CNN senior reporter Betsy Klein works in the CNN office after being allowed back on to the grounds of the White House on Sept. 24 in Washington, D.C. gettyimagesbank-TNS

"They're not worth the paper they're printed on."

The speaker was media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, who had accepted a sheaf of guarantees of editorial independence for the revered Times of London and the Sunday Times in order to secure government approval to take over the newspapers in 1981.

Among Murdoch's undertakings were that the newspapers' editors would maintain control of their political policies and that the editors would have full independence from Murdoch's orders about the mix of news and opinion in their pages. Additionally, four "national figures" would be placed on an oversight board to insulate the papers from his interference, and the independent board would have to approve the firing or hiring of the top editor.

Harold Evans, who served as editor of the Times for a year before Murdoch fired him, reported in his memoirs that "Murdoch broke all those guarantees." When a top British Cabinet member confronted him with these promises, Murdoch responded with the crisp assessment above.

Those words should be kept in mind as we contemplate the "News Editorial Independence Board" that Paramount boss David Ellison pledged to install to protect CNN and CBS News from his editorial meddling after he takes over Warner Bros. Discovery in a $111-billion deal.

The transaction appears to be likely to happen, now that Ellison settled a lawsuit brought by California and 11 other states to block the deal. Among the promises Ellison made to settle the lawsuit is the creation of the news board.

As my colleagues Stephen Battaglio and Meg James reported last week, media observers and merger opponents doubt that the board will have any real authority. They're right to be skeptical.

"This 'independence board' has no power, no authority and will likely do nothing to preserve the integrity of CNN or CBS," says William Grueskin, who was deputy managing editor of the Wall Street Journal when Murdoch acquired the newspaper in 2007. Grueskin resigned from the Journal a few months after Murdoch acquired it, and is now on the faculty of the........

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