{"id":380822,"date":"2026-06-30T16:15:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T16:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/380822\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T16:15:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T16:15:11","slug":"california-ag-bonta-downplays-report-hes-pushing-paramount-to-sell-cnn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/380822\/","title":{"rendered":"California AG Bonta Downplays Report He’s Pushing Paramount to Sell CNN"},"content":{"rendered":"

California attorney general Rob Bonta stopped by MS NOW on Sunday where he downplayed a Puck<\/a> report regarding his alleged concerns over CNN\u2019s future under Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery.<\/p>\n

Still, he admitted there are \u201cred flags in the air everywhere\u201d amid his investigation<\/a> into the $110 billion merger, even if he\u2019s not necessarily pushing Paramount to sell CNN upon completion.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know where that comes from, to be honest. There\u2019s been a lot of opining about what I\u2019m thinking or what I\u2019m saying or what I\u2019ll do, and I have no idea where it comes from,\u201d Bonta told Jacob Soboroff. \u201cI know a lot of people are interested in this transaction and what my office will do \u2014 and what we will do is what I\u2019ve always said: We are investigating. The transaction has not cleared regulatory scrutiny. There are red flags in the air everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re concerned about job loss and prices being increased and lack of quality and choice for consumers. And so, we\u2019re looking and we\u2019ll decide timely what we\u2019re going to do. But I\u2019m not sure what the origin of that is,\u201d he continued. \u201cWe expect more opining that may or may not be tethered to the truth, but we\u2019re just head-down, focused on an antitrust, fair but firm and comprehensive analysis, and we\u2019ll make a decision in the coming weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tPlay video<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"Play\"\/<\/p>\n

Soboroff then asked: \u201cHow much is what\u2019s played out at CBS, in terms of CBS News and the editorial independence of that organization, affected the way that you are looking at CNN potentially coming under the same umbrella?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, we have to be concerned about that. We\u2019re not naive. We see what\u2019s happening in the world,\u201d Bonta replied. \u201cI have always been a supporter of the independent free press as a critical guardrail in our democracy. That needs to continue. But our analysis is a straight-up antitrust analysis. That\u2019s our lane. That\u2019s our focus. We will do an antitrust analysis here and make a decision based on that analysis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bonta is one of approximately 10 state attorneys general who are reportedly preparing a lawsuit<\/a> to block the Paramount-WBD merger.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Paramount\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"California attorney general Rob Bonta stopped by MS NOW on Sunday where he downplayed a Puck report regarding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,5177,15839,6336,2794],"class_list":["post-380822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-cnn","tag-jacob-soboroff","tag-paramount","tag-rob-bonta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}