue to block Paramount’s blockbuster acquisition of Warner Bros., and officials in California, New York, and other states are reportedly preparing to do just that. Even if this merely forestalls the deal close by several months, that delay may last through a crucial midterm election cycle—a time when Trump and his loyalists will need all the positive press they can get.
