John,
If we don’t stop it now, America’s media landscape could be collapsed under the control of a single corporate mind — one vast entity deciding the majority of what we see, hear, and ultimately think about. A takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery by Netflix would mark a dangerous step toward cultural centralization on a scale we have never seen in this country.
This mega-merger would place enormous power over news, entertainment, and storytelling into the hands of one management structure. Decisions about which voices are amplified, which stories survive, and which perspectives disappear would no longer emerge from a diverse ecosystem of creators and competitors, but from an even smaller handful of corporate hierarchies. The extraordinary diversity that used to define American media would be flattened even further into a narrow, profit-driven pipeline.
Legislators, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, are raising alarms, warning that the merger would crush competition and leave us at the mercy of a few billionaires. Paramount’s bid, funded funded in part by the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, raises even bigger questions of conflicts of interest, political influence, and control over American culture.
Tell the Department of Justice to block the Warner Brothers mega-merger, protect consumers, protect workers, and protect our democracy from a corporate takeover of American media.
This is not a hypothetical risk. HBO Max subscribers have already filed a class-action lawsuit arguing that consolidation will degrade service and reduce choice. MAGA politicians — including Trump himself — have acknowledged the antitrust dangers of concentrating so much media power in one place.
If this merger proceeds, prices will rise, workers will lose their livelihoods, and a single corporation will exert unprecedented control over which stories are told and which ideas circulate in American life.
The Department of Justice is watching closely — and public pressure matters. Regulators can still stop a merger that would hand one corporate empire extraordinary control over American culture, journalism, and imagination, with the power to exert constant pressure to censor content that powerful stakeholders find inconvenient.
Tell the Department of Justice to block this mega-merger and defend the diversity of American culture.
And thank you for protecting consumers, workers, and the marketplace of ideas.
Robert Reich
Inequality Media Civic Action
