The Consent Decree Between Paramount And California Is Insane

Democracy is that Democrats oversee television news. Take it from Gavin Newsom’s halfwit communications director, who looks like he was rejected as an extra for High School Musical:

See, now a state government with single-party rule has “oversight” authority with news organizations, which preserves the independence of the journalists. For media, “independence” is when the news answers to the attorney general of California.

Pressured by the rise of streamers, the traditional movie studios Paramount and Warner Bros. pursued a merger to make a giant studio with a deep library of media product. Oleaginous California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued to stop the merger, joined by other Democrat AGs, with a bunch of far-left idiots cheering him on.

Running in the background was a debate over who controls the news. CNN is owned by Warner Bros. CBS is owned by Paramount. So a Paramount/Warner merger gives Paramount ownership of two major news organizations, and Paramount is run by David Ellison. If you believe the legacy media, which you should never do, Ellison is a huge Trump supporter. Sample headline about the merger:

So here’s the spin: “Donald Trump’s MAGA billionaire ally David Ellison” is seizing control of the news. Weirdly enough, David Ellison is a huge donor to Democrats, and poured cash into Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, but he doesn’t make a loud public display of being homicidally anti-Trump, so legacy media journalists basically regard him as Trump’s adopted son. Their standards of evidence remain interesting.

Paramount responded to California’s antitrust lawsuit by threatening to leave the state and set up shop in Tennessee, which brought Bonta running to the negotiating table. The result is not encouraging. You can read the consent decree that will allow the merger here (marked as a “draft” because it was posted before approval) or read Bonta’s summary here.

In a condition that will be enforced by government monitoring, the merged company “agrees to a News Editorial Independence Board to help CNN and CBS maintain editorial independence.” If the California Attorney General’s Office feels that CNN and CBS aren’t being independent, they can go back to court to enforce the consent decree. This condition is backdoor content monitoring, a First Amendment problem covered with the fig leaf of structural independence.

More quietly, Bonta has kneecapped CBS News Editor-In-Chief Bari Weiss, who has faced internal dissent over her decisions to hold or edit stories. The consent decree requires the merged company to give the News Editorial Independence Board the authority to adjudicate newsroom grievances: “Resolving any disputes between CBS News employees, CNN employees, and management of the Combined Entity regarding alleged reporting bias or failure to meet agreed reporting fairness standards.” So the next time Weiss decides a story isn’t ready for 60 Minutes, she faces a trial before an internal tribunal of career journalists. Good luck with that.

In another remarkable concession, Paramount agreed, as part of an enforceable decree approved by a court, to finance and distribute a minimum number of annual movies:

If Paramount doesn’t make enough movies, they have to give the Teamsters a bunch of cash. See, that’s not a shakedown at all.

So who decides how much product a corporation should produce? California’s top prosecutor. An office full of government lawyers has taken on the economic planning function, as if the litigation section in Sacramento will be meeting this week to decide how many bags of potato chips should be produced. Should we greenlight the Avengers sequel? Hold on, the attorney general has some creative notes.

Entertainment industry journalists are framing the deal as a Bonta implosion, calling it a “capitulation” to Paramount from a weak negotiator. And Bonta is objectively quite stupid, so this is a fair argument. But this still is a dreadful agreement that expands the role of government into bizarre new territory.

Chris Bray is a senior correspondent at The Federalist and a former infantry sergeant in the U.S. Army. He has a history PhD from the University of California Los Angeles, not that it did him any good. He also posts on Substack, at “Tell Me How This Ends,” here.