Respected Supreme Court Litigator: Sinclair Merger Fails Pair of Key Tests, Should Be Rejected
To View Video of the Event, Click Here
WASHINGTON, D.C. – This morning at a media event concerning partisanship in the news business and the proposed Sinclair-Tribune merger, respected Supreme Court litigator and consumer advocate Deepak Gupta made a compelling legal argument against the merger, noting the proposed deal violates current law and fails to meet the FCC’s public interest mandate:
“In order to approve this merger, the FCC must determine whether the transaction complies with specific provisions of the law and the FCC’s own rules. It must also perform a balancing test — weighing potential public interest harms against potential benefits. Simply put, this merger fails on both counts.
“First, it violates several FCC rules governing the transfer of licenses: It would create a nationwide behemoth, violating the FCC’s national ownership cap. And it would significantly reduce viewpoint diversity in local markets, violating the FCC’s local duopoly rule.
“Second, the merger fails the public interest balancing test: it would rob Americans of a real choice between televised sources of news and information, imposing a significant public interest harm that cannot be outweighed by any public interest benefit.”
His remarks were made at an event hosted by POLITICO and sponsored by Allied Progress titled, “The Media and Polarization: Golden Age or End of an Era? ” In addition to Gupta’s remarks, the event featured a pair of panel discussions on partisanship in the business of news and the proposed Sinclair-Tribune merger.
Participants in the discussion concerning the Sinclair-Tribune merger included, Rep. David Price (D-NC); David Goodfriend, President of Goodfriend Group; Patrick Hedger, Manager of Regulatory Action Center at FreedomWorks; and Chris Lewis, Vice President at Public Knowledge. The panel was moderated by POLITICO editor-at-large Peter Canellos.
Rep. Price, who has authored legislation to protect local television markets across the country from consolidation, echoed Gupta’s concerns about the merger stating:
“But I do think the net result is a media that is more and more concentrated, that is less and less oriented to local coverage, that is less keyed to those core values of competition and diversity and localism… when it looks like we’re going from 39 to 72 percent permissible penetration, we need to ask what’s that about, why should that be permitted? Particularly when it’s a devious and misleading kind of tactic that the FCC is – I mean, that matters.”
David Goodfriend spoke about the threat Sinclair poses to price increases, stating:
“Since when did somebody come to Washington and say ‘approve my merger, cause I’m gonna raise prices.’ But that is exactly what Sinclair is doing, they are saying ‘we wanna put all these stations together, drive up our leverage, charge more in retransmission consent fees – which means all of us, because just about every household in America has a cable subscription.”
The FCC has officially stopped the clock on its 180-day review of the merger between Sinclair Broadcast Group and Tribune Media, though Chairman Ajit Pai’s effort to take down the regulatory barriers in Sinclair’s way continues unabated. Yesterday, the FCC voted to “eliminate a rule that required broadcast station groups to maintain a physical presence in the community of their primary local coverage area.” If the Sinclair-Tribune merger goes through, Sinclair would reach 72 percent of U.S. households.
Additional panelists for the event’s other panel discussion on partisanship in the business of news included Rick Edmonds, Media Business Analyst at Poynter Institute; Amy Mitchell, Director of Journalism Research at Pew Research Center; Neil Patel, Co-founder and Publisher of the Daily Caller, and Amanda Terkel, Washington Bureau Chief at HuffPost.
To view video of Gupta’s remarks and the panel discussions, click here.
To speak with Karl Frisch about the Sinclair-Tribune merger, please contact Annette McDermott at 202-697-4804 or annette@alliedprogress.org.
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