Art of the Media Deal

   Presidential message to AT&T: Sell CNN to Fox and I'll approve the deal to buy Time Warner. That way I'll get more favorable coverage from CNN.
   Not exactly the way he phrased the message, but that's what it comes down to.
   AT&T wants to buy Time Warner, which owns the CNN cable news network in addition to Time Magazine, the Warner Bros. movie firm in Hollywood, and other stuff for $85.4 billion, and the deal seemed likely to close before the year is out.
   However, the Department of Justice stepped in and challenged the deal and told AT&T it should sell Turner Broadcasting, which owns a bunch of cable TV channels including CNN, in return for government approval. Otherwise, there are antitrust issues to cope with.
   An alternative, according to published reports, would be for AT&T to spin off DirectTV, a very profitable satellite operation.
   So there's the riddle: Sell a profitable content provider or dump a news operation, presumably to another news company more favorable to the president, who has often assailed CNN as a "fake news" operation.
   The public kerfuffle prompted the CEO of AT&T, Randall Stephenson, to comment, "I have never offered to sell CNN and have no intention of doing so."
   As early as a year ago, before the election, candidate Donald Trump, during a speech in Gettysburg, Pa., vowed his administration would not approve such a deal, "because it's too much concentration of power in the hands of too few."
   Our resident cynic Pug Mahoney refrained from commenting on the irony in that statement.