A handful of companies should not control what most Americans see as news. The Justice Department just cleared Paramount Skydance to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, which would put CNN, CBS, HBO, and the Warner Bros. studios under one owner. That is too much of the news and too much of the culture in one set of hands.
The owner is not neutral. Paramount already paid President Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit over a 60 Minutes story, and after the last merger was approved, more than 70 CBS News journalists were pushed out. Trump has publicly praised the man who would run the combined company. Now his Justice Department has cleared the deal.
The money behind it should worry anyone. Nearly half the new company, 49.5 percent, would be foreign-owned, with about $24 billion coming from the governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi. Foreign governments should not hold that kind of stake in the networks Americans rely on for the news.
The FCC still has to approve handing CBS's broadcast licenses to this company, because foreign ownership tops the 25 percent limit set in federal law. You have a say in whether that happens.
Publicly oppose the FCC transferring CBS's broadcast licenses to the merged company, and call hearings on foreign government ownership of American news networks.
