My father worked at CNN for 17 years. He officially left in 2017, and when asked why he left such an interesting job in the heart of Atlanta, he gave two answers.
“I was just starting to get bored,” he’d say first. Fair enough. He worked at the same desk, writing and producing stories for businesses, doing the same job for 17 years, so I can understand wanting a change. However, it was the second answer — the one he would always throw in toward the end — that I did not quite understand at the time.
“I am worried about where the media landscape is heading politically,” he’d say.
In 2017, I was 11 years old. In 2026, now 19, I finally understand his apprehension. We are living in an era of “dueling realities.” A study done in 2020 by the Public Religion Research Institute found that a growing number of Republicans believe Democrats are socialists, while Democrats believe Republicans are racists. While there have been improvements on both sides in some areas, political polarization continues to fester.
According to the Pew-Knight Initiative, in a report done in October 2025, trust in national news organizations has plummeted 20 points since 2016, with only 56% of adults expressing any trust in the information they receive. Among my generation, that trust is even lower: adults under 30 now trust social media at almost the exact same rate as national news.
While we argue over the “buzzwords” used to capitalize on this charged climate, we are missing the structural shift happening behind the curtain. On Feb. 27, the media landscape shifted permanently when Warner Bros. Discovery finalized a $110 billion merger agreement with Paramount Skydance. On the surface, it looks like a simple consolidation of streaming libraries — “Game of Thrones” meeting “Mission Impossible.” But for a family like the Ellisons, the “Superior Proposal” accepted this week includes an invaluable pickup: my father’s previous employer, CNN.
David Ellison is the CEO of Paramount Skydance, which will acquire CNN as part of the upcoming merger. His father, Larry Ellison, is the executive chairman and CTO of Oracle Corporation, which recently acquired sole authority over TikTok U.S. data protection. By combining CNN with Paramount’s CBS, the Ellison family has formed one of the largest news conglomerates in the U.S., giving the Ellisons extraordinary power to influence the upcoming midterm elections. Yet, as traditional cable numbers dwindle, the real “ace” in the Ellisons’ sleeve isn’t a television network. It’s the servers.
In January, TikTok finalized a deal to establish a new U.S. entity, TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, to sidestep a federal ban on the platform. Ellison’s Oracle, along with Silver Lake and MGX, now owns a majority stake in this entity. Most critically, Oracle now oversees the content recommendation algorithm and data protection for U.S. users.
Pew Research reports that 43% of young adults now regularly get their news from TikTok, up from just 9% in 2020. In addition to shaping the news from more traditional outlets, the Ellisons now have the chance to do so on TikTok.
Under TikTok’s Jan. 22 Privacy Policy update, the data being processed is increasingly sensitive. The policy explicitly mentions “citizenship or immigration status,” “religious beliefs,” and “mental or physical health diagnosis.”
While these inclusions are largely due to California’s AB-947 transparency laws, the stakes remain high. We now have a single family that hosts the data and the algorithm of the nation’s fastest-growing news source, while simultaneously controlling two of the nation’s largest traditional news brands. The data harvested by TikTok servers can, in theory, inform the “bombardment” of political ads when reading CBS and CNN news.
The concept of dueling realities is no longer just a metaphor for political disagreement. According to that 2020 study by the Public Religion Research Institute, the American electorate is split not just by policy but also by their fundamental perceptions of the nation’s health and future.
This reality gap is most visible in how we perceive existential threats. PRRI found that while a vast majority of one side sees the decline of democratic institutions as a primary crisis, the other side views the erosion of “traditional American values” as the true emergency. When the Ellisons’ new conglomerate — spanning the legacy reach of CBS, CNN, and the algorithmic precision of TikTok’s U.S. servers — manages the flow of information, these disparate fears could be manipulated.
The danger of this consolidation is the creation of a perfected echo chamber. PRRI’s data highlights that Americans who rely on different news sources inhabit entirely different moral universes. By controlling both traditional news and social media, a single entity can ensure that a user’s “reality” is never interrupted by a conflicting fact. As we head into the midterms, the bombardment of political ads can leverage the sensitive personal information found in TikTok’s 2026 privacy updates to target these specific, PRRI-identified anxieties.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta has vowed a “vigorous” review of the Paramount-WBD merger, noting that “These two Hollywood titans have not cleared regulatory scrutiny — the California Department of Justice has an open investigation, and we intend to be vigorous in our review.” He is right, but the danger isn’t just to the economy; it’s to democracy.
We cannot claim to be a nation of free speech if the reins of speech are held in so few hands. Awareness is essential. As we head into the midterms, it is no longer enough to fact-check a headline. We must continue to push for nonpartisan media — not because it is the media’s duty to make things black-and-white, but because it is the media’s duty to provide the facts so the public can determine the truth for themselves.
My father saw the storm coming in 2017. In 2026, almost a decade later, the dam finally broke. The question is whether we have the media literacy to navigate the flood that follows.
Nick Massey is a freshman studying political science and history.
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