President Donald Trump's disdain for CNN is no secret. Now, reports suggest the Justice Department may be pushing CNN's owner Time Warner to sell the network as a condition of a corporate merger. The acquisition may pose legitimate antitrust concerns, but Trump's behavior raises the specter of political retaliation, which in turn increases the need for transparency in the antitrust decision-making process.
AT&T's proposed purchase of Time Warner would place the telecommunications company in control of a portion of the entertainment it delivers, following in the footsteps of Comcast's acquisition of NBC. The Federal Communications Commission allowed the proposal to move forward without lengthy review. Makan Delrahim, the head of the Justice Department's antitrust division, stated before taking office that the merger likely fell within the law.
But Delrahim appears to have changed his mind. The Financial Times and the New York Times each report multiple versions of a tense meeting between representatives of AT&T and the Justice Department. By some accounts, government lawyers informed AT&T that it would need to divest CNN's parent company, Turner Broadcasting, or AT&T's satellite broadcaster DirecTV. "It's all about CNN," one anonymous source told the Financial Times.
Yet it's hard to forget Mr. Trump's harsh words for CNN or the opposition to the merger he voiced on the campaign trail, declaring: "Deals like this destroy democracy." In July, the New York Times reported that "White House advisers have discussed [the merger as] a potential point of leverage" over CNN.
Trump said on Sunday that he "didn't make [the] decision" to request CNN's sale, pointing to Delrahim instead. But it is an unavoidable fact that the president's behavior has cast a cloud of doubt over the work of these honorable civil servants.
The Senate subcommittee on antitrust, competition policy and consumer rights should exercise its oversight responsibility and convene a hearing on the matter. If the White House exerted improper influence over the Justice Department in the interest of punishing a political enemy, the public has a right to know. If suspicions are unfounded, then a hearing will work to dispel them.
Commentary on 11/15/2017