The mega-merger of advertising giants Omnicom and Interpublic will face more regulatory scrutiny than you think – and a key sticking point is woke capitalism, On The Money has learned.
Donald Trump isn’t even in the White House yet, but left-wingers in corporate America are already freaking out – and justifiably so. Paramount, for example, needs approval for a merger with the Hollywood studio Skydance, but as I reported for The Post earlier this week, its left-leaning network CBS may be in violation of the Federal Communications Commission’s fairness provisions.
That, I am told, is according to Brendan Carr, the incoming top cop at the FCC, who will enforce a mandate on how local TV stations operate over public airwaves (as opposed to cable). Carr believes how CBS covered the 2024 presidential election was further proof of its lack of “fairness” – as in providing both sides in any political debate, my sources tell me.
Likewise, ad agencies like Omnicom and Interpublic could face similar heat when they seek approval for their $25 billion merger when the Trump regulators take over next year. One key issue is the agencies’ reliance on so-called news rating services that rank outlets on whether they peddle allegedly inappropriate content such as misinformation.
These ratings, critics claim, are based less on real misinformation and more on left-wing groupthink. Ad dollars then skew significantly to left-leaning news sites and networks, which brings us to the antitrust angle (which I’ll get into) that could impact the Omnicom-Interpublic deal, my DC sources say.
Many of the news organizations deemed safe by these services were outlets that labeled as misinformation The Post’s very true Hunter Biden laptop story. Plus, it’s no secret that Madison Avenue is notoriously woke.
That’s why conservative activists say ad agencies and corporate ad departments seek political and regulatory cover to avoid news sites outside the progressive ecosystem of the New York Times, Washington Post and CBS. They will pay rating services from outfits like NewsGuard to justify their defunding of the conservative media, critics allege.
Specifically, the Trump antitrust department, Federal Trade Commission, and FCC will likely vet the Omnicom-Interpublic tie-up and demand answers about the agencies’ use of the rating services, I am told. Antitrust lawyers say a case can be made if you can prove that there is some deal by the raters to skew their grades to appease lefties in the ad business.
“There has been case law that if you essentially engage in a group boycott that could violate antitrust laws,” said one DC-based antitrust attorney with ties to the incoming Trump administration. “All these ad rating companies appear to rate conservative news sites lower, and the ad agencies are known to employ people who are left who would love to direct their business away from the conservative media.”
Congress has held hearings on the ratings business and is likely to do so again, I am told. Some are already predicting that the Trump people will block the Omnicom-Interpublic deal because of these woke ad issues. Chris Ruddy, the founder of conservative site Newsmax, who has a table at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, told On The Money: “I can tell you this deal will not go through if these companies rely on these rating services.”
People at the ratings companies say all they’re doing is providing a service to protect corporate clients who don’t want to be associated with fake news, or want to direct ad dollars away from bot farms on social media. And to be fair, I haven’t seen any direct evidence to show that there are undisclosed deals to penalize right-leaning news organizations.
In a statement, NewsGuard told me its ratings are “based on nine apolitical journalistic criteria using a transparent process with multiple layers of review and fact-checking. As a result of this nonpartisan and rigorous approach, there are more conservative sites with overall ‘credible’ ratings in NewsGuard’s database than liberal sites.”
NewsGuard added that “Many conservative sites outscore similar left-leaning brands — for example, FoxNews.com outscores MSNBC.com, The Daily Caller outscores The Daily Kos, The Washington Examiner outscores The New York Times, and The National Review outscores Mother Jones. The Heritage Foundation and the CATO Institute.”
Gordon Crovitz, the CEO of NewsGuard, told me in an interview that any grade over 60 is on the company’s “inclusion list” for advertisers and others who use the service. “Fox News and the NY Post benefit from our ratings,” he added.
But On The Money has reviewed the rankings and found some bizarre results. The New York Post, for example, has received rates 69.5 out of 100 from NewsGuard, which dinged The Post for “attention-grabbing headlines and gossip,” and for advancing “inaccurate and misleading claims about politics.”
Newsmax received a 20 out of 100 even though its website mostly runs wire copy from Reuters and AP, people there tell me. The Federalist, well respected in right-leaning political circles, notched a 12.5. Fox News received a 69.5 rating because it “generally maintains basic standards of credibility and transparency – with significant exceptions.”
Conversely, The New York Times – which for years delivered a steady dose of fake Trump-Russian collusion news, received a perfect score 100 out of 100. That is, until last February, when its rating was lowered to a still-strong 87.5. The Washington Post, which is literally bleeding readers because of its lefty bias and credibility problems, also got a perfect 100 score.
Al Jazeera English, which receives funding from the government of Qatar and has been credibly accused of anti-Israeli bias in its war against Hamas, received 82.5 because it “mostly adheres to basic standards of credibility and transparency.”
So stay tuned.
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