Free Press and Block the Merger Partners File Amicus Brief Blasting Pitiful Paramount Settlement

OAKLAND — On Thursday night, Free Press and other core partners in the Block the Merger coalition filed an amicus brief calling for a federal court in California to reject the consent decree 12 state attorneys general struck with Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery.

The groups — which in addition to Free Press include the Committee for the First Amendment, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, the Future Film Coalition and the International Documentary Association — are represented by attorney Brendan Benedict, of Benedict Law Group PLLC in New York City. They submitted the brief after Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín granted their emergency motion requesting the opportunity to weigh in on the consent decree’s many shortcomings. 

The brief explains that the consent decree fails to remedy harms to competition and prevents the very people that state attorneys general are supposed to represent from seeking remedies. The groups also condemn the proposed “independence board” that would oversee the CBS and CNN newsrooms as unconstitutional and not actually independent, given the Ellisons’ promises to make “sweeping changes” at CNN to satisfy the Trump White House. 

Free Press Co-CEO Jessica J. González, who is co-counsel on the brief, said:

“The court should reject this deal outright. It doesn’t address the anti-competitive concerns that state attorneys general themselves identified in their initial lawsuit. Nor does it bring this dangerous merger into compliance with the law. It’s full of weak and unenforceable behavioral conditions that will not protect workers, creatives or consumers.

“The settlement would not prevent price hikes as it does nothing to stop Paramount from leveraging CBS or HBO to demand higher prices for less-watched cable channels. It won’t get more movies made as the post-merger entity can get away with releasing fewer films than the two separate companies had planned to release this year. And it puts a massive media empire into the hands of the Ellisons, who are all too eager to lay off workers, threaten regulators and warp news coverage to placate Donald Trump.”

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