State AGs settle $111 billion Paramount-Warner merger suit for concessions watchdogs call 'meaningless bullshit'

…(cont) Former FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya and antitrust legal expert Lee Hepner went through the settlement's fine print for The Lever and found the part that did not make the press release: the loopholes, and the promises that read like commitments while functioning like nothing. Common Dreams had already flagged the shape of the deal days earlier — "a settlement that promises less than nothing" — and one critic's phrase for the concessions, meaningless bullshit, became a headline in its own right.

The Wall Street Journal reported the outline in advance: a series of potential concessions, including that same $1.5 billion figure, discussed over the weekend between Bonta and Paramount executives. A lawsuit meant to stop one media conglomerate from swallowing another ended, instead, with the state attorneys general helping negotiate the terms of the swallowing.

CBS News, which reported the settlement to its own viewers the day it was announced, is itself a Paramount property. The network covering the deal and the company completing it share a parent company. That is not an accusation. It is the masthead.

All together now, once more — the settlement was announced as the resolution of antitrust lawsuits brought by a dozen states and a writers' union. What it resolved was the lawsuit. What it left standing was the merger, the $111 billion, and the family now positioned to control what used to be two separate media companies. Bedoya and Hepner already read the settlement clause by clause. The loopholes did not need decoding. They needed only a byline.