The FCC has announced it’s waiving its rules limiting foreign equity ownership to 25 percent in the Paramount-Warner Bros. case and will allow three sovereign wealth funds run by the governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi to own 49.5 percent of the company.
During Brendan Carr’s tenure, the FCC has repeatedly threatened ABC, tried to block stations from airing interviews with Democrats, censored late-night TV hosts, and tried to bully journalists. However, it seems to have no qualms with repressive foreign governments owning a significant stake in a giant American media conglomerate.
In its ruling, the FCC defended the decision, saying that, because the stocks being purchased did not have voting rights, they “will not be able to wield any influence, let alone control, over decisions involving the Licensees.”
Of course, many, including the advocacy group Free Press and a number of Democrats, are not buying that. According to Variety, Free Press noted its opposition, saying that “control over for-profit, commercial domestic news media by any government is an extraordinary situation that would surely strike most Americans as unseemly, precisely because of the utility of the news media as a propaganda tool for those governments.”
Anna Gomez, the FCC’s lone Democratic commissioner, posted on X, “The FCC just let some of the most repressive governments in the world indirectly control nearly all of a combined Paramount-Warner Bros. An investment this large in one of America’s biggest media companies doesn’t just buy equity, it secures influence over what gets said and made.“