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Justice Department Tells Time Warner It Must Sell CNN Or DirecTV To Approve Its AT&T Merger (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source): 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 other potential way the merger could win approval would be for AT&T to sell its DirecTV division, two of these people added. As originally envisioned, combining AT&T and Time Warner would yield a giant company offering wireless and broadband internet service, DirecTV, the Warner Brothers movie studio and cable channels like HBO and CNN. If the Justice Department formally makes either demand a requisite for approval, AT&T and Time Warner would almost certainly take the matter to court to challenge the government's legal basis for blocking their deal.
Used to be this kind of chicanery was done in the shade, not in the open.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Trump wants to stop that "fake news". The analogy is hardly perfect, but when I think Trumpism Peronism comes to mind, or more specifically that fragment of the Evita Soundtrack.
"What's new, Buenos Aires? Your nation which a few years ago had the second largest gold reserve in the world is now bankrupt. Your country which grew up and grew rich on beef is now rationing it. La Prensa, one of the few newspapers which dare to oppose Peronism has now been silenced and so have all the other reasonable voices. I'll tell you what's new, Buenos Aires...."
Now I happen to think that the merger should be denied period, but the CNN angle I think is complete political bullshit. If this was Fox it would have likely been approved. Sinclair has certainly gobbled a lot of crap up that it shouldn't have been allowed to.
Why? Can someone help me with an answer?
"Justice Department Tells Time Warner It Must Sell CNN Or DirecTV To Approve Its AT&T Merger" makes it sound like TW owns DirecTV. As the second sentence of the summary indicates, AT&T owns DirecTV.
Side note, DTV customer service SUCKS since the AT&T takeover. We made a small change to our service, they screwed it up, then they screwed up the billing for it, and it has taken about 5-10 so far to try to get it fixed, and (as of right now) it's still not fixed. DTV was never perfect, but if there was a problem (and that was rare), it was usually fixed with a call or two. The current problem is not even the first we've had in the couple years since the takeover.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
There is much speculation that the Justice Department is doing this because its master, El Presidente is all mad at CNN for "Fake News"...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I see how it is, as soon as Trump leaves the country they go and try to do something that is in the best interest of the public.
That depends if we have another "Shock and Awe" the will need be televised in the near future.
Trump has had the stance since day one that the merger wouldn't happen under his administration, so this is expected.
In addition, we need to break these folks up, not let them keep consolidating into ever larger " too big to fail " entities. We have a monopoly problem already, don't need to throw more fuel on the fire.
One giant company shouldn't be allowed to own the content, the pipes and the end mechanism to deliver it all.
Too much power consolidated into too few hands makes it all too easy to sway public opinion in any direction you want. Trump is all too aware of this considering how the media has behaved since the election.
Though I suspect if the TW deal happens, it won't be long before AT&T starts prepping to sell off its wireline services.
.....CNN will have to go. Maybe MSNBC will buy them. lololol :)
Is this story an apple or a banana today?
Stormfront? Really?
If only we could have another Nuremberg and string all you Nazibassholes up again.
It's time to start putting the universe back in order.
Aren't most or all of Trump's grandkids Jewish? Oh my fucking god, Jews Will Not Replace Us idiots! Wut now???
Cornered on all sides!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Enough with the breaking news. Someone should tell them that it's not breaking news when you've been saying it for three days. Why don't they just put up an animation of Don Lemon shaking his head while a recording says trump-trump-trump-trump-trump. And what's with all the ex-CIA and former generals? Do they need the money that badly?
KILL CNN!
KILL CNN!
What do we want? Less propaganda!
When do we want it? About 10 years ago!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Im sure Trump knows someone that will buy them. All hail.
This is smart.
In broad terms, there is an argument that government should tune the mixture and sizes of corporations within markets so to maximize social efficiency or equity. On the other hand, there is the philosophical objection that individual liberty should take precedence, and that sub-optimal social outcomes must be accepted as a price for granting individuals liberty to make decisions on their own, free of coercion, because individual liberty is inherently preferred. The latter would not be unusual. For example, the liberty to eat refined sugar predominates over the public health benefits of its prohibition.
Regulation of mergers is a moot issue though, because the FTC bureaucrats have no real knowledge what are the consequences for the market of their dictates. It's all hocus-pocus. A larger corporation can benefit consumers by providing economies of scale and eliminating needles competition. Or it can harm consumers by reducing price competition. Which is declared by officials in what case is determined by political affiliations of the regulated and benefits the regulators choose to extort for a favored constituency. Edicts are not based on science, but a combination of inept meddling, political retaliation and extortion. Giving the FTC the power to block and restrict mergers is of no demonstrable benefit and only increases opportunities for corruption. It seems that regulation would be necessary to prevent monopolization before it forms because, historically, there have been some beneficial breakups of monopolies. The AT&T, Standard Oil, and railroad monopoly breackups stand out as convincing examples. But looking into the details, it turns out that those monopolies were created by government regulations to begin with, so that the the net effect of regulation was negative.
If CNN was genuinely opposed to this kind of regulatory meddling on principle, as opposed to acting as mouthpiece for the self-serving financial interests of it's corporate parent, it might have expressed some concern during 30+ years history of increasing intervention. Apparently, regulations apply to everyone else.
If Trump ordered this as hit on CNN (there is no evidence he did) ya, of course that is unjust. But this kind of things has been going for while. While the Obama administration was notorious for playing politics with regulatory policy, CNN never said a thing.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Look, nobody really gives a shit about CNN anymore and not just since yesterday. And there is no real utility to satellite television anymote, now that most people stream over the Internet. Might as well ditch both,if they could find a buyer that is.
So... Where is this standard applied to the FCC allowing the Sinclair Broadcasting acquisition of Tribune Media assets? This will essentially create the single largest TV broadcasting conglomerate on the face of the planet (conservative friendly, of course). Such a conglomerate would control multiple news media outlets, in many locations, essentially dominating local news for much of the US...
The Washington Examiner says:
* The suggestion came from AT&T.
* The justice department was against it.
I know it's easy to assume Trump would use the powers of the executive branch to punish his enemies. After all, that's what the Democrats have been doing for years now - and getting caught from time to time. So it's easy to assume the other side would act the same way.
But, so far, The Donald doesn't seem to be stooping so low.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
But, so far, The Donald doesn't seem to be stooping so low.
What else are you trying to sell us besides the bridge over the River Bullshit?
He's already done it, and before him, Bush Jr did it, Bush Sr did it, and Reagan, and especially Nixon.
All of them were subjected to investigations that revealed, if not punished, their perfidy.
I might accept that Eisenhower and Hoover didn't, and possibly Coolidge, but Harding ran into some trouble, and Taft even pissed off Teddy Roosevelt.
Before that, well, there's Chester A. Arthur, Benjamin Harrison, and ole Drunk Grant.
Not an uncorrupt one in the bunch.
Parent: chicanery, You: Trump originated chicanery is false + accuse Democrats of same
i.e. you created extra conditions (Trump originated) and then dismissed those extra conditions as false using a quote.
This is a vertical merger, Justice may hem and haw and even sue, but there is no case law to support killing CNN(*) just because Donald does not like what is being said about him (and it *is* all about him). Regardless of what you think of the merger (and there are legitimate and rational reasons to wish it was not happening), everyone should be appalled at the attempt to kill CNN by this administration.
(*) Sure, they bundle Tuner in the mix, but this is about CNN, first, foremost, and only.
CNN doesn't seem relevant to anything. It's horribly biased and useless. It's so pro-Muslim I call it the Caliphate News Network? Islamic terror attack? Two hours later they are running the Islamophobia story.
I'd pay a few bucks a month to just keep CNN from broadcasting. I suspect many people would subscribe to a "Kill CNN" service.
Someone forgot what website they went to. This is slashdot, not 4chan...
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
The point of the deal is the combination of CNN and DirectTV! Together they become the Dog Butt To Fuck and Fuck and Fuck and Fuck.
Hahahahahahahahaha
If you actually think Trump has anything to do with this, you're fucking retarded.
Besides, it was Obama who openly wanted to pass laws that explicitly censored right-leaning news sources. Where was your smug faux outrage on that one, dipshit?
Source?
He doesn't have one (or if he does it's some blog or far right site that made it up) - it's a lie.
Why does that mean staffing changes?
That will be controlled by the BUYER. If CNN is sold to Fox or the Koch brothers there would be staffing changes but certainly there is some left leaning buyer with the necessary deep pockets
Yeah, because NYT, Newsweek, CNN, MSNBC, and The Hill are all right wing blogs... You fucking imbecile.
Try Google out sometime, dipshit.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/30/opinion/sunday/if-donald-trump-targets-journalists-thank-obama.html
Crawl back the The_Donald plz
That's a nice article. And it is true. But it has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
Unless you cite a fucking source for your propaganda, it didn't happen, you fucking sorry ass Trumpologist dipshit!!
P.S. - I loved the tidal wave of Democratic votes in Tuesday's election. It is a nice precursor to the 2018 midterms. It is becoming quite clear that Trump is the best thing to ever happen to the Democratic party, and I'm having a boatload of laughs watching him implode the Republican knee-jerk party. God, I'd love to see Hillary run against him in 2020. After what we've seen, she'd win in a fucking landslide.
Should we go back and force them to sell off NBC Universal? I say yes, especially since AT&T is probably going to say something like, "Hey, you let Comcast do it!"
Widdle boy sad he got no power. Count to ten and have a cookie.
Take Trump (hate/like) out of the equation and do you really want a single company to have that much control? I do not regardless of who is the president.
I wish that ATT was never allowed to purchase DirectTV in the first place. That alone is way to much of a consolidation for me to be comfortable with.
So far, just about everything has come from unnamed sources and none of them seem to have much of a clue. Chances are, lots of things were thrown around without being proposed as actual deals. The only comment from a named source is from AT&T's CEO:
"Until now, we've never commented on our discussions with the DOJ. But given DOJ's statement this afternoon, it's important to set the record straight. Throughout this process, I have never offered to sell CNN and have no intention of doing so,"
Even CNN has walked back most of its speculation, so this looks like a big misunderstanding without any ulterior motives. Move along, nothing to see here.
I can think of some other lame channels TWC should sell off.
Other than political convenience, what is the official reason to require this?
Monopoly of some flavor? Conflict of interest? Fiduciary responsibility?
I'm not sure selling off CNN would hurt them so much. Is that mistaken?
Maybe CNN needs to suck The Donald's dick as hard as Fox does.
Not really related but, somewhat on topic: does anyone else think Fox New's coverage of the Trump administration looks and sounds an awful lot like North Korean state news?
So that's why you believe all the lies about China. Someone in your 'tribe' told you. Makes sense now, you're just too gullible I guess.
Mind blown, or it would be if you weren't so tribal. Quick, back to FOX before you have to start thinking about it.