Add The New York Post on Google CNN chief legal affairs correspondent Paula Reid is reportedly expected to join MS NOW after deciding to leave the Warner Bros. Discovery-owned network amid uncertainty over David Ellison’s looming takeover of its parent company.
Variety reported Tuesday that Reid is expected to move to MS NOW, citing a person familiar with the matter.
The report came after Status first revealed that Reid had declined to renew her CNN contract despite receiving a generous offer from network executives.
Reid, 43, privately raised concerns with CNN brass about Paramount Skydance’s pending $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery and the uncertainty surrounding CNN’s future under Ellison, according to Status.
Variety reported that Reid turned down a chance to renew at CNN in part because the network’s next era appeared chaotic, while MS NOW has placed a stronger emphasis on hard news and enterprise journalism under president Rebecca Kutler.
“As a general matter of practice, we don’t comment on personnel matters,” an MS NOW spokesperson told The Post.
“As everyone in Washington knows, Paula Reid is an exceptional reporter, and any news organization would be fortunate to showcase her journalism.”
Reid spent roughly a decade at CBS News before joining CNN in 2021, giving her firsthand experience inside the news organization now poised to become corporate cousins with CNN under Ellison.
Status reported that Reid privately expressed concern about the sweeping changes implemented at CBS News since Ellison took control of Paramount Skydance.
Those changes have been most visible at “60 Minutes,” where CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss fired executive producer Tanya Simon, correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, senior executive producer Draggan Mihailovich, veteran producer Guy Campanile and digital operations chief Matthew Polevoy.
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Veteran correspondent Scott Pelley was later fired after publicly confronting Weiss’s newly installed executive producer Nick Bilton over the shakeup.
Several reports previously indicated that Weiss is likely to oversee editorial operations across both CBS News and CNN after the Warner Bros. Discovery deal closes, but it is unclear whether that is still the plan.
The New York Times reported last week that Ellison and his deputies are mulling whether to install Weiss at the helm of CNN while pairing her with a veteran television executive to oversee operations and finances.
CNN chief Mark Thompson has reportedly told Paramount officials he will not share oversight of the network with another executive.
CNN declined to comment. A representative for Reid could not immediately be reached.
