from the quid-pro-quo,-but-shit-all-around dept
When final we checked it with the feckless execs at CBS/Paramount, they have been getting ready to pay Donald Trump tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars} to settle a very bogus lawsuit designed to bully the media large into compliance. CBS desperately desires the Trump administration to log out on their pointless $8 billion merger with Skydance. Trump desperately desires CBS to cease doing any actual journalism and kiss his ass.
They’ll each possible get their want, ultimately. However within the interim there’s been an attention-grabbing wrinkle.
In late Could, the California Senate opened an inquiry into whether or not this settlement would technically violate state bribery legal guidelines. One listening to on the matter examined “whether or not the corporate breached fiduciary duties owed by Paramount board members to shareholders, misused company funds susceptible to shareholder by-product litigation, or violated federal anti-bribery legal guidelines and California’s Unfair Competitors Regulation.”
That inquiry was apparently sufficient to at the very least quickly give CBS executives chilly toes, insiders advised the New York Submit. The fitting wing outlet can’t be bothered to say that the lawsuit is completely baseless, or that California’s inquiry is instantly liable for a pause in proceedings (that may make California sound good). However it’s clear that the specter of doable accountability has CBS legal professionals apprehensive:
“A possible $35 million settlement of President Trump’s lawsuit in opposition to Paramount’s CBS affiliate has been delayed after the corporate’s administration continued to worry a possible authorized backlash, The Submit has discovered.”
The Trump administration initially demanded $50 million to settle its baseless lawsuit and approve the Skydance merger. They’ve been negotiating over how pathetic CBS is prepared to be since final fall. At one level CBS was even contemplating working a sequence of free Trump administration advertorials to get within the authoritarian administration’s good graces.
If CBS executives had spine, they’d cancel the merger and inform the Trump administration to go fuck itself. They’d have loads of authorized and well-liked assist.
However billionaire majority proprietor Shari Redstone, at present battling thyroid most cancers, is poised to make $2 billion off the deal and is eager to move to the exits. Of us at CBS with any precise rules have already been leaving the corporate. Media moguls’ demand for consolidation beneath Trump 2.0 has been relentless because the administration destroys no matter’s left of U.S. media consolidation limits.
It’s unclear if this California inquiry really has enamel, and I’d suspect this grotesquely corrupt trade will get consummated finally. Skydance execs poised to take possession of CBS seem like even greater Trump ass kissers than the outgoing CBS execs. The top outcome will, somehow, be an organization even-more afraid of doing any actual journalism crucial of our more and more unpopular mad king.
Filed Beneath: bribery, california, consolidation, donald trump, journalism, media, mergers, shari redstone
Firms: cbs, paramount
