California attorney general Rob Bonta stopped by MS NOW on Sunday where he downplayed a Puck report regarding his alleged concerns over CNN’s future under Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery.
Still, he admitted there are “red flags in the air everywhere” amid his investigation into the $110 billion merger, even if he’s not necessarily pushing Paramount to sell CNN upon completion.
“I don’t know where that comes from, to be honest. There’s been a lot of opining about what I’m thinking or what I’m saying or what I’ll do, and I have no idea where it comes from,” Bonta told Jacob Soboroff. “I know a lot of people are interested in this transaction and what my office will do — and what we will do is what I’ve always said: We are investigating. The transaction has not cleared regulatory scrutiny. There are red flags in the air everywhere.”
“We’re concerned about job loss and prices being increased and lack of quality and choice for consumers. And so, we’re looking and we’ll decide timely what we’re going to do. But I’m not sure what the origin of that is,” he continued. “We expect more opining that may or may not be tethered to the truth, but we’re just head-down, focused on an antitrust, fair but firm and comprehensive analysis, and we’ll make a decision in the coming weeks.”
Soboroff then asked: “How much is what’s 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?”
“You know, we have to be concerned about that. We’re not naive. We see what’s happening in the world,” Bonta replied. “I 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’s our lane. That’s our focus. We will do an antitrust analysis here and make a decision based on that analysis.”
Bonta is one of approximately 10 state attorneys general who are reportedly preparing a lawsuit to block the Paramount-WBD merger.
