• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, Today

The surprise piece of news from Paramount’s Monday release was that its high-profile news platforms CBS News and CNN will continue to be run separately.

CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss and Chairman/Editor in Chief, CNN Worldwide Mark Thompson will remain, running separate operating news platforms.

And at the same time -- as has been disclosed earlier -- there will be editorial oversight: a five-member editorial independent board of critics, veteran journalists and others to offer insight and perhaps criticism of the journalists' work.

This is part of a settlement, with a 12-state attorney generals’ "antitrust" lawsuit against the company.

Industry observers, however, believe that this board -- despite the current organizational structure of the Skydance news platform -- will have limited, if any, real influence.

Will this help assuage critics' concern that the combination would stifle original news gathering -- especially with the perception that the new Skydance Media will continue to be favorable and sensitive to the Trump Administration?

President Trump has been all too critical about both news organizations in the recent past.

Two years ago, this resulted in CBS paying a shocking $16 million settlement for a 2024 Trump lawsuit over the editing of video featuring Kamala Harris, who was a presidential candidate at that time.

That’s right -- editing video. Something TV journalists have done for decades.

The acid test would be now to allow those news organizations to continue to be critical, balanced, and fair in reporting the news stories they need to cover, and -- as the phrase goes -- to continue to hold those in power to account.

Looking further, will this help the company’s potential business partners -- including heavy TV news advertisers -- worry less about buying into each news group going forward?

There may be a bit of give and take going on here. The other shoe has not dropped yet.

What will happen to those much-maligned non-news platforms -- the company’s cable TV networks?

Experts are not anticipating that those platforms will continue in their current form.

Rather, they expect them to be merged, combined or just operationally stopped -- which would be expected to result in massive layoffs.

Overall, that was another focus of that state attorney generals' lawsuit: the loss of jobs resulting from a massive, anti-industry competitive media merger.

Is there anything else under the radar we are missing?