Billionaires vs. Journalists

**Oliver Darcy** (0:01)
If you sold somebody a loaded gun who you knew was in a vulnerable state and they shot themselves, I think it is murder. Just because you're using the internet doesn't mean you get away with murder.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:13)
I'm Damon Fairless, host of Hunting Warhead. This season, I take you inside the business of suicide and the places desperate people go when they can't find what they need in the real world.
Hunting the Suicide Salesman, available now wherever you get your podcasts.

**Oliver Darcy** (0:33)
I think that it'd be nice if more advertisers had a backbone and said, you know what? We actually think journalism is important in society and we want to put our brand next to journalism, but these days they want to be around fun stuff. They want to be around sports. Everything has been polarized and politicized. And for them, I think, you know, let's say running an ad on a news network could be perceived as being anti-Trump. Right? Because the news is not typically positive for him. And so they don't want to alienate, you know, half the country.
And so they just they just shy away from that. And I think that's problematic. It would be certainly easier for people to build robust journalism businesses if they could count on advertiser support.

**Jon Favreau** (1:25)
I'm Jon Favreau, and you just heard from today's guest, Oliver Darcy, founder of the Status Newsletter and former senior media reporter at CNN. For a while now, I've wanted to have a conversation with someone who can help make sense of the massive changes that are rapidly transforming the media landscape right now. Oliver's one of the best media reporters in the business, first at CNN's Reliable Sources, and now at Status. He's become the go-to reporter for the Ellison-led takeover of CBS. He's the one who broke the news of Scott Pelley's confrontation with Bari Weiss that led to his firing at 60 Minutes. I invited Oliver on to talk about what's happening inside CBS, how journalists at CNN are reacting to the seemingly inevitable Ellison takeover there, and what the corporate consolidation of our media at large is doing to the industry and to the news we consume. We talked about all that and so much more, including Comcast's announcement that it's going to spin off NBC Universal, the latest MAGA media drama, and the future of independent news outlets like Oliver's and ours. We had a great conversation, and we'll get to it in a minute, but before we do, please consider becoming a subscriber to Friends of the Pod. Subscribers get access to ad-free episodes of their favorite Crooked Pods, including this one, special subscriber-only shows like Pod Save America Only Friends, and Polar Coaster with Dan Pfeiffer. Plus, as we'll talk all about in this episode, it is the best way to support pro-democracy independent media, which is more important than ever right now.
Head to crooked.com/friends to subscribe. All right, here's Oliver Darcy.
Oliver, welcome to Offline.

**Oliver Darcy** (2:56)
I'm happy to be here, excited.

**Jon Favreau** (2:58)
So the last month or so might be one of the fastest strangest periods of media consolidation, at least in my lifetime. The Justice Department just cleared a $111 billion deal that hands Warner Brothers Discovery, which includes CNN, to David Ellison, the billionaire who already owns CBS News. You spent 70 years at CNN, then left to build Status, which is now one of the go-to independent outlets covering the story.
Big picture before we get into it all. Do you feel like you got out at the right time? Like you're watching your old industry from a lifeboat?

**Oliver Darcy** (3:36)
Yeah. I mean, when I was there, I felt like it was pretty rocky at times.
We had a new ownership under Warner Brothers Discovery, which certainly, I think, tamped down the very aggressive posture of CNN against Trump that I was a part of. But now, looking at it, it would be very difficult to cover the media industry inside one of the biggest stories of maybe our lifetimes in terms of media consolidation.

**Jon Favreau** (4:04)
Yeah. I would imagine that's kind of tough to do as a media reporter.

**Oliver Darcy** (4:08)
I wouldn't want to work for Bari Weiss either. So, if it was me inside and we just reported yesterday that Paula Reed, the CNN Chief Legal Affairs Analyst or correspondent, is exiting because she was uncomfortable with the merger. But I would be like with Kara Swisher and saying, you know what, if this happens, I'm out. I'm not taking editorial direction from Bari Weiss. That's ridiculous.

**Jon Favreau** (4:31)
Yeah. She's kind of already got her hands full.