Jane Fonda Leads First Amendment Rally To Warn Of Paramount-WB Merger

Jane Fonda brought her Committee for the First Amendment to Washington, D.C. on Friday for a pre-No Kings Day rally that focused on Donald Trump’s attacks on the media and the pending merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery.

Held on a street just near the Kennedy Center, the event’s purpose was to “defend free expression and political intimidation, institutional capture, and censorship across the arts, culture and media.” Joining her were actors and performers including Joan Baez, Billy Porter, Maggie Rogers, Rupi Kaur, Sam Waterston, Griffin Dunne, Crys Matthews and Kristy Lee, as well as journalists Jim Acosta and Joy Reid, and writers Ann Patchett and Bess Kalb.

Watch the full rally below.

Fonda has been outspoken about the impact of recent media consolidation, not just Paramount-WBD but the FCC’s recent greenlight to the Nexstar-Tegna combination, creating a broadcast giant of almost 270 TV stations.

“Since Trump has taken over the approval of media mergers, we risk having major jewels in the crown of independent journalism and nuanced entertainment being gutted,” Fonda told the crowd. “I am referring to Warner Bros Studios, CNN and HBO. God, it hurts me to say those names that may still not be what they were.”

She characterized attacks on artists, writers and journalists as being “page one in the authoritarian playbook.”

She added, “The general public may think this all doesn’t affect them, but it does if we don’t fight back. The news will be increasingly fake. We won’t be allowed to know what’s really happening. Our children’s academic curricula will actually be censored. Ticket costs for cultural events will go up, while the quality will go down. Books and films will be shallower, lacking complexity.”

Paramount CEO David Ellison has defended the merger. He has said that CNN’s independence “needs to be maintained,” while he has argued that the merger of the two studios will boost film output. The transaction is being reviewed by the Justice Department, but it’s also being scrutinized by California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

Fonda relaunched the Committee for the First Amendment last year, a nod to the late-1940s group of artists formed to protest the emerging blacklist era. At Friday’s event, Waterston, Porter and Dunne read from one of the key moments from that time, when Paul Robeson testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Fonda was a weekly presence in Washington in the fall and early winter of 2019, when she led climate protests on Capitol Hill and was arrested five times. This being D.C., it was not only March cold and rainy, but the sounds of another, unrelated protest outside the Saudi Arabia embassy could be heard as Fonda spoke from a makeshift stage. She heard the sounds, and realized that it was an alternate event, not a counter-demonstration. “It’s a separate protest. We like protests,” she said.

Fonda’s event featured multiple references to Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center board which, late last year, added the president’s name to the arts complex. The board recently approved Trump’s plan to shutter the facility for two years in July, in what the president has said is needed for renovations. But the center has seen an exodus of artists following the name change, while ticket sales have been lagging, according to analyses in the Washington Post and the New York Times.

“I considered turning in my Kennedy Center Honor, but that would be admitting defeat,” Baez told the crowd. “It would mean we have given in to a bully, who is doing his best to strip us of our freedoms, to strip us of our joy.”

She and Rogers performed “The Times They Are A Changin’” and “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around,” while Lee led a finale of “Free Love.”

Lee was among the artists who backed out of planned Kennedy Center performances earlier this year. Ric Grenell, who was president of the center until earlier this month, dismissed the artist cancellations following the name change for Trump. “Boycotting the Arts to show you support the arts is a form of derangement syndrome,” Grenell wrote at the time.

Lee, though, has said that adding Trump’s name was an effort to impose “political branding” on the arts institution. At the event on Friday, she said, “There’s a lot of things happening right now that we all know just ain’t right, and it’s got a lot of people disconnected from each other.”

“I’m not going to lie. I was looking forward to the opportunity,” she said. “But playing at that center after what happened would have cost me my integrity, and that’s worth more than a paycheck.”