Renato Mariotti @renato_mariotti
THREAD: Why the Trump Administration’s push for Time Warner to sell off CNN appears to be illegitimate retaliation against the press.
1/ Today @politico reported that the Justice Department is pushing Time Warner to sell CNN as a condition of getting its merger with AT&T approved.
2/ The Justice Department reviews mergers by large companies to make sure that the combined company does not create an unlawful monopoly.
3/ The purpose of the DOJ approval process is to ensure that consumers don’t pay higher prices than they should because a merger creates a company that controls too large of a percentage of market.
4/ For example, in 2011 the government blocked AT&T for purchasing T-Mobile because it would have reduced competition in the market for cellular service providers.
5/ Sometimes, when two big companies merge, the government makes one or both companies divest certain assets to make sure that a new monopoly isn’t created.
6/ For example, Comcast owns NBC and Disney owns ABC. If they decided to merge, the DOJ might require the new company to sell either NBC or ABC.
7/ In this proposed merger, AT&T doesn’t not own a cable news competitor to CNN. There is no obvious reason why a combination of Time Warner and AT&T would need to sell CNN. They don’t own Fox News or MSNBC.
8/ This looks like an attempt by the Trump Administration to punish the free press, particularly because Trump has gone out of his way to personally and unfairly attack CNN.
9/ Lawmakers and the public should demand answers from the Administration. There had better be a very good reason for this request, and there doesn’t appear to be one.
10/ Our free press is vital to our democratic process and we can’t let the Trump Administration use its power to punish members of the press who hold Trump accountable. /end