Question Everything

News recently broke that Paramount, which is newly controlled by David Ellison and his billionaire dad Larry Ellison, won the bid to buy Warner-Brothers Discovery, after aggressively squeezing out Netflix.

As Trump himself has said, the Ellisons are “friends of mine…big supporters of mine, and they’ll do the right thing.”

Is the “right thing” squashing critical coverage of the president? Doing stories he’s more inclined to like? The Ellisons already own CBS News, through Paramount; now they’re about to own CNN. Larry Ellison also has a new ownership stake in TikTok, via a deal anointed by Trump.

Is this what experts call “media capture?” Is the U.S. in it, right now?

In this conversation we first ran in October 2025, after the Ellisons took control of Paramount, foreign correspondent Natalia Antelava explains the insidious implications of media capture from her experience living and reporting in captured countries around the world.

“Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory. And don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter.

This episode originally aired October 30th, 2025.

Guests:

Natalia Antelava, founder of Coda Story

When a promising young freelancer pitched a good story to his magazine, editor Nicholas Hune-Brown was ready to assign it. But as he looked more closely at the pitch and the writer’s bylines across the internet, Nicholas began to realize maybe this writer wasn’t who she seemed.

A version of Nick’s story first appeared in The Local – you can read it here.

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Question Everything is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory. And don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter.

Guests:

Nicholas Hune-Brown, Executive Editor at The Local

Victoria Goldiee

After journalist Mario Guevara was arrested while covering an anti-ICE protest, ICE moved him into their detention. As his lawyers and the ACLU tried to get Mario free, ICE argued again and again that he shouldn’t be let out, because his journalism made him too dangerous.

Mario was behind bars for 111 days. Then deported to El Salvador.

If you’re wondering where the hell the first amendment is in all this, so are we!

In the second episode in our special two-part series about Mario Guevara, we look into how the federal government targeted and detained a reporter, and ultimately fast-tracked his deportation–his first amendment rights be damned.

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Guests:

Mario Guevara, MG News

Giovanni Diaz, ESQ.

Scarlet Kim, ACLU

Curtis Clemmons, former Gwinnett Sheriff's Deputy and Retired Assistant Chief of Gwinnett County Police

This episode has been updated to reflect the fact that the news outlet Mario did an interview with from El Salvador was not Fox News -- it was a local Fox affiliate in Atlanta.

In June, journalist Mario Guevara was arrested while covering an anti-ICE protest in Georgia, transferred to ICE detention, and locked up by the federal government for more than 100 days. And that wasn’t even the worst of it.

But Mario is not the kind of ICE-criticizing reporter you might be picturing. He was a Trump-supporting, Republican-identifying, law-and-order-sympathizing immigration hawk, who knew ICE well and had covered them favorably for years. Why did the Trump administration still go after him?

This is the first in a special two-part series about Mario Guevara.

Please take 5 minutes to fill out this survey about Question Everything – it’ll help us know who’s listening and what you want from us! Thank you.

Question Everything is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory. Sign up for our Substack newsletter, where we’ve been covering the big landmark lawsuits against social media companies for harming people with their products. This week: Mark Zuckerberg’s rare testimony in an LA courtroom.

Guests:

Mario Guevara, MG News

Emily Wu Pearson, WABE

Giovanni Diaz, ESQ.

Scarlet Kim, ACLU

This episode has been updated to reflect the fact that Mario Guevara had a Social Security card before his immigration case was administratively closed, not after. His subsequent green card petition was also unrelated.

A little message from host Brian Reed about a scary incident he’s dealing with. And much scarier incidents other journalists are dealing with.

Question Everything is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory. Sign up for our newsletter to see Brian’s interview with Senator Dick Durbin about his effort to repeal Section 230.

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