Paramount sale gets a yes from Trump’s FCC : NPR

Under the executive president Shari Redstone, Paramount Global took measures to appease concerns in the Trump administration on the coverage of CBS news. Thursday, Federal Communications Commission approved the sale of Paramount in Skydance.

Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images / Getty Images North America

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Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images / Getty Images North America

Wednesday, Trey Parker and Matt Stone – The creators of the satirical show Southern park – announced that they had concluded a streaming agreement of $ 1.5 billion over five years with Paramount Global.

That evening, the beginnings of the season of Parker and Stone for a long time on the comedy of Paramount buried the company for having canceled the CBS ‘ The late show With Stephen Colbert – Implying that it was done only to appease one of the frequent targets of Colbert: President Trump. (In the episode, a Trump cartoon is shown naked in bed with Satan. It is not an attractive representation. Nor it was not intended for being.)

Paramount Global said that Colbert’s cancellation, effective next June, was only carried out for financial reasons. However, he performed in the middle of a wave of measures taken by Paramount and Skydance Media – who sought to acquire the conglomerate of the media – to appease the Trump administration.

Federal regulators announced on Thursday that they have voted to approve the agreement estimated at $ 8 billion.

Initiates to eliminate prejudices in the coverage of news, and more

Paramount paid $ 16 million to resolve a trial tabled by Trump as a private individual against CBS and 60 minutes. Skydance CEO David Ellison promised to eliminate All Dei-based programs in the United States to paramount and to create A new mediator to present ideological biases complaints in the cover of the news. Skydance did not deny Trump’s claims that the network will perform $ 20 million in public service announcements in accordance with its ideological beliefs.

The president of the Federal Communications Commission Brendan Carr cited the promises of Skydance of “important changes in the CBS diffusion network formerly corrected”.

“Americans no longer trust the national media inherited to report entirely, with precision and fairly. It is time to change,” Carr wrote in a press release. “In particular, Skydance has made written commitments to guarantee that the programming of the new company embodies a diversity of points of view from the whole political and ideological spectrum. Skydance will also adopt measures that can eliminate the bias that has undermined confidence in the national media.”

On Fox News earlier in the day, Carr took a victory tour on the cancellation of Colbert and other CBS concessions, as well as the Standard for federal funding for public media. “You have exhibited the commercial model of many of these outfits as nothing more than a partisan circus”, ” Carr said on Fox News. “All this is downstream of President Trump’s decision to get up.”

Skydance and Paramount refused to comment.

Last week, Ellison met Carr to underline “the commitment of Skydance towards impartial journalism and his adoption from various points of view, the principles which will guarantee that the editorial decision -making of CBS reflects the varied ideological prospects of American viewers”, as the lawyer for Ellison later in the later in the later official deposits.

The father of David Ellison, the founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison, finances the agreement to buy Paramount, who owns CBS, Nickelodeon, Paramount Pictures and Comedy Central, among other brands. He had been controlled by Shari Redstone, who wanted to withdraw the participation of what remains of the vast media assets of his late father, Sumner Redstone.

She finally told Associates that the company was too small to compete with the largest digital titans Netflix, Amazon and Apple in the era of the diffusion and the decline of the cable. There was no plan B, according to people with knowledge in Paramount and CBS who spoke provided they were not appointed because they were not allowed to speak of the sale.

“A scary effect”

Trump’s trial that CBS and Paramount settled under Redstone were – by almost all the accounts of external legal experts – incredibly fragile.

Trump’s criticism say it was never the point.

“It is mainly a question of exercising domination and creating a frightening effect for other actors,” explains Michael Dorf, professor of law at Cornell University, a constitutional scholar. “It is less that he gets money, but defendants must get rid of it.”

Media organizations, he says, “will think twice before putting news that is unfavorable for the perceived personal interest of the president”.

Dorf indicates combinations that Trump, as a private citizen, undertook against other media companies and official administration procedures and proceedings against universities and law firms. Colonies – like The agreement of Columbia University to pay $ 221 million When he has long -term billions in play – it is a sense on an individual basis, he says. But they leave the other exposed to the same types of pressure.

“What unites all these cases is that the administration or Trump personally has a very low case against the person or the entity he pursues,” explains Dorf. “The more active target, the more vulnerable they are.”

A multitude of legal regulations

CBS was Trump’s pressure point: Redstone’s plan to sell the company forced FCC approval due to the transfer of more than two dozen local stations.

Trump’s trial allegedly alleged that CBS News had committed electoral interference by cutting out the response of the president of the time, Kamala Harris, to a question about the conflict of Israel / Hamas, two different ways on different broadcasts. Together, the two shows offered a complete response from Harris viewers; Trump’s legal team argued that the network had sought to make it more consistent than it was really.

The prosecution was filed in a jurisdiction in Texas with a judge friendly to the president. Under Carr, the FCC revived rejected complaints against CBS and its local stations about the interview which had been filed by a defense group for conservative public defenders.

The executive director of 60 minutes and the President of CBS News and Stations The two resigned earlier this year, saying that they were opposed to a regulation, especially if he contained apologies. CBS did not apologize within the framework of the regulations.

ABC News’s Parent Company, The Walt Disney Co., had previously paid $ 16 million Towards the future Trump’s presidential library and legal costs. Trump had continued on the anchor of the anchor George Stephanopoulos on the conflict of the legal conclusions of a jury in a civil case. This resolution included a note of regret.

The social media giants X and Meta paid the $ 10 million in the Trump Foundation and 25 million dollars to settle the proceedings on their decision to launch it with their platforms after claiming to have won the 2020 elections against Joe Biden. Elon Musk of X has several billion dollars contracts with the federal government; Mark Zuckerberg’s applications are highly regulated by federal agencies. Both hoped for a light touch on AI regulation, which Trump reported that he supports.

FCC commissioner Anna Mr. Gomez, the only democrat of the Commission, attacked the agency’s decision to approve the sale. In a written statement, she said it had marked the continuous erosion of journalistic independence.

“After months of loose capitulation to this administration, Paramount finally got what he wanted,” wrote Gomez. “Unfortunately, it is the American public who will finally pay the price of his actions.”

“In an unprecedented decision, this FCC, formerly independent, used its vast power to put pressure by primordial to negotiate a private legal regulation and further erode press freedom,” she said. “Once again, this agency is undergoing legitimate efforts to combat discrimination and expand the opportunity by exceeding His authority and intervening in employment issues reserved for other government entities with appropriate competence on these issues. Even more alarming, this now imposes controls without sight on the decisions of the editorial hall and the editorial judgment, in direct violation of the first amendment and the law. “”