antitrust lawsuit challenging<\/a> its proposed $110bn merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.<\/p>\nOn Tuesday, at Politico\u2019s Agenda California conference, Paramount\u2019s chief legal officer, Makan Delrahim, said a potential sale was on the table as 12 states led by California sued to block the merger.<\/p>\n
Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list<\/p>\n
He stressed that Paramount Skydance had been \u201ctransparent\u201d and was willing to work with both Republicans and Democrats to move the merger forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not naive to know that politics does not exist,\u201d said Delrahim, who served as an antitrust official during US President Donald Trump\u2019s first term.<\/p>\n
Editorial independence questioned<\/p>\n
The potential sale comes as Ellison faces scrutiny over his promises to preserve CNN\u2019s editorial independence if the merger goes through. Ellison, whose father is Oracle cofounder and prominent Trump ally Larry Ellison, has sought to reassure critics that he would not interfere with CNN\u2019s journalism, including in a New York Times op-ed last week in which he promised to preserve the network\u2019s independence.<\/p>\n
But those assurances echo promises Ellison made before Paramount Skydance took control of CBS News nearly a year ago, according to CNN media analyst Brian Stelter.<\/p>\n
CBS subsequently hired Bari Weiss, a right-leaning opinion writer with no television experience, to lead CBS News. CBS also appointed Kenneth Weinstein, a former Trump administration appointee, as an ombudsman to investigate allegations of bias.<\/p>\n
CBS has since faced accusations of a rightward editorial shift under Weiss\u2019s leadership, including the shelving of a 60 Minutes investigation into Trump\u2019s deportation policy, a major overhaul of the news magazine programme and a primetime town hall with Erika Kirk, the widow of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk who was killed last September.<\/p>\n
Prominent anchors including Anderson Cooper and Scott Pelley have also left or been fired from the network since Weiss joined.<\/p>\n
Missing the point<\/p>\n
While selling CNN could address some concerns about political influence over the network, the potential sale is not at the heart of the lawsuit filed by California and 11 other states challenging the merger.<\/p>\n
Delrahim confirmed reports that Paramount was considering relocating operations amid the lawsuit, while appearing to ramp up political pressure before California\u2019s gubernatorial election.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I was governor, I wouldn\u2019t want to lose Hollywood from the state. I wouldn\u2019t want to lose a major company like Paramount to another state,\u201d Delrahim said.<\/p>\n
The Writers Guild of America, which has opposed the merger, criticised Paramount\u2019s reported threats to leave California.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy threatening to leave the state because it doesn\u2019t want the government to enforce the law, Paramount further proves the danger of its outsized power over the industry and what that will mean for writers and the creative community. This type of behavior is precisely why the merger should be blocked,\u201d the Writers Guild of America said in a statement provided to Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
Seth Stern, director of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said selling CNN would not resolve the broader concerns surrounding the merger.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Attorneys General\u2019s lawsuit is an antitrust case that has nothing to do with CNN, so selling CNN would not resolve it. It also would not resolve separate censorship concerns from free speech advocates,\u201d Stern told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
\u201cHBO documentaries and even Hollywood films also rely on strong First Amendment rights that have not been compromised through crooked deals with the administration. The merger and the blatant corruption surrounding it is bad for Paramount, bad for the press, and bad for the public, full stop.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lawsuit alleges that consolidating the studios would mean fewer options for consumers and fewer professional opportunities for those who make television and movies. California Attorney General Rob Bonta has warned that the resulting company would control 27 percent of theatrically released films in the US market, as well as basic cable distribution.<\/p>\n
On Wall Street, Paramount Skydance stock is up 1.1 percent in midday trading while Warner Bros. Discovery stock is up 1.4 percent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paramount\u2019s legal officer hints at CNN sale option as 12 states, led by California, file lawsuit to block…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":853037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,6073,2973,164,134,5927,1685,44,8056,434,427,1055,6075],"class_list":["post-853036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business-and-economy","tag-courts","tag-economy","tag-entertainment","tag-financial-markets","tag-media","tag-news","tag-telecommunications","tag-television","tag-tv","tag-united-states","tag-us-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=853036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/853037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=853036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=853036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=853036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}