The Senate Judiciary committee will hold a significant hearing
Wednesday on the proposed $84 billion merger between AT&T and Time
Warner, which owns CNN.
AT&T's CEO Randall Stephenson will be testifying, as well as others, who support or oppose this merger.
The senators should be prepared to ask Stephenson some tough
questions – because allowing this merger will have important
implications for a free press and American democracy for many years to
come.
During the recent election, presidential candidate Donald Trump said,
"AT&T is buying Time Warner, and thus CNN, a deal we will not
approve in my administration because it's too much concentration of
power in the hands of too few."
Since then, a number of news reports – no doubt pushed by AT&T –
are suggesting President Trump will have a laissez-faire approach and
the deal will go through
.
Knowing of the grassroots concerns many conservative leaders share, I
doubt President Trump or Congress will rubber stamp this deal.
Trump was right when he warned of the massive concentration of media power in a few hands.
Consider: 90 percent of cable television networks are currently owned
by just six companies: Time Warner (CNN), Viacom, CBS, ABC (Disney),
Comcast (NBC) and 21st Century Fox.
Of these major conglomerates, only Fox gives conservatives a fair shake. New, independent networks like Newsmax TV
are on the rise, but the big media still controls, dangerously, the
flow of information to the public. Trump was their most recent victim.
A combination of AT&T and Time Warner will be toxic, further constricting competition and press diversity.
AT&T is a giant media company which also owns DirecTV. It was
also a major corporate backer of Hillary Clinton's presidential
campaign. It strongly opposed Trump's election.
Time Warner's CNN was nothing short of the "Clinton News Network" – a
24-hour propaganda machine spewing out anti-Trump and anti-Republican
venom.
Right now, AT&T has 26.3 million pay TV subscribers through
DirecTV and AT&T U-verse service – controlling about 25 percent of
the U.S. cable market. It is the largest cable/satellite operator in the
U.S., bar none.
By owning the largest chunk of cable home distribution, AT&T will
obviously be in a position to favor their own channels like CNN, over
other channels like Fox News, Newsmax and many others.
The ability for AT&T to discriminate against other cable networks
that could compete against CNN or their other networks would be
endless.
AT&T, which controls a huge percent of the mobile telephone
market, could exempt its mobile customers from data usage charges if
they stream CNN content, but streaming independent news networks like
Newsmax might continue to count against high-speed data caps.
