Elizabeth Warren's Merger Warning Starts With CNN

Sen. Elizabeth Warren wants the fight over Paramount Skydance's merger read as more than an antitrust problem. In a warning Variety reports she issued on Saturday morning, the Massachusetts Democrat said President Donald Trump's recent barring of CNN from the White House is a sign of things to come if Paramount Skydance settles with the states and is allowed to merge with Warner Bros. — Variety reports the press restriction itself as recent fact, and Warren's claim about what it foretells is hers alone. She was one of several Democrats who had already taken an interest in the deal before the CNN episode, and she's not the first to weigh in on the settlement question recently. Merger battles are usually argued in the language of prices, choice and market power. Warren's version is about precedent: what a network's exclusion from the White House says about the ground a merged company would stand on. Her warning doesn't establish that a press ban predicts corporate behaviour, and a settlement with the states is a different fight from press access. It does suggest she wants the political context counted as part of the case.