By Astrid Galvan, AP Reporter
House Democrats are raising concerns that the proposed merger of Discovery and AT&T's WarnerMedia, a $43 billion effort to conquer the world of streaming, could affect diversity efforts in Hollywood and particularly hurt Latinos, who are already deeply underrepresented.
The Democrats, led by Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas, wrote a letter to the Justice Department on Monday asking it to consider whether the merger will hurt competition and workers and diversity efforts in the entertainment industry.
Castro has long championed diversity in media, which can include everything from Hollywood movies to book publishers to news organizations. Last year, Castro and members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus tasked the government's watchdog agency with investigating Latino representation in media. The Government Accountability Office, which released its findings in September, found Latinos are vastly underrepresented in all aspects of media.
"Part of what's different about our argument is that we also center around the exclusion of many people of color in these companies as employees and often times in terms of content," Castro said.
Castro said Discovery in particular has a poor record of hiring Latinos in front of and behind the camera, concerns he expressed to company representatives during a meeting recently.
"I was clear that if you continue to exclude people from your company, then you don't deserve to merge and it's not in the country's best interest to allow for concentrated exclusion," Castro said.
In May, Discovery announced it was absorbing WarnerMedia from AT&T, combining giants like HBO, CNN and HGTV, along with Oprah Winfrey's network.
Experts have questioned whether this will hurt consumers, who may end up spending more money on streaming services in the long run.
In a news release, Discovery said the Warner acquisition will increase investment and capability in original content and programing and "create more opportunity for under-represented storytellers," although the company hasn't laid out how.
John T. Stankey, president and CEO of AT&T, addressed the concerns about antitrust violations expressed in the letter during a virtual global conference on Monday, according to a transcript of the call.
"Not to say that we won't get the dialogue and have a constructive conversation for people to understand that I think what's been articulated in those letters is really unfounded," Stankey said. "And I believe the context of our discussion with regulators up to this point have centered around those issues, and we feel very good about the data we've put on the table that it's clearly indicated that there's nothing unusual about this transaction."
Darnell Hunt, the dean of Social Sciences at UCLA who has spent years researching diversity in Hollywood, said the merger would be particularly troubling for diversity in executive level positions.
"Bigger is usually not better when it comes to these types of mergers, and there's less competition, there's less opportunity for access, because there are fewer gatekeepers. And that's not a good thing in an industry that's already exclusionary and very insular," Hunt said.
Mergers mean job cuts, leaving an even greater void for people of color to work in high-level positions in the industry, Hunt said.
When Comcast and NBC announced a merger in 2009, Hunt publicly opposed it, and says promises by executives to create more minority-owned networks largely fell flat.
He doubts the Discovery acquisition will result in more diversity.
"I would love to hear their plan for that, if they're thinking about it, but it doesn't sound like they're thinking about it," Hunt said.
Galván reported from Phoenix. She covers issues impacting Latinos in the U.S. for the AP's Race and Ethnicity team.
Carrie Coon Relishes Being Part Of An Ensemble–From “The Gilded Age” To “His Three Daughters”
It can be hard to catch Carrie Coon on her own.
She is far more likely to be found in the thick of an ensemble. That could be on TV, in "The Gilded Age," for which she was just Emmy nominated, or in the upcoming season of "The White Lotus," which she recently shot in Thailand. Or it could be in films, most relevantly, Azazel Jacobs' new drama, "His Three Daughters," in which Coon stars alongside Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen as sisters caring for their dying father.
But on a recent, bright late-summer morning, Coon is sitting on a bench in the bucolic northeast Westchester town of Pound Ridge. A few years back, she and her husband, the playwright Tracy Letts, moved near here with their two young children, drawn by the long rows of stone walls and a particularly good BLT from a nearby cafe that Letts, after biting into, declared must be within 15 miles of where they lived.
In a few days, they would both fly to Los Angeles for the Emmys (Letts was nominated for his performance in "Winning Time" ). But Coon, 43, was then largely enmeshed in the day-to-day life of raising a family, along with their nightly movie viewings, which Letts pulls from his extensive DVD collection. The previous night's choice: "Once Around," with Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfus.
Coon met Letts during her breakthrough performance in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?" on Broadway in 2012. She played the heavy-drinking housewife Honey. It was the first role that Coon read and knew, viscerally, she had to play. Immediately after saying this, Coon sighs.
"It sounds like something some diva would say in a movie from the '50s," Coon says. "I just walked around in my apartment in my slip and I had pearls and a little brandy. I made a grocery list and I just did... Read More