Justice Department Says Not So Fast to AT&T’s Time Warner Bid
November 9, 2017 by admin
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In one account of the meeting, Justice Department officials called on ATT to sell Turner Broadcasting — the group of cable channels under the Time Warner banner that includes CNN — as a potential requirement for gaining government approval, according to three people from the companies involved, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because of the delicacy of the negotiations.
Or, the people said, ATT could sell off DirecTV, the satellite television provider that it bought two years ago for nearly $49 billion. But ATT and Time Warner executives say privately that such a concession is not realistic, given that DirecTV and its DirecTV Now streaming service would be crucial to a combined ATT-Time Warner.
A different account emerged later: It was Mr. Stephenson who had offered to sell off CNN as part of a strategy to win governmental approval, according to two Justice Department officials who declined to speak publicly about the meeting. The officials also insisted that selling the cable news channel would not be enough to address antitrust concerns.
Mr. Stephenson responded with a public denial. “Until now, we’ve never commented on our discussions with the D.O.J.,” Mr. Stephenson said. “But given D.O.J.’s statement this afternoon, it’s important to set the record straight. Throughout this process, I have never offered to sell CNN and have no intention of doing so.”
The Justice Department said it was committed to carrying out its duties in accordance with the laws and the facts. “Beyond that, the department does not comment on any pending investigation,” it said in a statement.
ATT and Time Warner are poised to fight to keep all their assets intact, believing that the government has no legal grounds for blocking the transaction, according to the company officials.
At stake is a deal that, if completed, would join one of the nation’s biggest wireless internet providers to HBO, CNN, Warner Bros. and DirecTV. Behind it is the desire to create a powerful provider and distributor of content, with ATT able to both produce hits like “Game of Thrones” and distribute them to wireless service customers and DirecTV subscribers.
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The deal is designed to help ATT counter slowing growth in its core wireless, internet and satellite businesses while fending off online video upstarts like Netflix and Hulu.
Because the proposed deal involves two companies that do not compete directly with each other, executives at both ATT and Time Warner believe there is little legal basis to block it.
Mr. Trump, who has long accused CNN of being biased against him, has spoken against the proposed deal — most notably during a speech in the final month of the 2016 presidential campaign, in Gettysburg, Pa.
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After mentioning the “crooked” media, he seemed to oppose ATT’s bid for Time Warner on populist grounds. “As an example of the power structure I’m fighting,” Mr. Trump said, “ATT is buying Time Warner and thus CNN, a deal we will not approve in my administration, because it’s too much concentration of power in the hands of too few.”
In response to news articles speculating that the president had pressured the Justice Department concerning the proposed deal, White House Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah said, “The President did not speak with the Attorney General about this matter, and no White House official was authorized to speak with the Department of Justice on this matter.”
Mr. Delrahim, the assistant attorney general, also denied that Mr. Trump had been involved in the discussions.
“I have never been instructed by the White House on this or any other transaction under review by the antitrust division,” he said.
Critics of the merger have described it as a sign that there is too much consolidation in the media and telecommunications industries. Even lawmakers who have otherwise been critical of Mr. Trump have offered support for the Justice Department’s continued review.
Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said on Twitter that the deal still needed a “thorough” and “exacting” review.
I’ve long opposed ATT/TW merger b/c of its impact on competitorsconsumers—DOJ must continue its thoroughexacting review. https://t.co/ADy7XXMnj9
—
Richard Blumenthal (@SenBlumenthal)
Nov. 8, 2017
The uncertainty has weighed on Time Warner’s stock, as investors have worried that the deal may founder on antitrust grounds. Those fears began to crystallize on Wednesday, when ATT’s chief financial officer, John Stephens, said at an investor conference that the timing of the deal’s closing was in doubt.
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“We are in active discussions with the D.O.J.,” Mr. Stephens said. “I cannot comment on those discussions. But with those discussions, I can now say that the timing of the closing of the deal is now uncertain.”
To win approval of the deal, ATT early on hired lobbyists close to Vice President Mike Pence and others in the Trump administration. ATT was among the top donors to Mr. Trump’s inauguration.
Mr. Stephenson, the ATT chief, has attended at least two meetings with Mr. Trump this year. Shortly after the first one, Mr. Trump lashed out at CNN on Twitter, saying that “their credibility will soon be gone!” After the second meeting, the president complimented Mr. Stephenson, saying he was doing “really a top job.”
Fighting the deal could prove challenging for regulators, antitrust experts said. The Justice Department would have to argue that ATT would have an incentive to withhold Turner channels from rival broadband distributors like Verizon and Comcast. It could also try to demonstrate that ATT would give channels like CNN or TNT preferential treatment over their competitors.
A potential requirement to sell DirecTV is rooted in the idea that ATT would otherwise have too much control over the distribution of content. The company could block competing networks like Starz or ESPN from running on DirecTV’s satellite or streaming services, the argument goes.
A counterargument to that line of thinking is the Obama administration’s approval of Comcast’s acquisition of NBC Universal in 2011. In that case, the Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission attached several conditions to Comcast’s business practices, including promises that Comcast would not withhold content from rival streaming services.
Mr. Trump, however, was also critical of the Comcast-NBC deal in his Gettysburg speech last year.
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In a Texas town overwhelmed with grief, Pence delivers a message of support and faith
November 9, 2017 by admin
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When Codee Baker, a 17-year-old cheerleader, showed up at the Floresville High School football stadium Wednesday evening, she was not spinning or tumbling or cheering.
She was thinking of the people she had lost: Karla Holcombe, a family friend who shared a birthday with her mother and used to watch her when she was little. Dennis and Sara Johnson, her elderly next-door neighbors. Haley Krueger, a shy 16-year-old sophomore she passed daily in her school hallways.
Texas mass shooting: Portraits of the fallen »
“I came here to honor the ones I lost,” Baker said as she entered the stadium with a long line of people clutching Bibles. “It’s just unbelievable that they’re gone.”
Clasping hands and bowing their heads in prayer, thousands of residents of small towns across south-central Texas packed the stadium Wednesday night to honor the 26 people who died Sunday when a gunman burst into the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas, spraying bullets at the congregation.
“Words fail when saints and heroes fall,” Pence said. “We mourn with those who mourn and we grieve with those who grieve, but we do not grieve like those who have no hope. Our faith gives us hope. Heroes give us hope.”
The crowd stood and cheered as a cluster of churchgoers and bystanders who survived the massacre walked onto the football field. Among them was Stephen Willeford, the local plumber who grabbed a rifle and chased the gunman as he exited the church, and Johnnie Langendorff, who joined Willeford in a high-speed chase.
“Thank God there was a neighbor that helped save lives on the tragic day,” Abbott told the crowd to loud cheers. “We will not be overcome with evil. Together we will overcome evil with good.”
Many people who assembled in this small town 13 miles south of the scene of the massacre had a connection to the victims or those left behind. Some were connected through church or community bake sales. Others were classmates or taught children who had lost loved ones.
As Makayla Pew, 7, clambered across the bleachers, her parents, Jeff and Suzanne Pew, talked about their daughter’s classmate, Emily Garcia, who died at University Hospital in San Antonio.
Just a few days before the shooting, when the Pews went with others from the school on a field trip to the San Antonio aquarium, Emily’s mother, Joann Lookingbill Ward, had been the first person there to talk to them. Smiling, she had told them they could get a better deal on Groupon than from the cashiers.
Ward and two of her children died at the church.
“She was a good person,” Suzanne said.
“There’s a girl in my daughter’s class and she’ll never come back,” Jeff Pew said, shaking his head as he looked into the distance. “There’s just a vacant seat.”
Robin Stine, 61, was a longtime neighbor of the Holcombe family, which lost eight members in the shootings. She remembered when a local mother of a special-needs child couldn’t afford a new wheelchair. Bryan Holcombe, an associate pastor at the church, repaired her wheelchair free of charge.
“They were wonderful pillars of the community,” she said, eyes misting. “That man took out three generations of that a family of loving Christian people.”
Trusting in the Lord, and drawing strength from community, were recurring themes of the vigil.
“If the attacker’s desire was to silence their testimony of faith, he failed,” Pence said. “The witness of faith in that small church and that small town now echoes across the world.”
The crowd swayed as a singer with a guitar played “Good Good Father.”
“Oh, and I’ve seen many searching for answers far and wide,” men and women on the bleachers crooned. “But I know we’re all searching for answers only you provide. ‘Cause you know just what we need before we say a word.”
Across this rural area of rolling hills dotted with cow pastures and fields of hay bales, the community has rallied around the families who lost loved ones, offering prayers and hugs, dropping off plates of hot food, and chipping in to feed their horses, dogs, cats and goats.
One businessman from a town 80 miles away has offered to make custom caskets free of charge for each of the victims.
Still, some in the crowd hoped for another kind of action. John Nieto, 71, a veteran and retired teacher who had traveled to the vigil from San Antonio, said he hoped the community — and the country as a whole — could move beyond prayer and take action by passing new gun laws.
“I feel like I’m in a war zone,” he said, rattling off other recent massacres, from Orlando, Fla., to Las Vegas. “There’s too many guns. So many people died, and yet we’re not upset enough to change the laws. It’s madness.”
Jarvie is a special correspondent.
UPDATES:
8:50 p.m.: This story was updated with additional details of the vigil.
This story was originally published at 8:05 p.m.