Kara Swisher Says She’s Leaving CNN, Calls Ellisons “Terrible Media Owners”

Kara Swisher says she’s going to make good on her previous threat to leave CNN now that Paramount Skydance has cleared its last major legal hurdle to acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery.

On her Pivot podcast Tuesday, Swisher told her co-host Scott Galloway that she’s done with the network when her contract is up at the end of the year — and perhaps much sooner — because she doesn’t want to work for Paramount CEO David Ellison and his father, Larry.

“I was just literally reading my contract today, as you might imagine, when this news struck, because I threatened to leave,” said Swisher, who’s been a CNN contributor since 2023. “I have asked my agent to get me out of my contract. It ends December 31st.”

“So it’s only a few months, right?” Swisher continued. “[But] I just can’t. I was trying to figure out ways I could work with them in some like licensing way. But then I thought, ‘Fuck these guys.’ I don’t want to work for them. I just don’t.”

Galloway then suggested if Swisher were to walk into CNN and say she wanted to leave early, they might be very inclined to let her go.

“No, not at all,” she replied. “You’re wrong. I know you like to run me down … Maybe the Ellisons, that’s for sure. But no, they’ve been trying to keep me. Very nicely been trying to keep me, and I have a lot of regard for the executives there now … [but] I am not staying. I have other things that make more money, that matter more, that have a bigger audience … I have been very explicit … I think they are terrible media owners.”

Then Swisher added, perhaps a bit surprisingly: “I’d rather work for Rupert Murdoch.”

Galloway then had a rather amusing take on the controversial settlement deal that California Attorney General Rob Bonta and 11 other state attorneys general struck with Paramount that removed the last legal roadblock to the merger. “They extracted from them a promise to make more movies? That’s like letting Goldman and JPMorgan merge if they promised to build more ATMs … Pure regulatory theater.”

Swisher’s work with CNN has also included the six-part original series Kara Swisher Wants to Live Forever, which premiered in April. Swisher also has plenty on her plate beyond the news network. She’s also editor-at-large at New York Magazine, host of the On with Kara Swisher interview podcast, co-host and producer of Pivot and does live touring and events.