Passivity Buster 3, third in a series
Media critic and author Jennifer L. Pozner is back with another Block the Merger roundup! This essay covers so much ground, you’ll want to read all the way to the action steps at the end. Check out her It’s Not You, It’s Media newsletter for media literacy tips and media advocacy strategies.
DOJ helps Paramount extort California; FCC lets foreign nations pull ParaBro’s financial strings. Broadcast journalists humanizing AI “actors.” Coyote vs Acme is to David Zaslav what the Roadrunner is to Wile E, while 60 Minutes fell off a cliff. Former FCC commissioners have Kimmel’s back. Plus, a few related sneak-peek panels from my forthcoming graphic novel.
It’s been a busy news month, so let’s get to it! Jump through the topics below at will:
* DOJ does us dirty
* Nepobaby throws economy-destroying temper tantrum
* Break out your #BullshitDetector
* Coyote vs Acme vs Zaslav
* Journalists anthropomorphizing AI…
* …Journalists replaced by AI
* Viewers watched “the new 60 Minutes” for next to no minutes
* These clowns would control of two of four US news archives?
* Murder journos? Not a prob for the FCC.
* Brendan Carr still obsessed with Jimmy Kimmel
* Pissed off or freaked out? Fight back.
Tick, Tick… Boondoggle
Do you want to do dangerous, illegal things, then make the government (and a bunch of writers) pay your bills when they sue to stop you?
Good news: if your last name is Ellison, Trump’s DOJ is on your side!
As Ted Hope covered on Aug. 23, Paramount petitioned a judge to make 12 states and the Writers Guild of America pay them nearly $2 billion as their two antitrust lawsuits play out. Their filing whined that AGs “have chosen to erect a roadblock at the last second that harms two media companies.”
I can almost hear David Ellison toddler-sobbing to Daddy Larry. How dare the U.S. legal system not let us violate antitrust laws? I waaaaant Warner Bros! I WANT it! AG Bonta’s so mean!
Fact check: the AGs didn’t erect that “roadblock” (nice term for normal antitrust litigation, eh?) “at the last second.” They sued as the last line of defense after Trump’s DOJ leadership rubberstamped the Ellisons’ plans — much to the surprise of their own investigators, who leaned toward opening an antitrust case. If that wasn’t suspect enough, DOJ leadership issued a highly unusual additional statement that read like a Paramount press release, claiming
that the transaction is not likely to result in harm to competition or American consumers…
That was patently untrue, as I previously broke down. By blessing the deal out of politically-motivated favoritism instead of good-faith scrutiny, Trump’s DOJ forced the AGs to step up on behalf of the American people.
Meanwhile, this bond demand is the kind of Bond villain ploy oligarchs make when they’re high on their own supply. They’re desperate to duck the $7 million/day ($635 million+/quarter) “ticking fee” they promised to Warner Bros. Discovery if their takeover falls through. The trigger date is Oct. 1.
They’d also owe — OOPSIE! — a $7 billion breakup fee if Para’s prevented from being Bros with WBD.
Despite behaving as if the AGs picked their pocket, the Ellisons willingly negotiated the ticking fee and breakup clauses as a sweetener to get WBD on board. Reckless? Sure… but to be fair, these corrupt schemers never imagined that they’d have to pay up.
Why would they? From the moment Paramount announced their intentions, their victory was declared a done deal. The entertainment industry and many journalists assumed it was inevitable; Wall Street and a largely unskeptical business press initially lauded the prospect. Most comfortingly to Papa and Babyboy Ellison, the president was on their side (especially after David promised to make sweeping changes to CNN.”)
The millions they’d funneled to Donald Trump, plus promises of additional media favors, bought them an outspoken ally in the White House (a shareholder’s suing for corruption over this). After Paramount’s prior Skydance merger, the president crowed “Larry Ellison is great, and his son David is great. They’re friends of mine. They’re big supporters of mine… They will make the right decisions.”
No wonder they thought they had WBD in the bag.
They didn’t count on the power of the Block the Merger coalition’s robust, cross-sector organizing, which pressured the states to sue. And they really didn’t count on CA AG Rob Bonta or NY AG Leticia James being unwilling to back down.
DOJ does us dirty
On Tuesday, the DOJ pressured the court to codify the Ellisons’ demands.
In other words, give our “good friend” David the money.
…Of course, with the close relationship between the Ellisons and Trump administration, which in the minds of some saw the merger approved this spring with too few questions and no conditions, the fact that the language in today’s DOJ statement so closely mirrors Paramount’s recent filings on the bond issue is just another non-surprise.
A corrupt DOJ can echo Paramount’s press releases all they want, but it doesn’t actually make this merger legal. The financial burden of normal regulatory lawsuits — and contractual fees they willingly agreed to — is just the cost of doing business. As Bonta argued in a court filing, “Paramount now wishes to offload its responsibility.” But despite his many pampered privileges, David Ellison isn’t a Very Special Boy to whom the rules simply don’t apply.
In practical terms, what does this mean? Simple: The DOJ wants the courts to let Paramount force taxpayers to underwrite their gamble that they’d close their deal with little to no scrutiny. It’s essentially a hostage situation: Either we let them screw over the country without objection, OR we subsidize their attempts to defeat our representatives who fight back.
The DOJ’s endorsement of bullying as legal strategy sets a dangerous precedent for any company entering litigation with any state or national government body. The states’ legal response makes clear that acquiescing would encourage businesses “to negotiate extraordinary fees to inoculate themselves from state and private antitrust enforcement.”
In what world should multinational corporations be financially incentived to break the law, then have their legal bills covered by the government during lawsuits to determine whether or not they broke the law?
Nepobaby throws economy-destroying temper tantrum
Since July, David Ellison has attempted to intimidate AG Bonta by hinting he’d move Paramount to Texas or Tennessee if the merger didn’t close, abandoning Hollywood’s entire creative labor force after more than a century.
This is peak nepobaby entitlement. Bonta, unmoved, correctly called it an attempt to blackmail Californians into allowing an illegal, authoritarian power-grab. He didn’t back down. As any pre-K teacher or parent knows, we don’t give in to destructive toddlers throwing temper tantrums.
With two months to plan, you’d expect Big Media’s evil geniuses to prepare an airtight rollout for their official “Hi, we’re holding California’s economy for ransom” threat. Something perfectly placed to do maximum damage to their adversaries.
Evil, yes. Geniuses? Not unless “getting scooped by a TMZ exclusive” counts.
From Deadline:
David Ellison has let it be known that he is willing to take his Paramount ball and leave California… And now it looks like the CEO’s ball really could be in play.
But as former FTC commissioner Alvaro Bedoya (now senior advisor to the American Economic Liberties Project) tells me, Ellison’s threats would be costly, hard to pull off, and don’t seem credible:
He’s not even taking his ball home. He’s loudly yelling, “Guys, I’m super serious, I’m totally going to take my ball home!”
Twelve states are pursuing this antitrust case — this obsession over California is a red herring meant to terrify CA families and pressure the lead prosecutor, while making the majority of the country think the merger has little to do with them. Many entertainment workers have already been forced to leave CA after multiple rounds of layoffs in an industry shrinking under the weight of billionaire extraction. That’s the climate in which Ellison’s playing pretend, and Paramount-aligned astroturf spammers are scaring CA residents.
It’s a cruel gambit to force-close an illegal deal that would make a combined Paramount Skydance/Warner Bros Discovery one of the most powerful media conglomerates in the world, with monopolistic control over two giant film studios, CBS, CNN, HBO, Comedy Central, BET, MTV, many other entertainment and sports channels and networks, two of four historical news archives, and TikTok.
As our coalition has said for half a year — and as the states will prove in court — ParaBros would drastically reduce entertainment and news industry jobs, degrade quantity and quality of art, further erase viewpoint diversity, threaten press freedom, minimize media opportunities for women and people of color, raise consumer prices, and harm civic life.
Break out your #BullshitDetector
On Wed. The Wrap, which has published quite a bit of Paramount-friendly coverage, warned of “serious cuts on the table” “for the David Zaslav-led media giant” if the merger collapses. “Even with the breakup fee and improving leverage,” Warner “would still be in a difficult financial position with its debt” according to “some experts.”
True enough! But a quick scan with your media literacy Bullshit Detector (“follow the money” edition) reveals even more serious cuts undoubtedly on the table if the merger does close.
As I discuss in my forthcoming graphic novel, It’s Not You, It’s Media: Decoding What We Watch, Read, Post, Buy, and Create, Warner Bros. took on $56 billion in debt to merge with Discovery. Zaslav started paying down that debt on day one by shelving completed or nearly finished projects, canceling existing programming, erasing archives, lowballing wages, and in many cases just choosing not to create new art at all.
Here’s are a few never-before-seen panels from a section of the media economics chapter where we disover who’s behind a mysterious string of art heists at an entertainment museum.
Parabros $111 billion deal would saddle the new conglomerate with an astronomical $80+ billion in debt — 43% more than what WBD torched so much art and journalism to pay down. Obviously, more extreme reductions in output — plus mass layoffs, likely accelerated by AI — would surely follow for the new conglomerate.
Coyote vs Acme vs Zaslav
That’s why it’s delicious — and instructive — to see movie fans having such a great time with Coyote Vs Acme in theaters.
As “synergy target” practice, Zaslav tried to prevent anyone from ever seeing this delightfully funny, anti-corporate family film bursting with visual wordplay reminiscent of The Simpsons at its cleverest.
I may write a separate piece about why (and how disrespectfully) he axed the movie, its long road(runner) to break free from cinematic purgatory, and why it’s a useful case study for threat media consolidation poses to art.
But for now, it’s enough to know that Coyote vs. Acme has earned nearly $11 million more at the box office in its first two weeks alone than what Zaslav made from preventing its release in 2023.
After just two weeks of release, the once-shelved Looney Tunes hybrid feature Coyote vs. Acme has successfully pled its case, surpassing the $30 million that Warner Bros. Pictures traded it for back in 2023. The Ketchup Entertainment release came through Labor Day weekend at No. 3 and has now earned $39.9M in domestic box office alone.
Wile E. Coyote’s corporate court battle is also rolling out internationally, and has reached a worldwide total of $50.89M, with key markets such as Oceania still to open.
As I write this at 4:30 on Sept. 18 (before third weekend ticket sales), Box Office Mojo shows a worldwide gross of $74,835,741. It also has a near-perfect Rotten Tomatoes score.
One hopes Zaslav still has the capacity to be embarrassed. From Ellison’s temper tantrum and propagandistic instincts to Zaslav’s disregard for quality entertainment, I can’t help but wonder: Why are filthy rich Davids so bad at media-bossing?
Journalists anthropomorphizing AI…
When is a news source not a news source?
When it’s a personified tech company ad masquerading as an actor, fully incapable of original thought.
This week CBS, NBC, ABC, Variety, and various other TV and print news outlets “interviewed” a computer program, assigned it a gender and name, and debased themselves by asking it questions as if it was a legitimate news source. As if “she” was a person.
CNN kicked off the clickbaity trend story by giving “first AI actor” “Tilly Norwood” “her first on-camera interview” as part of a press junket stunt by Particle 6, a generative AI company. “It’s not a real interview, because Tilly isn’t real. She is programmed with prompts by her creator,” CNN’s Elizabeth Wagmeister noted on social media. Yet she and CNN devoted a luxurious 11 minutes to a glorified marketing campaign for Particle 6 and its founder’s spin. What good it is to nod to the fact that Tilly isn’t real in viral clips, when you muddy the waters by humanizing a system of ones and zeroes as “her” and “she” and “you” and “actress” — even as you acknowledge that “Tilly can’t act” without prompts coded by its creator? The overall framing can only add to audiences’ misimpressions about AI’s ability to “think” for itself, even with qualifiers thrown in.
And speaking of it’s creator, Eline Van der Velden faced overwhelming industry backlash in 2025 for saying, “We want Tilly to be the next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman, that’s the aim of what we’re doing.” Now, she’s pivoted by adding “In AI” to the end of that sentence, pretending “It’s not to replace anything in the traditional filmmaking scenario… She’s never meant to replace any actor.”
ABC repeatedly, uncritically echoed the tech industry’s mantra “AI is here.” Coupled with Particle 6’s disingenuous quote that “AI is a tool, not a replacement for humans,” the story essentially turns “Tilly” into The Borg. Resistance is futile, ABC implies, so why not enjoy a snippet of the bot’s “single and music video” with such scintillating lyrics as “Actors, it’s time to take the lead. AI’s not the enemy, it’s the key” and faux-angsty belting “They say it’s not real, that it’s FAKE! But I am still HUMAN, make no MISTAKE!”
Literally “singing” a different tune from its soft-peddling “I’m not a human and I don’t pretend to be” on TODAY. Describing the software as “speaking out,” NBC’s Chloe Melas asked, “Why have you decided to do interviews?”
It didn’t; it can’t. It’s not sentient, Chloe.
#MediaLiteracy moment: The free earned media Particle 6’s PR team generated for Misaligned (an AI-gen film they’ve been planning for ages) with this nontraditional press tour is incalculable. Yet the only ethical way to reference AI programs is as it (not “she/her” or via pretend name), and to put scare quotes around the premise that it might have a profession. Philly’s ABC affiliate came through with a model other outlets should follow: their caption references the studio as a subject with agency, while placing “actress” and “starring” (an unearned verb) in quotes.
In 2025, in the afterword for It’s Not You, it’s Media, I discussed “Tilly” as just one of many threats this tech poses to the industry:
A.I. has begun to infest every corner of Hollywood: editing, scripts, storyboards, lighting, cinematography, animation, special effects, costume design and makeup, even deepfakes of actors’ images and voices.
A.I.-generated “synthetic actors” are marketed with human names like “Tilly Norwood”: Hollywood agencies hint they want to represent “her,” business execs say they hope one of “her” could replace 100 background actors.
…Journalists replaced by AI
Despite AI’s known tendency toward “hallucinating” inaccurate misinformation, this is already happening in the news industry,
And it’s not just anchors. Profit-focused owners who see news as indistinguishable from sneakers, fidget spinners, or any other product are using AI to decimate entire news departments. To hell with jobs, accuracy, local communities… Papa needs a new yacht!
But we can still rely on time-tested, deeply researched investigative reporting, right? Sure — just not on Paramount’s watch.
Viewers watched “the new 60 Minutes” for next to no minutes
Can’t imagine a future where low-rent AI knockoffs replace Anderson Cooper or Christiane Amanpour on CNN? I’m sure David Ellison can. Consider this actual footage of 60 Minutes’ ratings falling off a cliff.
Despite a full-force ad campaign and an internal hype memo to CBS’s entire newsroom, Bari Weiss’s post-facts revamp took a dive. Who knew installing unqualified leadership, firing trusted news anchors and producers, and trading factual reporting with propaganda would turn off viewers?
Everyone. I did, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver did… even my local bodega cat could’ve predicted this.
Literally everyone outside of Trump’s sycophant circle knew Bari Weiss would be the death of 60s Minutes, even before Scott Pelley famously accused her of “murdering” the broadcast:
new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified.
In Murdering 60 Minutes, Brave New Films uses Paramount’s willful destruction of America’s oldest, most respected investigative news broadcast to make a potent case against media consolidation.
As I discuss in my forthcoming graphic novel, It’s Not You, It’s Media, our democracy simply cannot survive without challenging, unfettered journalism that holds power accountable to the public.
AI programs cannot do that. And Paramount Skydance’s propagandistic reign over CBS News demonstrates that they will not do that.
Does anyone really believe ParaBros wouldn’t jump at the cheapest way to replace news and creative workers, and churn out AI slop news, film, and TV? They’re already enamored (here, here, here, Warner is similarly inclined); tools like “Tilly” will glaze their eyes with cartoon dollar signs.
So even though the AGs didn’t include CNN or journalism in their antitrust suit, the rest of us understand the danger of their WBD takeover poses to the press and society.
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Tip: For credible, well-researched news turn to outlets including ProPublica, Mother Jones magazine, or anyone who has ever won Hillman Prizes for public interest journalism.
These clowns would control of two of four US news archives?
In 2024, Paramount erased decades of MTV News reporting, commentary, and footage on music, culture, and politics — *poof!* — as none of it mattered. Documentarians, scholars, history buffs, and pop culture fans are left unable to access that treasure trove of information. They also cut nearly all content on Comedy Central (and with it, 25 years of Daily Show clips), TVLand, and CMT, “wipes out a huge trove of archival material.”
Now they’ve come for BET Digital’s news archives, first noted by HuffPo deputy editor Phil Lewis:
Via AV Club:
While it’s not uncommon for websites to degrade as soon as a media tycoon realizes there actually isn’t a ton of profit in reporting the news, BET Digital is one of the rare outlets that highlighted Black voices. By wiping the archive, Paramount essentially erases that perspective on a very consequential period in American history. Sadly, this isn’t Paramount’s first rodeo. In the pre-Ellison days of 2024, Paramount scrubbed decades of music news from MTV’s website.
As George Orwell wrote in his dystopian novel 1984, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
We cannot let the Ellisons (or any one company) control — and have the ability to censor or erase — 50% of all archival broadcast news footage.
Murder journos? Not a prob for the FCC.
On Thursday evening, FCC Chair and Trump enforcer Brendan “We can do this the easy way or the hard way” Carr waived the 25% cap on foreign equity ownership of U.S. companies. Per Reuters:
As Clayton Weimers, Executive Director of Reporters Without Borders’ US office, tells me (data here):
15 journalists are currently behind bars in Saudi Arabia, 1 in UAE. Between the three countries in question, 63 journalists killed or jailed in the past decade. Is that who we want owning the American media?
Alvaro Bedoya made the threat clear on X and BlueSky:
Brendan Carr just cleared the way for a nation that was responsible for the murder of an American journalist to hold a key stake in CBS News and 60 Minutes, and if this merger goes through, in CNN and Last Week Tonight.
Saudi Arabia First.
As did Free Press’s Craig Aaron:
I also chimed in on Bluesky:
Last week’s comprehensive webinar from the Media and Democracy Project breaks down what debt and foreign ownership by 3 petro-state sovereign wealth funds means for Americans. And in June, the Center for American Progress explained why geopolitical financial ties to regimes hostile to journalism, speech, and human rights make this deal untenable.
Want to dig even deeper? See UC San Diego and MACRO Lab’s study, “The Costs of Consolidation: Arguments and Evidence for Blocking the Paramount-Warner Bros. Merger.” (PDF)
Brendan Carr still obsessed with Jimmy Kimmel
On Sept. 9, comedian Jimmy Kimmel announced that his interview with TX Senate candidate James Talarico would air on YouTube, not Jimmy Kimmel Live, because the FCC
has threatened me, threatened our show, threatened our network, ABC, our affiliates, our local stations, based on simple, traditional editorial decisions. Guest bookings it would seem they don’t like… so if you want to learn about a candidate for Senate tomorrow you will have to go to the Jimmy Kimmel Live Youtube channel… Thank goodness we have that, because in the America we live in right now, that is the best that we can do.
After Trump’s reelection, Disney spent $16 million ($15m, plus $1m in legal fees) to fold rather than fight the president’s nuisance lawsuit over an ABC News segment he resented. Disney’s attempt to curry favor with power set off a string of corporate media capitulation (including Paramount’s similar settlement over normal 60 Minutes editing).
It didn’t work out for them. Famously, Carr went on a right wing podcast and stated that broadcast affiliates should boycott until Kimmel was canned. Seeking FCC approval to buy Tegna, local TV news giants Nexstar and Sinclair both jumped to do Carr’s bidding. ABC — which also needed FTC and DOJ approval to acquire FUBO and a majority stake in NFL Media — caved quickly, yanking Kimmel off the air “indefinitely.”
Backlash was swift, from headlines about state attacks on the First Amendment and corporate collusion, to alarmed Americans canceling HULU, Disney+, ESPN and boycotting Disney parks. Disney stock plummeted 3%, a market value loss of $6.4 billion; Jimmy Kimmel Live was back on ABC within a week.
When Carr continued to target ABC with investigations and sketchy license renewal nonsense, Disney finally learned their lesson. They went on the offensive this summer with ads directly asking viewers to support Jimmy Kimmel Live, The View, and ABC. Their boldest move to date came last month:
On Thursday, a bipartisan coalition of former high-ranking FCC officials who served under every President from Reagan to Biden offered muscular backup: an amicus brief supporting ABC’s lawsuit.
They filed “after ‘hav[ing] watched with growing alarm as the agency they once stewarded has unleashed a wide-ranging campaign to bring an independent press to heel.” Citing FCC threats against Kimmel and ABC having to pull Talarico’s interview, the coalition
argues that current FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has engaged in a pattern of misconduct “bear[ing] three hallmarks: It is retaliatory; it requires invoking FCC regulatory power beyond the boundaries set by law, regulation, and historical agency practice; and it is calculated to evade judicial review.”
ABC’s case is the first in which a federal district court will consider a First Amendment claim brought against Carr’s FCC—a test the coalition says is long overdue… In July, a number of former officials from this coalition publicly opposed the early renewal proceeding, calling it “an assault on free speech disguised as regulatory process.” They warned that Chairman Carr’s actions signal to other broadcast companies that they, too, risk losing their licenses if they broadcast speech the President doesn’t like. The coalition has grown since that July filing to 18 former FCC officials, signalling bipartisan concern over Carr’s conduct is building among Democrats and Republicans alike as the midterms approach.
Pissed off or freaked out? Fight back.
I’m not one to depress and run. Being informed and media literate are just the first steps: there’s always something you can do, and effective media advocacy efforts you can get involved with, to fight for better media content and policy.
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Be like Sally Field and sign this petition to tell the AGs to see the lawsuit through and fully block the merger, with no concessions.
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As the iconic actress reminded us during her Emmys acceptance speech:
We’re the arts. We matter. Our voices matter. Our diversity, our unique storytelling, matters. We can’t let those voices be silenced or compromised or merged.
Damn right, Sally. I already adored you, but now I like you — I really like you! —even more!
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Organize! At their Brooklyn book launch for End Times Fascism this Tuesday, I asked authors Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor if they consider organizing against media consolidation (and blocking the ParaBros merger in particular) to be an important structural solution to multiple domestic and international crises. Klein replied:
I do think that the media piece is so important… I would say stopping these further mergers is an attempt to control this huge political shift.
It’s a huge piece, of course. It’s incredibly important, and it’s a step towards establishing the principle of a media commons and the right to public interest media…
Maybe you don’t like CNN as it is right now, and you’re like, “Well, do I really need to develop my political organizing to stop it from getting even worse?” I would say it is worth it. It is worth it.
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Shore up support for local and independent media, as with Future Film Coalition’s civic media cohorts, which “brings leaders across documentary film, journalism, public media, arts and culture, philanthropy, education, and civic life together to develop practical funding, governance, and policy strategies for public-interest storytelling”:
And via NiemanLab, one of many great models states have been building to do just that:
4. Read beyond soundbites: Media scholar Victor Pickard’s essay on fighting media oligarchy drills into the big picture:
While Chris Yogerst offers a granular historical critique of David Ellison and ParaPros:
Harry Warner was never happy with politicians and other Hollywood leaders’ approval; he needed to make sure the carpenters and grips understood that Warner considered them with every decision he made. Warner looked to defend his company to shareholders, not explain shareholder feelings to the rest of Warner Bros… Movie bosses from Paramount founder Adolph Zukor to Warner Bros. co-founder Harry Warner were courting and jousting with Washington their entire careers, but the story was always in defense of movies.
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Use creative visuals. This week, More Perfect Union Foundation began erecting these billboards in California and New York.
A group calling itself Neighbors for Strong Communities took a more explicit approach earlier this month, flying a banner reading “Ellison Is Trump’s B!tch!” over the Paramount lot.
And in April, media advocacy group Free Press (not Bari Weiss’s rag) drove trucks with concerning headlines and flew a less risque banner around the studio.
The mobile billboards feature headlines about political pressure, spiked stories and pro-Trump propaganda at CBS, alongside images of billionaire Larry Ellison and Donald Trump over the text: “What you support when you support Paramount/CBS.” The plane banner displays text: “Don’t spend $ on ads at ‘see b.s.’ news,” referencing a joke told by comedian Nikki Glaser while hosting the Golden Globes in January.
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Watch this space (It’s Not You, It’s Media, and Hope for Film) for ongoing Block the Merger updates, and how you can plug in to these efforts. And if you enjoyed this essay or learned something from it, I invite you to subscribe to my newsletter for:
