NPI asks Bob Ferguson to consider filing suit to block bad AT&T/Time Warner merger

Editor’s Note: The fol­low­ing is the text of a let­ter sent to Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son ask­ing his office to take a stand for media diver­si­ty and Inter­net free­dom by fil­ing suit to block the merg­er of AT&T and Time Warner.

Dear Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ferguson:

The North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute is very sup­port­ive of your endeav­or to pre­serve a free and open Inter­net for the peo­ple of Washington.

Thank you for join­ing with oth­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic Attor­neys Gen­er­al to bat­tle Trump and Ajit Pai’s push to repeal the FCC’s 2015 Open Inter­net order. The North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute stands with you in the fight for net neutrality.

We are writ­ing to you about a relat­ed mat­ter: the pro­posed acqui­si­tion of Time Warn­er by AT&T. As we are sure you are aware, the Depart­ment of Jus­tice is suing to block this merg­er, but seem­ing­ly only because Don­ald Trump despis­es CNN and the Depart­ment of Jus­tice is try­ing to get on Trump’s good side.

We can­not count on the oth­er Washington.

At NPI, we have been doing our part over the years to raise aware­ness about the prob­lems caused by unchecked media con­sol­i­da­tion. When big media con­glom­er­ates get even big­ger, they become con­tent clear­ing­hous­es that slant the pro­gram­ming to meet their objec­tives, instead of pro­vid­ing broad per­spec­tives for peo­ple to con­sid­er. Diver­si­ty falls by the way­side, and con­stituen­cies with­in our coun­try go unrep­re­sent­ed in the press. This is dan­ger­ous, and the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton need you to take a stand to ensure the prob­lem does­n’t get worse.

Unchecked con­sol­i­da­tion has already led to few­er jobs in jour­nal­ism, small­er news­rooms, and reduced cov­er­age of civic mat­ters. Non­prof­its like NPI and star­tups like Geek­Wire have tried to mit­i­gate this destruc­tive trend by pro­vid­ing online pub­li­ca­tions that offer report­ing and analy­sis to the public.

We depend on a free and open Inter­net to reach audi­ences. If the Inter­net does not remain free, the con­se­quences of con­sol­i­da­tion will grow even more severe.

It is impos­si­ble to assess the AT&T/Time Warn­er merg­er with­out tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion the impact that the FCC’s pro­posed net neu­tral­i­ty roll­back would have. AT&T is the third-largest broad­band provider in the Unit­ed States, with 15.7 mil­lion sub­scribers. And they own DirecTV, by far the largest satel­lite tele­vi­sion provider, with over twen­ty mil­lion subscribers.

If the Trump admin­is­tra­tion is suc­cess­ful in ram­ming through its net neu­tral­i­ty repeal, but is unsuc­cess­ful in block­ing the AT&T/Time Warn­er merg­er, it would cre­ate a night­mare sce­nario for Americans.

There would be noth­ing to stop AT&T from plac­ing stream­ing con­tent it con­trols – prop­er­ties which would include HBO, the sport­ing events broad­cast on Turn­er Sports, like the NBA, the NCAA Men’s Bas­ket­ball Tour­na­ment, the Major League Base­ball Play­offs, plus the entire Warn­er Broth­ers film cat­a­logue – in a fast lane, or from slow­ing down deliv­ery of con­tent they don’t own to their subscribers.

AT&T’s CEO Ran­dall Stephen­son has claimed that they wouldn’t do such a thing because they know it would anger their sub­scribers. But, in effect, he’s just say­ing, “Trust us.” That is a leap of faith that Amer­i­cans should not take.

Big media is already too big. It can’t be allowed to get any bigger.

We request that you con­sid­er fil­ing a sep­a­rate suit to block the pro­posed merg­er between AT&T and Time Warn­er. Doing so would send a pow­er­ful mes­sage that is con­sis­tent with your sup­port for net neu­tral­i­ty. It will also send a clear sig­nal that there are rea­sons to oppose this merg­er that have noth­ing to do with which media out­lets Don­ald Trump has been using as a punch­ing bag on Twitter.

Thank you.