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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

A group of award-winning journalists and documentarians expressed strong opposition to the proposed merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery during a press conference today, citing the threat the deal poses to journalism and American democracy.

Journalists Kara Swisher, Jim Acosta, and Katie Phang along with Emmy-winning documentary filmmakers Laura Poitras and Geeta Gandbhir spoke at the event, hosted by Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), Democracy Defenders Fund, International Documentary Association, Future Film Coalition, and Free Press.

The 2026 News & Documentary Emmy Awards, which begin tonight, celebrate achievements that wouldn’t be possible without press freedom and editorial independence. But, as the speakers discussed, Paramount CEO David Ellison has a track record of throwing those fundamental American principles under the bus to curry favor with the Trump administration, harming the press, the public, and Paramount itself. Case in point, today news broke that Paramount-owned CBS News would not renew the contract of journalist Sharyn Alfonsi, who resisted censorship of her “60 Minutes” story on torture of Venezuelan migrants.

“I think what’s happening right now is pretty dangerous,” said Acosta. “To essentially announce the departure of Sharyn Alfonsi from 60 Minutes is a very in-your-face move by some people who don’t care very much about the First Amendment.” Acosta added, “Folks need to use a little bit of their imagination here to recognize what may be coming down the pike” with a “strange oligarchical empire … attempting to do state media.”

“There’s a feeling that the wall has come down between editorial independence and corporate interests,” said Swisher. “They’re not doing it for economics. The math doesn’t math. You think Elon Musk bought Twitter to make money? These people are rich beyond all possible wealth. You have to really be thinking about what’s the actual game here, and the actual game is influence, and to take corporate interests and align them with editorial.”

Phang added that in a world where the government dictates who owns the media, “editorial independence will be a thing of the past, and what you’ll have is no one capable of being able to hold power to account.”

“Consolidation of media is bad for the public, it’s bad for creators, it’s bad for the public’s right to know,” said Poitras, who also serves on FPF’s board of directors. “The government has always tried to silence and censor the press, and the job of the press and the journalist is to be adversarial to power … the interests of corporations are entirely different [from] what is good for the press,” which, she explained, leads to capitulation by conglomerates faced with government pressure.

Gandbhir highlighted an often-overlooked issue: The proposed merger’s impact on news archives. “Many of us documentary filmmakers depend on access to archives to make our films, and specifically, the CNN archive holds over 4 million assets, spanning 45-plus years of global news, wars, elections, and political events. And, the CBS archive adds to that years of network television programming. And folding these two massive archives, two of the four major U.S. news archives, under the control of one entity, who has shown themselves to be active in editorial suppression, is a grave threat to documentary filmmakers,” she explained.

FPF also released an open letter yesterday signed by over 200 current and former journalists, documentarians, journalism professors, and rights organizations. The letter elaborates on the dangers of allowing the administration to steer media companies to stooges and oligarchs who have shown a willingness to censor the news — and tank news companies — to further their own interests. Notable signers include Sam Donaldson, SE Cupp, and Mehdi Hasan, as well as Acosta, Phang, and Poitras, among many others. FPF plans to continue collecting signatures.

FPF Chief of Advocacy Seth Stern said: “The First Amendment assumes that the government will attempt to silence the press, but the First Amendment also assumes that the press won’t voluntarily agree, won’t go down without a fight.” He added that “news outlets have a constitutional right to report from whichever perspective they see fit, but presidents don’t have a right to abuse their offices to shape those decisions, and executives like Ellison who are willing to let them do so need to stay out of the news business and find some other widget to sell.”

Please contact us if you would like further comment or a copy of the transcript and/or video of the press conference.

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