The Paramount/Skydance Merger Is The Blueprint For Political Control Of The Press

Originally Posted On Jon Hall’s Apocalypse Diaries

As the FCC approves a clandestine, shady, and backroom deal of Paramount’s merger with Skydance, a critical factor of the deal is going unignored.

ArsTechnica reported that the $8 billion merger “came with a condition to install an ombudsman” – who, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, described as a “bias monitor”.

Carr told Newsmax that one of the conditions of the deal included putting the omsbudsman in place for two years to act as a “bias monitor” that “reports directly to the president [of Paramount]”.

The FCC claims there’s precedent for the installing of an ombudsman but it’s a starkly different standard being referenced.

The mentioned “precedent” involved a deal between GE and NBC, with an ombudsman being put in place to protect NBC’s editorial independence without any interference from GE.

Speaking to Newsmax, Carr also detailed that “for years, people cowed to the executives behind these companies based in Hollywood and New York” and “accepted that these national broadcasters could dictate how people think about topics”.

Carr also pointed out that the broadcasters “could set the narrative for the country” and how “President Trump… rejected it”, saying that Trump also “smashed the facade” of gatekeepers influencing what people think.

Fact check: true. In 2016, Donald Trump – as an outsider political candidate – faced a mainstream media machine owned entirely by the establishment, whether political or cultural elite, who wielded legacy media outlets as an apparatus against Trump’s candidacy.

However, that doesn’t mean a hard swing in the opposite direction is what’s warranted.

Once political power is able to reach into a newsroom or a scheduled weekly program – such as the case in Stephen Colbert – whether through direct pressure or merger conditions, the startling precedent becomes more dangerous than any immediate victory.

Today, the bias monitor might lean one way. Tomorrow, another administration can take this same playbook, swap the names and keep tightening the grip even further.

It quickly becomes deciding which facts are allowed and which aren’t… This isn’t just historical revisionism, it’s an active editing of events.

A “bias monitor” being put into place isn’t only rife for abuse no matter what party is in office but creates a dystopian precedent that turns freedom of press into a privilege granted by political power – not a right protected from it.