{"id":17780,"date":"2026-07-20T13:29:06","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T13:29:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/17780\/"},"modified":"2026-07-20T13:29:06","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T13:29:06","slug":"poland-paramount-warner-bros-discovery-merger-may-put-editorial-independence-of-tvn24-at-risk-rsf-warns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/17780\/","title":{"rendered":"Poland: Paramount\u2013Warner Bros. Discovery merger may put editorial independence of TVN24 at risk, RSF warns"},"content":{"rendered":"

On 22 July, the European Commission is\u00a0expected to decide<\/a> about the Paramount-Warner Bros. transaction following Paramount\u2019s offer of undisclosed structural remedies. The deal, worth 110 billion US dollars, would make Paramount the new parent company of Poland\u2019s most trusted news channel,\u00a0TVN24.\u00a0<\/p>\n

RSF has already drawn attention to Paramount owner David Ellison’s\u00a0record of editorial interference<\/a> at US broadcaster\u00a0CBS News and\u00a0warned of the risks<\/a> the merger poses to the news ecosystem in the US and worldwide. There is no indication\u00a0TVN24 would be treated differently once under the same ownership.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In December 2024, the Polish government decided to list\u00a0TVN group as a strategic asset protected against acquisitions deemed hostile or harmful to national interests. The sale or takeover of any entity on this list requires government approval should the government decide to invoke this right, which has not happened to date.<\/p>\n

In addition, the merger would place\u00a0TVN24 under the control of a US media conglomerate whose shareholder base includes sovereign wealth funds from Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia, countries that have consistently ranked near the bottom of the RSF\u00a0World Press Freedom Index<\/a> for many years. Poland, on the other hand, ranks 27th out of 180 countries and territories in the 2026 edition. Though Paramount said that they would not carry governance rights \u2014 they stated they would remain \u201cpassive shareholders\u201d \u2014 the risk of editorial interference, which includes indirect pressure on journalists or their self-censorship, remains.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0TVN24 case illustrates that this large-scale operation is more than a competition problem. As much as ownership transparency is important, it does not provide sufficient guarantees that editorial independence will be preserved. For this reason, RSF calls on the European Commission and the European Board for Media Services to:<\/p>\n

Explicitly assess the merger’s impact on\u00a0TVN24\u2019s editorial independence, and on media pluralism in Poland, pursuant to Article 23 of the EMFA, before any decision is finalised, recognising the negative effects it could have beyond competition and distribution;
\nRequire binding, enforceable guarantees for\u00a0TVN24\u2019s editorial independence as a condition of approval.<\/p>\n

This call is consistent with the coalition\u00a0letter<\/a> RSF supported in June, alongside more than two dozen organisations, addressed to European Commission Executive Vice-President Teresa Ribera and the European Board for Media Services (EBMS), calling on them to reject the merger over its risks to media pluralism, competition and Europe’s creative industries.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On 22 July, the European Commission is\u00a0expected to decide about the Paramount-Warner Bros. transaction following Paramount\u2019s offer of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17781,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9],"class_list":["post-17780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-poland","tag-poland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}