In a filing with the Federal Communications Commission, Standard General said the NewsGuild has failed to find evidence to corroborate its claims the company plans to eliminate newsroom jobs if it acquires station owner Tegna and the regulator should approve the deal.
Tegna agreed to be acquired by Standard General in an $8.6 billion deal in February that would be partially financed by Apollo Global Management, with Apollo’s Cox Media Group getting three stations, reducing the final size of the Tegna-Standard General combination.
Objections to the deal came from NewsGuild, part of the Communications Workers of America, cable operators and rival station group Graham Holdings.
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Standard General called the nearly eight-month review of the pending deal “exhaustive,” noting that as a result of NewsGuild's requests it has had to produce thousands of pages of confidential documents.
Despite getting all those documents, the NewsGuild “has returned empty-handed from one of the longest fishing expeditions in recent Commission history, still lacking evidence to support its baseless allegations that Standard General (1) misled the Commission in saying it does not intend to reduce station-level staffing; and (2) will conduct ‘massive layoffs of journalists’ and 'slash newsroom payrolls' following its proposed acquisition of Tegna,” Standard General said in its filing.
"None of the documents cited by NewsGuild supports those allegations or suggests any public interest harms that will come from the transaction. It is time to complete this extraordinarily burdensome review process and for the Commission to grant the applications," Standard General said.
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Standard General said that during the review process it has asserted six times on the record that it has “no intention of reducing journalist jobs, or station-level staffing more generally, following the transaction.”
In the filing, Standard General notes that “NewsGuild’s calls for the Commission to reject the transaction do nothing to protect Tegna's existing journalists’ jobs. In fact, the extended review resulting from the petitioners’ repeated requests for documents and delay has created uncertainty for Tegna’s employees as they head into the holiday season.”
It concludes that “NewsGuild may for its own part choose not to believe Standard General’s demonstrated commitment to news and localism, but that places it in the extreme minority in the ample public record of this proceeding, and it is the public’s interest — not NewsGuild’s — on which the Commission must base its decision here.”
"It is time to complete this extraordinarily burdensome review process and for the Commission to grant the applications," the companies said.
The FCC is currently on day 199 of its informal 180-day shot clock on reviewing mergers. ■
