Early this morning, core members of the Block the Merger coalition filed an emergency motion with the federal court in California overseeing the lawsuit against Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. The motion asks Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín to grant interested parties the opportunity to formally oppose the weak and unenforceable consent decree that state attorneys general entered into with Paramount on Monday.
Earlier this week, the Block the Merger coalition blasted the deal as bad “for the future of film, entertainment, independent journalism, and a strong democracy in this country.”
After filing a lawsuit to block the merger in July, California Attorney General Rob Bonta consistently said that he would not accept behavioral remedies in any settlement because they are “empty promises, self-serving promises, promises that are unenforceable, that won’t be kept, that history shows won’t be kept.” Yet that is exactly and exclusively what the attorneys general’s consent decree with Paramount contains.
Judge Martínez-Olguín has scheduled a hearing for 11am this morning to “address certain outstanding questions regarding the factual and legal underpinnings of the parties’ proposed consent decree, as well as the implementation of the proposed consent decree.” The judge may rule on the Block the Merger parties’ motion during that hearing.
“Hundreds of thousands of people across the country called on state attorneys general to enforce the law and to protect consumers, workers and free speech,” said Free Press Co-CEO Jessica J. González, who serves as co-counsel on the motion. “The weak and unenforceable deal the AGs struck with Paramount leaves us in the lurch. We deserve our day in court.”
“We believe the consent decree fails to meaningfully address or mitigate the harms that will be caused by this monopoly merger to the entertainment industry, diverse storytelling, independent filmmaking, consumer interests, a free press, First Amendment rights, and fundamentally, democracy,” stated Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Steering Committee for the Committee for the First Amendment and First Amendment litigator. “It does not serve to benefit anyone except the owner family of Paramount and those holding political power who will use this corporate consolidation as a proxy force for First Amendment suppression of disfavored expression and viewpoints.”
“The solution for the Ellisons letting Donald Trump and Brendan Carr police journalism is not to let attorneys general and judges police journalism too,” said Seth Stern, Chief of Advocacy for Freedom of the Press Foundation. “It’s to keep the government out of the newsroom, period. No one seriously believes the Ellisons (or their rumored new investor Elon Musk) will do that, with or without a self-appointed sham editorial board, which is why this merger cannot proceed.”
“The independent filmmakers and small businesses in this industry depend on multiple studios, distributors, and platforms competing to finance, acquire, license, distribute, and exhibit their work," said Jax Deluca, Executive Director of the Future Film Coalition. ”This merger eliminates a competitor, and the proposed consent decrees are insufficient in restoring that competition or preserving separate acquisition and licensing decisions. We are asking the court for the opportunity to explain why these agreements fail to remedy the harms the states themselves identified in their original complaint.”
“This deal does nothing to protect documentary filmmakers, or the CBS and CNN news archives on which they depend,” said Dominic Willsdon, Executive Director of the International Documentary Association. “It puts two of the most significant homes for ambitious documentaries—HBO and CNN—under the control of one family, along with two of the four most significant news archives. Documentary filmmaking, like journalism, is essential to an informed democracy. Despite the grave harm to documentary makers’ ability to work freely, the attorneys general's settlement does not even nominally protect the nonfiction filmmakers we serve. IDA raised the alarm on this deal nearly a year ago. We opposed it when Netflix seemed the likely buyer, and we continued to oppose it when the buyer became Paramount. Massive media consolidation is dangerous for democracy, and we will continue to fight it.”
The emergency motion comes as the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) files a separate legal motion to address concerns with the consent decree.