FCC’s Gomez Calls For Review Of Paramount’s Dodgy Merger Financing

Legal Issues

from the dodgy-global-autocratic-disinformation-alliance dept

Anna Gomez, the FCC’s lone Democratic Commissioner (because Republicans refuse to seat the second one) is calling for a rigorous review of Paramount and the Ellison family’s planned $111 billion merger with Warner Brothers. As Paramount recently revealed, 49.5 percent of the deal’s funding comes from Middle East and Chinese government-linked sources; just the sort of thing Republicans pretend to get mad about when engaged in stuff like, say, offloading TikTok to the POTUS’s rich friends.

The FCC doesn’t have much of a role in the giant media merger approval process because public license transfers aren’t involved. But it does (in a theoretical country that respects the law) have a role to play in enforcing Communications Act restrictions that restrict foreign entities from holding more than a 25% indirect equity or voting interest in a U.S. company that holds broadcast licenses. 

Carr and the Ellisons have spent months publicly insisting the law doesn’t matter because the countries won’t have a meaningful management and board presence. It doesn’t matter, it’s still technically illegal.

But Carr is eager to ignore the law because the merger is of benefit to a rich Republican looking to gift his nepobaby two major Hollywood studies and turn what’s left of corporate news media (both CNN and CBS News) into an even-friendlier safe space for rich Republicans and global autocrats.

While Gomez’ actual power here is negligible, her call for a meaningful review is a useful reminder of Trump-era Republican hypocrisy and the importance of functional media ownership regulation (which the U.S. hasn’t had in a very long time). From Gomez’ statement:

“The American public deserves to know who owns the airwaves that carry their news. I
am alarmed by what appears to be an effort to rubber stamp a financial structure that
places nearly half of one of America’s largest broadcast and media companies into the
hands of foreign governments with documented records of press suppression and a
troubling willingness to silence journalists.

There are serious, unresolved questions about how this foreign investment may jeopardize national security, and this Commission has a legal obligation to answer them before handing
wealthy friends of this Administration yet another Billionaire Buddy Bypass on a
transaction that strikes at the heart of American journalism.”

Again, recall how Chinese private ownership of a social media company doing business in the United States caused a four year embolism by FCC boss Brendan Carr and other Trump loyal Republicans. Here you have a billionaire right wing Trump friend ignoring the law and gobbling up whatever’s left of U.S. media with the help of several autocratic buddies and there’s curiously no problem.

It’s almost as if Trump Republicans don’t have any coherent ideology beyond propping up their own wealth and power. If only the United States had a diverse and healthy news media capable of explaining that.

With Gomez in the minority there’s virtually no chance of a meaningful FCC review. Still, it’s nice to see a Democrat at least get the messaging on this right. Dem media reform policies have historically ranged from highly performative to nonexistent in a country increasingly too corrupt to care about meaningful antitrust reform (recall how Democratic leadership abandoned popular media reformer Gigi Sohn’s appointment to the FCC after a baseless Republican and telecom/media sector smear campaign).

Ellison’s effort to dominate media, and the authoritarian threat more broadly, is so ham-fisted and dire it’s been hard for Democrats to ignore this one. Carr has unsurprisingly ignored other Democrat lawmakers’ call for meaningful inquiry.

A potential lawsuit by a coalition of state attorneys general remains the best path for blocking the deal, though their focus will obviously be on the inevitable mass layoffs, price hikes, and shittier overall service that arrive every single time giant media mergers (especially involving Warner Brothers) get rubber stamped by our pay-to-play federal government.

Filed Under: brendan carr, china, donald trump, fcc, foreign ownership, larry ellison, media, mergers, national security, saudi
Companies: paramount, warner bros. discovery