Twelve Democratic attorneys general filed a lawsuit this week to block the Paramount merger with Warner Bros. Discovery. California Attorney General Rob Bonta led the charge, with 11 other Democrats signing on. The stated reason is antitrust concerns.
The actual reason is CNN.
Here's the problem for the plaintiffs: the merger would place CBS and CNN under the same corporate umbrella — an umbrella that now includes Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News. Weiss has publicly criticized mainstream media for being too anti-Trump. She's made editorial changes. Several correspondents have left CBS, been fired, or resigned in protest, accusing her of bias — which in network-news language means she stopped letting the newsroom function as a Democratic campaign office.
That's what 12 state attorneys general are suing to prevent. Not monopoly pricing. Not consumer harm. The possibility that CNN's editorial direction might shift a few degrees toward the center.
Bonta framed the lawsuit in lofty terms: "America has no kings in government or our economy." A stirring sentiment from a man whose entire legal theory boils down to 'we need to stop a private company from hiring editors who might ask tough questions of both parties.'
NPR's David Folkenflik, reporting on the suit, described Larry Ellison — whose son David Ellison runs Paramount — as "one of the richest people on Earth, an adviser and financial supporter of the president." That's the tell right there. They really oppose this because the company's dad once donated to President Trump. Oh the horror!
Folkenflik went on to note that under the merger, CBS "would be perhaps under the same umbrella as CNN" and that the new editor-in-chief "has criticized the mainstream media for being too anti-Trump, and several correspondents have left the network, been fired or resigned, criticizing her for bias."
Translation they don't want to lose another reliable leftist news outlet.
The lawsuit was an all-Democrat event. Every single one of the 12 attorneys general is a Democrat. Not a single Republican joined. For a case supposedly about consumer protection and antitrust law, the partisan unanimity is revealing. Antitrust cases don't typically break along party lines. Cases designed to protect partisan media advantages do.
The irony runs deeper when you consider the alternative bidder. Netflix, co-founded by Reed Hastings and run by co-CEO Ted Sarandos — both prominent Obama supporters — had also been involved in discussions around Warner Brothers--Discovery. Nobody filed suit to block that arrangement on grounds that Obama-aligned billionaires might influence CNN's coverage. That concern only materialized when the billionaire in question was friendly with the current president.
There is an obvious "one-party state" in television journalism — the same outlets that employ almost exclusively left-leaning anchors, producers, and correspondents now face the possibility of a single editorial leader who thinks journalism should interrogate both sides. Former NPR editor Uri Berliner raised similar concerns about ideological uniformity at his own network. The response from NPR wasn't to examine the criticism. It was to push Berliner out.
So the Democratic legal apparatus has moved from pressuring newsrooms behind the scenes to filing lawsuits in open court. The quiet part — 'we need these networks to stay on our side' — is now the loud part, stamped on legal filings across 12 states.
They could have let the merger proceed, trusted that CNN's audience would hold the network accountable, and competed in the marketplace of ideas. Instead, they filed a lawsuit that tells the country exactly what they think journalism is for.