Trump Administration Engaging in Assault of a Political Enemy
For more than two years, as a candidate and as president, Donald Trump has viciously attacked CNN, repeatedly calling it “FAKE NEWS” and verbally attacking its reporters. There’s no question CNN is enemy number one to the Trump administration.
So it should come as no surprise that the Dept. of Justice is trying now to force Time Warner to sell CNN before it approves a proposed merger between AT&T and Time Warner.
“The Justice Department has called on AT&T and Time Warner to sell Turner Broadcasting, the group of cable channels that includes CNN, as a potential requirement for approving the companies’ pending $85.4 billion deal, people briefed on the matter said on Wednesday,” The New York Times reports today.Â
The Times adds, “analysts have said that there were few legal grounds on which to block the transaction.”
AT&T has been told by the US Department of Justice that it needs to sell CNN, Time Warner’s cable news channel, to get its $84.5bn acquisition of the media company approved, according to three people with direct knowledge of the negotiations.Â
The Trump administration is engaging in a politicized attack on CNN, pure and simple.
ThinkProgress calls it “Authoritarianism.”
Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti†says “the Trump Administration’s push for Time Warner to sell off CNN appears to be illegitimate retaliation against the press.”
How do we know?
Less than two weeks ago the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Republican Ajit Pai (who also is a staunch opponent of net neutrality) announced he is moving to remove a decades-old FCC rule that limits media companies from becoming monopolies in any given market. The rule has prevented newspapers from buying TV stations and vice-versa, if it would mean citizens would have fewer sources of news.
“If you believe, as I do, that the federal government has no business intervening in the news, then we must stop the federal government from intervening in the news business,†Pai told a House communications subcommittee October 25, as Bloomberg News reported. “He said that’s why he offered his rules revision to ‘help pull the government once and for all out of the newsroom.'”
Republicans have been calling, without success, to weaken or kill those rules for more than a decade, and Pai’s ascension to FCC chair as President Donald Trump’s choice gives the party a chance to accomplish that goal. He set a vote for Nov. 16.
Relaxed rules could help Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc., which earlier told the FCC that its proposed $3.9 billion purchase of Tribune Media Inc. would violate local-market ownership strictures in 10 cities.
Pai cast his ownership proposals as part of his commitment to the First Amendmentthat guarantees free speech — a live topic since Trump threatened broadcast licenses over news reports.
Sinclair is a right wing media outlet that has been gobbling up local TV news stations then forcing them to broadcast pro-Trump “reports,” including a nightly opinion segment masquerading as news by former Trump staffer Boris Epshteyn.
“Sinclair Broadcasting is giving more exposure to political commentator and former Trump administration official Boris Epshteyn by increasing its number of ‘must run’ segments at its 173 local affiliates across the country,” The Hill reported in July.
Sinclair will now require its stations to run nine Epshteyn commentaries per week, an increase from the three per week requirement since the 34-year-old Russian-born former investment banker and attorney joined in April.
Now, FFC Chairman Pai is dead wrong, but so is the DOJ. The AT&T-Time Warner merger isn’t bad for Americans. It doesn’t help make the quality of the news better, but it doesn’t make it worse, either.
The Trump administration is engaging in the assault of a political enemy, and it’s plain as day.
To comment on this article and other NCRM content, visit our Facebook page.
If you find NCRM valuable, would you please consider making a donation to support our independent journalism?