'BradCast' 6/26/2026 (Encore: DOJ Greenlights Paramount-Warner Deal; Guest: John Bergmayer of Public Knowledge)

Today's broadcast was originally recorded on June 16, 26. There was a thumb on the scale for the president's version of events that I felt was a level of political influence that I had never seen in 37 years at CBS News. And if you think what's going on at CBS is bad, just wait until you see what they do at CNN. Well, I don't know why I came here tonight. That's why. I got the feeling there's something right. Oh, it is not. I'm so scared in case I'll fall off my chair. And I'm wondering how I'll get down the stairs. Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am. From Pacifica Radio and Los Angeles, this is the broadcast as heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in LA, and on dozens of other fine affiliate stations on both the public airwaves and the internets around the country and the world, blanketing planet Earth. I'm Brad Friedman. Your friendly investigative blogger, journalist, troublemaker, muckraker, and... All around, swell fellow says me from bradblog.com. Thank you very much for joining us today. All right, we have to start Desi Doyen with a correction. Oh, dear. Correction. Okay. We like to put them up front when we can. This, to a comment that I made on yesterday's show as best described by Dan in Minnetonka, Minnesota, who wrote into Bradcast at Bradblog.com to essentially let me know that I horribly screwed up. Brad writes, Dan, it really pains me to correct your Monday broadcast. You're usually so admirably well-researched and accurate. Thank you, Dan. You reported that the Vegas Golden Knights won the Stanley Cup in the NHL. Actually, the Carolina Hurricanes won the Stanley Cup by beating the Golden Knights three to nothing in game six over the weekend. It's only because I'm a devoted hockey fan. That prompted me to report this. Sorry about that, says Dan in Minnesota. Well, don't be sorry, Dan. I am grateful. And actually, not really sure how I screwed that up. I'm a hockey fan, too, although I haven't been following it this year. And I didn't have it written down when I mentioned it yesterday. Had in my head, I think, that the final game was played in Vegas. But in fact, the Vegas Golden Knights lost in Vegas in game six to the hurricanes losing the series.

Four games to two. And that is the last time I will casually cover NHL hockey when my... Off the top of your head. Well, when my St. Louis Blues aren't in the Stanley Cup finals. So my apologies to the Hurricanes and to Dan and to the good people of North Carolina. Let's see what else I can screw up today, shall we? But listen, if you think that my misleading information on that show yesterday was bad, my wrong information, at least it was an accident, quickly corrected. What about the corporate news media that is being purposely corrupted as a favor to the failed president in the White House? Well, on Friday, it was announced that DOJ was approving the mega merger between Paramount Skydance owned by Donald Trump's buddy David Ellison and Warner Brothers Discovery, which owns, yes, CNN. That despite lawsuits against the merger, reported objections from career professionals inside of the DOJ, and the fact that Ellison has apparently promised to do to CNN what it has done to CBS News since his Skydance company purchased Paramount, namely break it, ruin it, make it more friendly to the administration and its false facts. So can this be stopped? What are the concerns if it is not? And oh, what about the purchase announced on Monday by the Murdoch family's Fox? that they are purchasing the Roku streaming system and making their way into about 100 million households in the bargain. For insight on all of that, we will be joined by John Bergmeier, the legal director at Public Knowledge, the D.C. government watchdog, which fights to defend consumer rights in the emerging digital culture. He will be with us momentarily. Also, does he doyen? You got a green news for us today? I sure do. Well, let's see if we have time for that. We better. We'll see. Before all of that, voters on Tuesday took to the polls in a number of states around the country for primary elections, primary election runoffs and even some special elections. Trump's great power to affect election results, at least in GOP primaries, with his endorsement. That will be tested again in races. And runoffs in Georgia, Alabama, Oklahoma, although in some cases his endorsed candidates are running against self-funded billionaires who are also working to protect themselves as the Trumpiest in the race. So we will see if, I guess, if money beats a Trump endorsement.

this week. And the progressive and more centrist swings of the Democratic Party, they are also duking it out in a couple of contests in D.C. for mayor, for instance. And here in California, to fill the seat recently vacant U.S. House seat. recently vacated by the disgraced Democrat Eric Swalwell. We will, of course, have any noteworthy reported results on our next thrilling broadcast as available with races in places like California and D.C., however, which take their time in counting to allow late arriving mail ballots cast by Election Day to arrive and to be counted. And with the possibility that the D.C. mayoral race could go to a ranked choice voting so-called instant runoff, which they now use in D.C., I believe for the first time. Well, with all that in mind, we may not have callable races results in some of those races on our next show. Allowing time, of course, for Donald Trump and Republicans to pretend. That races are being stolen from them unless, of course, they are Republican contests that might take several weeks to count. Those are fine. In those cases, there's nothing to see there, of course. Well, it's pretty simple. In all cases, Republicans believe that only the elections that Republicans win are legit, and any elections that they don't win are totally illegitimate. Apparently that is now the case. Speaking of both delayed results and GOP election conspiracy theorists in one fell swoop after more than a week of counting and waiting for late arriving vote-by-mail ballots, which apparently Republicans are just fine with because this was a Republican primary. Well, it is now official or at least has been called by the media election denier Jim Marchant. appears to have won the Republican primary for Secretary of State in Nevada. Edging out the other GOP challengers in Nevada. where their Vegas hockey team did not win the Stanley Cup this year. Marchant will run against Democrat Francisco Aguilar, the current Nevada Secretary of State. Aguilar defeated Marchant previously back in 2022 in a relatively close election in a state which now runs all vote-by-mail elections, though voters may still vote in person if they prefer on... 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems across the state. In 2020, as a Trump-organized group of fake electors signed documents to send to Congress from Nevada, Marchant was standing right next to them in support. In 2022, he told audiences that, quote, the people of Nevada have not elected anybody since 2006. They've been installed.

by the deep state cabal. In recent news interview, Marchant claimed that he had never really lost his last run for Secretary of State in 22. He said, quote, so I went on to run in the general election against Aguilar and won early voting and election day, 20,000 points of votes, he said, ahead. And then the next eight days, they were able to manufacture enough votes for him to win. He told that to News for Reno in May. So the votes that were available by Election Day, the early voting, and so people who voted before the election in person and voted on Election Day, I guess those count. But all the ballots that came in afterwards, they don't count. They were simply manufactured. for the Democrat to win. Now, I'm pretty sure that Nevada has a Republican governor at this point. How that happened, I can't explain to you if that's the Democrat system out there. But the journalist interviewing him asking for evidence for his claim, Marchant's response was, quote, why don't you ask Tulsi Gabbard? She's got all of our evidence, he said, so does President Trump. Of course, Tulsi Gabbard, Trump's Director of National Intelligence, which has nothing to do with domestic elections. She was recently fired by Donald Trump, and in any event, neither her nor Trump have offered any evidence to support Marchant's claims. And for that matter, neither has Marchant, apparently. But he will now be the Republican nominee, it seems, for Secretary of State in Nevada, the chief election official there. Once again, this November, a presidential swing state, by the way, that moved from support of Joe Biden in 2020 when I guess it was illegitimate to supporting Donald Trump in 2024 when I guess Marchant didn't complain about that. Though, if you believe him, Democrats and the state's Democratic Secretary of State just two years ago installed Donald Trump as the winner for some reason in 2024. There seems to be a mix-up in his logic here. That's a nice way to put it. Now, I have a question, though. Yes. So whoever wins the Secretary of State in the general, the Secretary of State seat in the general election in November, that person will be in place for the 28 presidential election in a critical swing state. Correct. Got it. Speaking of this week's GOP Georgia primary runoff also includes some election deniers. Election denier Vernon Jay Jones is in a two-man runoff contest for the Republican nomination to become Georgia's. Another critical battleground state's next chief election official as Secretary of State. And.

Another Jay Jones is running in Georgia and an actual fake elector he is from 2020. That would be Lieutenant Governor Bert Jay Jones. He's vying in the runoff on Tuesday this week to become the Republican nominee for governor this year in the Peach State with the endorsement of both Donald Trump and Brian Kemp. The current termed-out governor and potential 2028 GOP presidential contestant. Brian Kemp opposed Trump's attempt to steal that election back in 2020, but apparently he supports one of the fake electors who is now running for his job as governor. President Donald Trump's attorney. For the 2020 campaign in Wisconsin and two former aides all pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to felony forgery charges for their roles in the fake elector scheme from 2020 designed to overturn Trump's loss in the swing state of Wisconsin. A lot of fake elector news, a lot of 2020 news for some reason all tied up in this year's elections. Jim Truppus, a former judge. who was Trump's Wisconsin campaign attorney, Mike Roman, Trump's director of Election Day operations in 2020, and Ken Chesbrough, some call him cheese bro. The cheese. He stands alone, but not today. He had two other folks arraigned at the same time along with him. He is the former legal advisor. He was the main architect of the fake electors strategy. They all entered pleas of not guilty against state charges in Dane County, Wisconsin Circuit Court on Tuesday. The Wisconsin fake electors case is moving forward, even as others in the battleground states of Michigan and Georgia have faltered. Special prosecutor Jack Smith last year after Trump won the presidency for a second time, was forced to drop a federal case, alleging that Trump had conspired to steal the 2020 election, which he obviously did. And there's another case having to do with the fake electors in Nevada. That is still alive. The fake elector scheme reports AP under which Republican electors in battleground states submitted phony documentation to Congress attesting that Trump had won their states, even though he had lost to Joe Biden. That originated in Wisconsin with Chesbro and friends. Troopers, Chesbro, and Roman argued that they committed no crime. They were just trying to keep their options alive in case a court had ruled that Trump had actually won the state. Remember, there was all of those lawsuits, about 60 of them, that Trump had lost pretty much every single one of them. Well, just in case one of them decided that Trump really did win Wisconsin.

they would have these elector certificates ready to go. That was apparently the argument, and apparently that's what they told the fake electors, in fact. Prosecutors alleged that the three defendants defrauded. The 10 Wisconsin Republican electors who cast their ballots for Trump in 2020 in this scheme, they contend that the three lied to those electors about how the certificate that they signed would be used. as part of a plan to submit paperwork to then Vice President Mike Pence falsely claiming at the time that Trump had won the Battleground State that year, that it actually had nothing to do with the court ruling that never came. In fact, that's just what they told the electors, according to prosecutors. Hey, this is just in case. But in fact, it wasn't just in case. They actually tried to get these to Mike Pence so that he would rule in Donald Trump's favor on January 6th. A majority of the electors, and by the way, Chesbrough was at the January 6th event. He was listening to Alex Jay Jones. He was walking around with them, taking photos, et cetera, et cetera. Visiting the scene of the crime, as it were. Correct. Yes. He was also charged, if I recall, down in the Georgia. conspiracy case against Donald Trump. In any effect, a majority of the electors up in Wisconsin told investigators that they did not believe that their signatures on the elector's certificates would be submitted to Congress without a court ruling, according to the complaint. Also, a majority said they did not consent to having their signatures presented as if Trump had won without that court ruling. The arraignment on Tuesday came two years and two weeks after the first charges were brought against the three by Wisconsin Democratic Attorney General, Josh Kohl. Troopis, Chesbro, and Roman now each face 11 felony forgery charges, which are each punishable up to six years in prison and a $10,000 fine. up in Wisconsin. So 10 of those felony charges, I think, were for each of the electors that they convinced to sign this document under false pretenses. Troopus and Roman both filed motions seeking to relocate the trial, this is fun, from Dane County, which includes Madison, to neighboring Jefferson County saying that negative publicity in Dane County had tainted the potential jury pool.

So negative publicity in Manhattan, in Madison, but not next door in Jefferson County. As it turns out, however, Trump carried Jefferson County by 15 percentage points back in 2020. Aha, there you go. But he lost Dane County by how much? Nearly 53 points back in 2020. So yeah, you see why they actually, actually want the trial moved next door to this more right-wing county in Wisconsin. Troopus and Roman. Also argued that one of the 11 felony counts, just one of those counts, should be dropped because Trump issued a pardon for any federal crimes related to their work on the fake elector scheme. And they argue that the state cannot prosecute them over the casting of electoral votes because they say that is a federal process. And therefore, Trump's pardon applies. We will see if the judge buys that argument, I suppose even if he does, there are still 10 felony counts against each of them for which they could serve six years in prison each, along with a $10,000 fine. But we will see Trump also pardoned Chesbrough specifically, but again. only for any federal crimes which do not apply in the state of Wisconsin in charges like this. The judge said on Tuesday he would set a schedule to hear arguments on those particular motions. The state charges against the Trump attorneys and aid are the only ones in Wisconsin now. None of the electors have been charged. The 10 Wisconsin electors. Chesbro and Troopus all settled a lawsuit, a civil suit that was brought against them by Democrats seeking damages. But the criminal case goes forward and these Trump buddies are pleading not guilty. Six years after... What they did, what they were alleged to have done to try to steal the 2020 election was carried out. Yeah, the wheels of justice grind really slow or something like that. That's all right. They are still grinding and I will take it. And I'm glad to be able to tell you about it because before long... Who knows who will be able to tell you about any of these things as all of the major broadcast news outlets seem to be getting scooped up together in one single company owned by a good pal of Donald Trump. We will talk about that, the merger between...

was then subsequently fired about two weeks ago after demanding explanations from Bari Weiss as to why she had fired his colleagues. Bari Weiss reportedly refused to give him any explanation. Pelly offered a detailed interview to the New York Times about all of this and revealed that he had been told to use false or unproven remarks in one of his 60 Minutes reports on the killing by ICE officials of Renee Good up in Minnesota following Bari Weiss's takeover of CBS News following the Paramount Skydance merger. There was a thumb on the scale. for the president's version of events that i felt was a level of political influence that i had never seen in 37 years at cbs news we were being told to write a version of events that conflicted with the video account i couldn't understand that we had already done in my view the important work of journalism to balance the story finally. The story was not out of balance. It was not out of balance. But there was a thumb on the scale to push the balance a little further in another direction. My impression at the time was that she was putting a thumb on the scale on behalf of the administration.

looking out for the views of the president. We're reporting those views. There's nothing wrong with reporting those views, but it was never enough. Always needed more from the president, from the administration, that sort of thing. All of that, just some of the fallout from Skydance's $8 billion purchase of Paramount approved by the Trump administration after that $16 million payoff to Trump by Paramount to end his dumb lawsuit. Next, Ellison and his newly renamed Paramount Skydance set their eye on the purchase of Warner Brothers Discovery and all of its huge portfolio of major film studios, TV studios, streaming news, lifestyle, sports properties, which happened to include CNN, another news outlet that Donald Trump hates because they tend to report on actual facts instead of Trump's alternate reality. Netflix had attempted to purchase Warner Brothers Discovery themselves but was ultimately outbid in a bidding war, which Paramount Skydance won with its $11 billion bid. And word from the administration that they would likely approve that purchase versus an attempted purchase by Netflix, whose owners apparently have not been quite as friendly, have not given quite as much money, I guess, to Donald Trump. Late last week, on Friday, Donald Trump's corrupted Department of Justice approved the Paramount deal to purchase Warner Brothers, despite a number of active lawsuits hoping to block the merger due to, among other things, federal antitrust laws, threats by dozens of state attorneys general to file suit and despite pushback from career officials at the DOJ who reportedly wanted DOJ to sue to block that merger rather than approve it. A merger that would otherwise allow the company to become the biggest and most powerful entertainment company by far in the U.S. And those who are concerned about freedom of the press are doubly concerned about reports that Bari Weiss, who broke CBS News and 60 Minutes, will also now be placed in charge of the legendary CNN under Ellison's control with plans to do to it what she has already done to CBS. On Saturday, public knowledge, a good government group, a nonprofit that focuses on telecommunications and media and internet and consumer rights, issued a press release decrying the formal approval of that deal by Trump's DOJ. If the deal closes, they warn consumers will face higher prices and fewer choices in streaming film and news media.

John Bergmeier, legal director at public knowledge, is cited in the statement, noting, quote, the Justice Department just closed its investigation into the largest media merger in a generation. It waved it through with no conditions. It did not merely find that the merger would cause no harm, but it claims it will somehow increase competition while benefiting consumers and workers. The facts, he says, just don't bear this out. Further, he noted putting CBS News and CNN under a single owner with demonstrated ties to the administration. They cover threatens the independence of the press at the moment we need it most. Joining us now is John Bergmeier from public knowledge in D.C. to discuss all of this and a bit more, another merger that was announced this week. We'll get to that in a moment. Welcome back to the broadcast, John Bergmeier. Thanks for having me, Brad. And yeah, that's an absolutely exhausting litany of corrupt acts one after the other leading up to this. It really is. And, you know, I tried to sort of summarize it, but it is really one thing after another. You know, last time we spoke with you a few months ago. was after it appeared that Trump's corrupted FCC chair, Brendan Carr, was sort of unilaterally changing the rules for local broadcast station ownership to allow this $6 billion mega merger at the time between Next Star and Tegna, further consolidating ownership of local TV stations and the trusted local news operations that they run. Well, this $11 billion. Paramount Warner merger kind of makes that one look like peanuts peanuts by way of comparison. So did I explain the basic building blocks there of where we now seem to be correctly or did I screw anything up or miss anything critical in our story up till now at least? I think the only thing is like even after we sent out that press release on Fridays, some reporting Wall Street Journal indicated that this was done without the knowledge of the career DOJ staff who were actually doing the investigations who had questions about, you know, continued commitment to theaters and other things that they were saying. You know, they were still in active review of this deal. Maybe they would have extracted some conditions or like kept it going. It probably was going to go through given the disposition of the administration. But instead of that, just top. DOJ political officials, very likely the White House, they just, you know, over their heads, just boop. It's really, it's over, you know. And that's, so we sort of expected this would go through obviously because, uh, the, the administration already projected that they wanted, uh, Paramount Skydance to, to, to,

to buy Warner rather than Netflix, but there could have been conditions. Is that how this would normally happen in a huge merger like this? If we're not going to block it entirely under antitrust laws, at least put some conditions in place? Yeah, exactly. That's the standard practice with the DOJ. They basically tell the companies like, look, we're going to sue to challenge you and stop this unless you agree to the following. And, you know, there's some procedures to bring that about. But it's fairly common. And very often the conditions, they're not even anything that the company is really truly object to. I mean, half the time it's just saying you agree to do the thing that you said you do. So like what's the harm there? But yeah, even that didn't happen this time. So they could have, for example, and I don't know that the Trump administration ever would or really any administration, but they could put conditions on and like say, okay, you've got CBS over there. It's sort of a competitor with CNN. You need to keep those shops separate or sell off one or the other or something like that. Yeah, exactly. And in fact, the kinds of conditions here, because this is a merger, it's what they would call a horizontal merger. I mean, the two companies are in broadly similar businesses. There are some overlap as opposed to like buying a supplier or a studio buying, you know, a creator or something like that. Yeah, they'd have to split off or have some sort of condition. But yeah, there is nothing at the sort. So what is your greatest concern, John Bergmeier, and that of public knowledge regarding the decision to approve? that deal without any conditions. Obviously, that's a concern. But what are the big concerns that you guys have about such a big mega merger company here? Yeah, I think some of them are just having to do with the free press. I mean, this is a series of events that, like, no matter what kind of freedom you subscribe to, if you believe in free markets, the free press or the rule of law, it sort of violates all of them. I would say I'm primarily concerned personally, and I think it does matter a lot of democracy, just the corruption of the coverage of the administration by a major news network that is basically in thrall to him that... So I think that's the top one. The second would just be consumer prices when you have streaming services that previously competed with each other now under one roof. And I think a third one is just the effect on creativity and the creative industry. A lot of the writers and creators in Hollywood really were opposed to this merger and the Netflix one, for that matter, because they thrive when they have buyers of their scripts and outlets for shows, and that goes away too. So we're looking at higher prices for news coverage that is just overly deferential to the administration on top of that, on the entertainment side, that gets worse too.

as a Star Trek fan, I truly hate that my beloved franchise is under the control of the Ellisons here. Yeah, I get you on that. Now, in normal times, John, with an uncorrupted, unweaponized Department of Justice who actually enforced antitrust laws, would this merger? I mean, this is a huge merger, really. I mean, with just, you know, dozens of studios and companies sort of all bring broad under the same roof. In normal times, would this have gotten the green light from DOJ? I don't think so. I mean, I think this one's just like a flat antitrust violation. It's a horizontal merger. It's a concentrated military. There's so many harms. I mean, sometimes there's mergers that I oppose them, but you can come up with a theory. It's like, oh, they need to merge because they need to like keep up with big tech or something. That's when you hear a lot. It's like, you know, that's often the theory. But I don't even see how that works here. This looks purely just like empire building. It looks like an attempt to control major news outlets to sort of like shape the public narrative in ways that are favorable to the billionaire class. Yeah, I just don't see how, as the DOJ says, how this is a merger that somehow enhances competition and sort of gets us to a better place. I mean, I just don't even see the, I don't even see the theory, much less whether I agree with it. Yeah, I mean, they're just saying it increases competition. It benefits consumers with no actual evidence to support that. As noted, there were reports that career DOJ officials. Such that there are still any left there that haven't already been purged by the administration, that some of them were against the approval. Do you have any sense or any insight information of what it was that they were concerned about here? I did hear that they were asking actually a lot of questions about theaters. I mean, I don't think it was even like the DOJ staff were going to pose some huge obstacle that would be insurmountable. I think they had minor questions on technical details. They wanted certain claims to be substantiated. They didn't want to rubber stamp something that didn't make a lot of sense. And even those, I think, in the scheme of things... were relatively minor concerns, even those were ignored, you know, much less like the bigger picture. So now that the DOJ has officially approved this merger, does that make it official? Is it now closed or are there still ways that it can be stopped before it actually closes and actually becomes official? Well, we've heard some pretty heavy signals from a co-state attorneys general, like California, that they would like to bring a case to challenge this. So that still might happen, just as it's happened in the Next Star Tegna case that you brought earlier about the broadcast merger. That is currently being challenged by a number of parties, including public knowledge, incidentally. So I would expect that there's going to be more lawsuits, including I'm very much hoping for a coalition that's...

states to step up because we've really been dependent on the great work of the state attorneys general to, you know, to enforce law when the DOJ, it's not just ignoring the law. It's sort of like actively hostile to the rule of law. And honestly, when you mentioned a lot of the career DOJ officials who are attorneys who have left. A lot of them, where are they working? Now they're in the states and they're trying to carry on their mission in a venue that supports them. Now, would that have to be filed? before the merger, before it officially closes or could it be filed at any time? No, yeah. Not really. I mean, in fact, this is what happened before. Sometimes the companies try to like make it irrevocable, but really the law is the law. And if you're a company and you merge and a court later finds that it violates the law, they can make you unmerge. Of course, it can be logistically challenging. But no, that's not like a big obstacle. It's just like a logistical problem if you win. I'm old enough to remember. just barely, but I'm old enough to remember when the DOJ actually enforced, or forced, I should say, the breakup of monopoly controlled industries like the breakup of AT&T back in the 1980s. So if the deal actually closes here, it would still be possible, right, for a future administration to come in and sort of force the breakup of the company, finding that it violates antitrust law, break it into pieces that better served consumers. the way that AT&T was forced to divest its local phone companies. You remember the so-called baby bells? Now, of course, they went back and bought them all back up. But in that landmark 1984 consent decree, we actually saw that. Is that something that we could see in a future administration coming back and having a review at this purchase even a couple of years down the line? Yeah, it's certainly possible. And another course is just if the states get to court soon enough and they get a preliminary injunction, the companies might still technically emerge, but they'd be ordered to sort of keep the operations separate during the litigation so that it just becomes easier depending on the outcome. That would be good. The corporate news and entertainment industry obviously was already kind of. incredibly consolidated in recent decades into really just a handful of major corporations controlling much of what is available to read and watch and listen to in the corporate media. Even before this new round of mega mergers, how much of what we are seeing now with these companies sort of all being bought up at once? How much of it has to do with changes in the media market? Due to the advent of streaming, et cetera, versus the sort of opportunistic moves by these, you know, industry power brokers who sort of see an opportunity to pretty much get away with anything that they want under the Trump administration, at least, you know, as long as they pony up enough money and make him promises to, you know, undermine his political enemies. How much is really based on...

you know, the economics of where we are versus the opportunism of where we are. Yeah, I kind of think it's both. I mean, the media industry has been in turmoil for a long time, you know, the cable industry, the multi-channel industry, like satellite and cable, you know, that's, they're losing subscribers year after year. People are shifting to streaming. Streaming platforms are launched. A lot of them don't do so well. They fail. They merge. So it's just been a time of like a lot of this like great disruption and change, which isn't bad in and of itself, you know, new technology, new business models come about and things have to shift around. But then I think. With that, the Trump administration comes along and you have this new class of openly quite right-wing, even authoritarian-leaning tech billionaires who have been mad at the press for years for sort of covering them, which they just think is a travesty. And they would like to. uh, you know, use the, the, the moment to sort of seize control of the, uh, you know, of major media outlets. And they've been doing it. And it's, uh, it's, uh, it's quite alarming. Uh, and it's just one more thing that's been happening recently, you know, just going back to the law, the phony lawsuit of the Trump administration against CBS. I mean, that was replicated against any number of companies that quote unquote settle and by, by paying like millions of dollars. And just like with the, uh, you know, the, the, January 6 fund, like you see how there's possibility of like using like phony court settlements effectively as bribes in various ways. And I think that's what's been, I think that's sort of like that started this ball rolling with CBS and has this gotten worse ever since. Well, speaking of which also this week, before we even got to make sense. Of the Friday DOJ approval of Paramount Warner, that merger, news broke on Monday that the Rupert Murdoch family-owned Fox is buying the home streaming company Roku. It's a $22 billion deal reportedly that will allow Fox to reach 100 million households merging Fox's live news and sports portfolio with Roku's TV platform. It will make Fox the third largest U.S. TV player in a deal expected to close in the first half of 2027. Okay. So John Bergamire, what concern should we have about this newly announced deal? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple. One of them, you know, Roku is a very big in the, what they call like the set-top box marketplace, these little devices that you attach your TV. Plus, it's like the built-in operating system of a bunch of TVs, and a Fox owns that. It seems pretty obvious that they would have every incentive to prioritize their own programming and their own content over that of others. But on top of that, I'm just not sure that a lot of people are aware of.

Everything that Roku currently does and a lot of these video device makers do. Like Roku just sort of like monitors what you watch. Like you know how Shazam or something works for audio or it just like listens and it can tell you what the song is. They have that for TV and it just sort of like monitors the content you're watching even if it's from like a third party service and it just sends it upstream to build a dad, a dossier on you about what you watch and presumably to target ads. And I would have to point out, If you have a Roku TV, this is happening even if you're using an alternate input of your TV. Like if you're attaching a different device or even a Blu-ray player, like they actually monitor the content that comes in just... over your HTML connection to send that upstream too. I mean, there's so many ways in which TVs, if you don't set them upright and you don't know what to disable and you don't know, okay, I shouldn't attach this to the internet, they are just spying on you. And the idea that, and I'm already not a big fan of that, but the idea of that falling into the hands of Fox, you know, frightens me just a little bit more. I hear you, because I got a Roku TV in my bedroom, so now that means Rupert Murdo. is going to be in my bedroom. Really? Yes. Any chance, you know, you mentioned all of these lawsuits. Donald Trump actually has a... I don't remember how many pretend billions of dollars it is against Rupert Murdoch against the Murdoch family, I guess, and Wall Street Journal because they didn't like the way that Wall Street Journal reported on the Epstein files. Is there any chance that the Trump, DOJ, would actually want to stop this merger between Fox and Roku? And could they, if they wanted to? Could they? They could certainly get in the way of it if they wanted to. Would they want to do it for that reason? You know, maybe. Like, I'm aware of that lawsuit, but, you know, I'm not sure if that means that the Trump administration is like full all out at war with Fox and the way it is with, for example, ABC in Disney right now where they're trying to revoke station licenses. They want to declare that the view television program no longer counts as news. You know, so I think. And, you know, I have been actually heartened by the fact that Disney and ABC are fighting back against the Trump administration and they're not rolling over. And I honestly think that the administration is politically weaker than it has been before. We have elections coming up. You know, so maybe companies will start to sort of put their finger in the wind and maybe start to fight back instead of just... capitulating in advance as so many prefer to do because, you know, I think most executives, they just want the problem of the Trump administration to sort of like go away. But it's not going to go away and they can't be appeased. And I think the only thing that has worked so far has been fighting back. Well, I do wonder if we should watch out for a settlement coming soon in that particular lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and the Murdox because, you know, they may now need the approval of this 22.

billion dollar Roku deal. John, before I let you go, anything that we, the people can do about any of this? Are we just sort of stuck, you know, watching all of this play out as our already, you know, less than perfect corporate news media becomes even more corrupted by the day here? Yeah, I mean, with matters before the FCC, there's always room for public comment. There isn't really here. So I think it's really just you have to engage in the political process, talk to your member of Congress, and, you know, make sure that electeds understand that people are paying attention to this and that these media consolidation issues really do matter. Once again, it comes back to elections and voting. Go figure. John Bergmeier, legal director at Public Knowledge, you can follow their important work right now, more important than ever, frankly, at public knowledge.org. You can follow them on the blue skies at Public Knowledge. And John, I suspect we'll be talking to you guys soon. Thank you, sir. Okay, have a good day. Thank you and you. Bye. All right, and I'll tell you one more thing before we get to your Green News Report, as I'm thinking about this. And I know I've spoken about this in various ways in recent days and months and even years, which is the notion of supporting. independent media outlets. And I say this, of course, because it's self-serving. After all, we do take donations at bradblog.com slash donate. That's how we stay on the public airwaves. But my suggestion is forget about Brad. Well, Bradblog and Bradcast are fine, but pick an independent outlet that can't. like us, cannot be affected by these mergers, cannot be strong-armed by the administration. Because at some point, we are all that is going to be left. if we continue down this road that we appear to be on. So make sure that whatever your favorite media outlet is, whoever it is you rely on, I know that I actually donate to some of them myself, some media outlets that I lean heavily on, support them. Pick one. and help them stay in business, help them stay, you know, independent so they can continue to inform you even as all of these corporate outlets are just taken down one by one by one.

Yes, because the only way we get out of all of this autocratic proto-fascist mess is through elections and voting and voters need accurate, honest information. Right. And that's harder and harder to come by, as you can see. Just look at what is happening here. So pick a media outlet, have it be your, you know, adopt a media outlet, support them, an independent outlet that cannot be twisted and manipulated. by these people. That's all I'll say. Quick break. And speaking of never manipulated by those people, Desi Doyle will join us for our latest Green News report. I'm Brad Friedman and this is the Bradcast. You're listening to The Bradcast. We are 100% listener supported thanks to listeners like you who stopped by Bradblog.com slash donate. You're listening to an encore presentation of the Bradcast. Oh, yes. The Siren Song. with Desi Toyin and our latest Green News Report. We've been in this situation before where there's a deal that may be imminent, but then it falls apart. Trump administration announces preliminary framework for negotiations with Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz. Winter heat wave in Antarctica, alarm scientists. Plus, why and what are we hiding and why are we erasing history. Court orders Trump administration to restore historic exhibits on climate change, slavery, and more in our national parks. All of those stories and more straight ahead from bradblog.com. I'm Brad Friedman. And I'm Desi Doyen. Stand by for six minutes of independent green news, politics, analysis, and... snarky comment. So it turns out orange is the new green. Trump is going to end up going down as the president has done more for renewable energy than any president in history. Screwing up in reverse. That's my president. This is your green news report. I'm going to soak up.

Okay, Desi Doreen, I guess the one thing we can all agree on is that Donald Trump has saved the world, has been great for the economy, and I can't wait to see what he's going to do next. Everything's fine, right? Well, we'll see. What? Global oil prices fell and stock markets have surged after Donald Trump announced the U.S. had reached a memorandum of understanding with Iranian leaders. See? A framework for continued negotiations that reportedly includes halting military actions for 60 days and reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, where a fifth of the world's oil and gas and a third of its fertilizer have been trapped. Few confirmed details as we go to air. expert Juan Cole summarized it as, quote, simply in agreement to stop fighting while further negotiations continue. Breakthrough. Oil industry experts say that whenever the strait reopens, it will take weeks for slow-moving oil tankers to cross the oceans, months to restart production of oil, gas, and fertilizer, and years to repair extensive damage to Gulf oil facilities. And unlike before the war, Iran now fully controls the strait, warns Robert Pape of the University of Chicago on MS Now. The world has changed, and it's not going back. And the world is where Iran has leverage for as far as the eye can see to shut down Hormuz whenever they want. A major question going forward is how will the world respond? The oil supply shock from Trump's Iran war underscored the national security risks of fossil fuel dependence. Time will tell whether nations and consumers continue. their recent surge to electric vehicles, renewable energy, and batteries. They kind of do have short memories, don't they? Yes, they do. In science, down at the South Pole, a winter heat wave in Antarctica is alarming scientists. This month, temperatures in the Antarctic climbed above 60 degrees Fahrenheit in winter, shattering the previous winter heat record. The scientists reported snow falling as rain, melting glaciers in the years. usually frozen region. It doesn't get to 60 degrees Fahrenheit here in Los Angeles in the winter, much less down in Antarctica. Here in the U.S., we just saw the second hottest spring since record keeping began in the late 1880s, thanks to an historic record-shattering extreme heat wave in late March that contributed to record-low snowpack in the western U.S., in turn, raising fears of water shortages this summer. In Arizona, Colorado, Texas, and New Mexico, it was the hottest spring on record. That's all according to Noah. The Lake Jerome Powell and Lake Mead reservoirs, which serve 40 million people and agriculture across six states, are now at less than 30% of capacity. Not good. But Hawaii, meanwhile, saw its wettest spring on record with more than double its average spring precipitation. Well, that makes up for it then. In U.S. territorial waters, Donald Trump has reopened more than...

half a million square miles of marine national monuments in the Pacific Ocean to industrial commercial fishing operations. Environmental groups say they will sue to stop the action. Trump has now eliminated commercial fishing bans in all five national marine monuments. You would think you would get tired of all that losing in court. But no. Speaking of, some better news. A federal judge on Friday ruled that the Trump administration must restore facts and history about climate change, slavery, and indigenous history to U.S. National Park Service sites by July 4th, the nation's 250th anniversary. The judge excoriated the administration for removing accurate information, saying it, quote, sets a dangerous precedent of censorship and sanitization. different judge called the removals an attempt to, quote, rewrite the nation's history with a white out pen. The administration says it will appeal the ruling. For much more on all of those stories and the ones we couldn't get to today, check out our website at greennews.com. Find, follow, and share us planetwide on the social media, especially blue sky at Green News Report. I'm Brad Friedman. And I'm Desi Joyan. And this has been your Green News Report.

Well, I can read the sign that it's time for us to get out. Got to go. Well done, Desiree, our producer. My thanks to our guest today, John Bergmeier of Public Knowledge, and to all of you for spending a portion of your day or night with us. If you missed any portion of today's program, download it for free any time at the newly redesigned brand blog.com. While you're there, please consider hitting one of those donate buttons to help us stay. on your public airwaves as long as you can stand it and as long as we can drop me email i'm bradcast at bradblog dot com and you'll find me on social medias at the brad blog see you there until we see you here hopefully tomorrow with election results i'm brad friedman good luck world