Free Press Calls on Attorney Generals Not to Cave to Ellison’s Extortion

LOS ANGELES — According to multiple press reports, California State Attorney General Rob Bonta and some other state attorneys generals are negotiating to settle their antitrust lawsuit to block Paramount Skydance’s $111 billion takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery. 

The potential settlement terms leaked to the press make claims about creating a nominally independent editorial board to oversee CNN, and promise that the combined production studios would produce at least 30 movies with a 45-day theatrical window. Press reports also suggest that the settlement is heading in the direction of behavioral remedies that Bonta has previously and rightly denounced.

These minor concessions came after Paramount owner David Ellison made multiple empty threats to move the studio out of California unless the attorneys general dropped their lawsuit.

If accurate, such a deal would be a dramatic shift from earlier positions staked out by Bonta. Since the attorneys general filed their case against the mega-merger, Bonta has maintained he’ll only accept structural remedies, which prevent the combination or involve companies selling off significant parts of the combined businesses.

Some settlement agreement could be reached as early as this weekend, according to reports, which also suggest not all of the attorneys general are ready to accept such weak terms.

Free Press Co-CEO Jessica J. González said:

“We oppose a weak deal based on unenforceable and empty promises. The reported deal would abandon the thousands of creatives and workers who risked speaking out and the tens of millions of consumers the attorneys general should be fighting for. Let’s be clear: Behavioral conditions do not work. That’s what California’s Rob Bonta has said repeatedly – and he’s right.  They won’t save jobs, preserve choice, or prevent price hikes.

“A fake bipartisan oversight committee won’t save CNN. We have all the evidence we need from the Ellisons’ destruction of CBS about what they do to warp journalism at Donald Trump’s request. At a moment when the Trump administration is trying to control and censor news coverage and kick reporters who dare to ask questions out of the White House altogether, blessing an unlawful deal just to hand CNN, HBO and dozens of other channels to the Ellisons is an unforgivable capitulation to the billionaires and authoritarians attempting to take over our media system.

“Here’s what every politician negotiating in backrooms should understand: Americans across the political spectrum are fed up with corruption and consolidation, and with billionaires calling the shots while everyone else struggles. People won’t forget who stood up for them and who capitulated on such disastrous mergers. Standing firm and enforcing the law isn’t just the right thing to do. It’s the politically smart thing, too.”

Background:
Free Press is a founding member of the Block The Merger coalition, a combination of more than 40 free speech, pro-democracy and antitrust groups with entertainment industry members, associations and labor unions that has submitted more than 200,000 petition signatures from people calling on the state attorneys general to accept no concessions in their lawsuit to stop this massive deal.   

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