Kara Swisher is on her way out at CNN. The tech journalist told listeners of her podcast “Pivot” on Tuesday, September 22, 2026, that she is finished at the network, following a settlement with state attorneys general that resolved the last major legal challenge to Paramount’s purchase of CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery.
“My contract, just literally reading my contract today,” Swisher told co-host Scott Galloway on the episode, adding that she has asked her agent to get her out of it. “It ends December 31st.”
Leaving was not her first instinct, she told Galloway on the September 22 episode. “I was trying to figure out ways I could work with them in some like licensing way. But then I thought, f*** these guys. I don’t want to work for them.”
The Settlement That Cleared the Way
California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the agreement on Monday, September 21, joined by attorneys general from 11 other states and resolving the antitrust suit that had stalled the $110 billion deal. “This settlement is not a vote of support for this merger,” Bonta said. Under its terms, Paramount must set up a News Editorial Independence Board to help CNN and CBS News maintain editorial independence, and must release at least 30 films a year for the first two years and 32 a year after that. At a court hearing on Thursday, September 24, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín held off on approving the settlement, saying she would rule in “due course” after reviewing further submissions.
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav laid out a timeline for staffers in a memo: “While the timing is not yet fixed, we expect the merger will close no later than early October.” The settlement still requires court approval.
The oversight panel did not impress Swisher, who called it “dingbat nonsense.” As a precedent she pointed to Rupert Murdoch’s 2007 purchase of The Wall Street Journal, which came with its own watchdog board for the newspaper. She predicted that retired media figures would end up filling the new body, since no serious working journalist, in her view, would agree to be monitored by directors whose interests line up with the owners’.
Galloway had little more use for the bargain the states struck. “There was no legal reason to block this merger,” he said, likening the concessions to “letting Goldman and JP Morgan merge if they promised to build more ATMs.” He called the outcome “sheer regulatory theater.”
A Vow First Made in 2025
None of this came as a surprise from Swisher, a part-time CNN contributor since 2023. Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery struck their deal in February 2026. She first vowed in December 2025 to walk out if the Ellisons took over. At a Syracuse University event in March 2026 alongside journalist Margaret Talev, she said Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison and his father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, have demonstrated they have “no interest in journalism,” adding, “I don’t think they’ll be good owners.” She doubled down in June 2026. A major donor to President Donald Trump, the elder Ellison helped bankroll the acquisition. Trump, for his part, has welcomed the takeover, and he has repeatedly derided CNN’s reporting on his administration.
The company’s other newsroom also feeds her objection. October 2025 brought Bari Weiss in as editor-in-chief of CBS News, and in the time since, Anderson Cooper, Scott Pelley, Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega are among the journalists who have resigned or been fired from “60 Minutes.” The program’s ratings have slid over the same stretch. When Page Six suggested Weiss was a factor in her exit, Swisher replied on Threads that she had long said she would leave “due to my lack of confidence in the owners as decent media stewards & not whatever minion they decide to install.” The two women overlapped for nearly two years in The New York Times opinion section, though by published accounts they have never met in person.
Nerves Inside the Newsroom
Inside CNN, staffers fear the new owners will move quickly to cut jobs once the deal closes; top on-air talent is reportedly anxious about the future. Mark Thompson, CNN’s CEO, has said he wants to stay and be useful to the incoming owners. At a Politico event in August, Paramount Chief Legal Officer Makan Delrahim said David Ellison “wants to bring it back to news.” Inside CNN, that phrasing registered as a signal of significant change.
On the podcast, Galloway needled his co-host with the suggestion that CNN would jump at the chance to tear up her deal. Swisher flatly disagreed. Executives have been trying to keep her, and trying nicely, she said, and she holds the current leadership in high regard. What she will not do is work for the new owners. “I’d rather work for Rupert Murdoch,” she said. CNN declined to comment.
Plenty to Do Away From Cable
A crowded calendar awaits Swisher, 63, on the way out. She serves as editor-at-large at New York Magazine and hosts the interview podcast “On with Kara Swisher,” co-hosts and produces “Pivot” and performs live events, and her byline turns up regularly in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. At CNN, her work included the six-part original series “Kara Swisher Wants to Live Forever,” which premiered in April 2026. Her other projects, she said on the podcast, pay better, matter more and reach a bigger audience.
Criticism of the transaction has not been confined to the podcast studio: New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has blasted the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery deal as corrupt. The deal’s own timing is less certain than Zaslav suggested: after the September 24 hearing, the judge asked the parties to respond by Monday, September 28, to a letter from Sen. Cory Booker urging an independent review, and Paramount faces penalties of about $7 million a day if the deal has not closed by October 1. For Swisher, only the timing remains unsettled, not the intent. She conceded that the door is not open to her yet, but promised to walk through it as soon as it is.
