The Morning Risk Report: Paramount Has Discussed Creating a Board to Ensure CNN's Independence — WSJ

By Max FillionGood morning. Paramount in recent months has discussed creating an editorial board for CNN and other safeguards to ease concerns over its news operation's independence, according to people familiar with the situation.Paramount, which owns CBS News, has agreed to buy CNN parent Warner Bros. Discovery for $81 billion. The internal discussions about establishing an oversight committee for news have come up as the company has planned for the deal's closing, the people said.Antitrust suit: The deal is now on hold as an antitrust lawsuit filed by California and 11 other states winds its way through the federal court system; a trial is scheduled for March. The plaintiffs allege that combining Warner and Paramount would give one company too much power over theatrical movie distribution and cable television. Timing: Paramount's discussions about creating an editorial board for CNN began before the lawsuit was filed, said one of the people familiar with the talks. "We always remain open to internal improvements to journalistic integrity," the company said in a statement. Editorial impact concerns: Concerns about the company's owner swaying news coverage have been brewing since Paramount agreed last year to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit by President Trump over the editing of a "60 Minutes" interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris as its merger with David Ellison's Skydance Media awaited regulatory approval. Some CBS correspondents have alleged political interference since Ellison, now Paramount's CEO, named Free Press founder Bari Weiss as CBS News editor in chief last fall. CBS has said there isn't political interference at the network. ComplianceEli Lilly sues sellers of black market weight-loss drugs.Eli Lilly has filed six new lawsuits against U.S. entities that it alleges are selling a version of the company's investigational weight-loss drug on the black market.The pharmaceutical conglomerate is claiming the entities sell retatrutide, a GLP-1 drug that is still in trials and not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration.The black-market companies call themselves "medical spas" and "wellness clinics," and they offer the unapproved products as a weight-loss hack, Lilly said. The entities also claim the drugs are for research-use only, when they are actually intended for human consumption, the company said.British lawmakers call on U.K. banks to take on crypto firms.British lawmakers are calling on U.K. banks to more readily provide services to cryptocurrency firms, arguing their refusal remains one of the biggest impediments to the growth of digital assets in the country, reports Risk Journal's Yusuf Khan. (free link)"Access to banking services could be one of the single biggest barriers to growth for U.K. crypto and digital asset businesses, and could potentially undermine the success of the U.K.'s forthcoming crypto regime," Gurinder Singh Josan, a Labour member of parliament, and Lord Ed Vaizey, a former conservative minister, wrote to the chief executives of major U.K. banks on Tuesday.The two chair the All Parliamentary Party Group on Crypto and Digital Assets, a cross-party parliamentary group that looks to shape regulations in the digital assets sector.FlightAware abruptly withdrew its lawsuit against predictions market operator Kalshi over the use of its flight tracking data to offer bets on flight cancellations, Risk Journal reports. (free link) Egan-Jones Ratings, the credit-ratings firm accused by former employees of grade inflation, won't be able to add asset-backed securities to its ratings portfolio after the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday rejected its application to do so. Risk Journal reports: A former Bank of America relationship manager was sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to helping a transnational criminal group launder more than $8 million in proceeds from a healthcare fraud scheme. (free link) Risk Journal reports: Sens. Jon Husted and Mark Warner introduced four bills aimed at bolstering U.S. oversight of China's artificial intelligence development, tightening enforcement of export controls and closing loopholes that foreign adversaries, including China, can exploit. (free link) A former director at the Southern Poverty Law Center was arrested for allegedly overseeing secret payments to informants from white supremacist groups, federal authorities said Wednesday. The Federal Reserve's reported inflation rate for July.RiskTrump says Hormuz is under U.S. control. Few ships are listening.President Trump said Wednesday that the U.S. has total control of the Strait of Hormuz. The reality on the water tells a different story.Ship-tracking data shows that just 14 vessels on Tuesday crossed a waterway that routinely handled more than 130 a day before the war. Eleven of those ships took the route administered by Iran. Traffic was slow throughout July, with an average of 26 crossings a day, and in June, with 33 a day, as renewed Iranian attacks on ships cut short a deal to open the strait.How Trump's Ruse to Evade an Iranian Threat Unfolded on the Tarmac in Turkey Why AT&T is betting big on open-weight AI.Corporate America's AI playbook is changing as more businesses substitute proprietary AI models in favor of open alternatives to save on costs. AT&T's effort to remake its business for the AI era shows just how far that shift has come.Such open models currently power about 25% of the telecommunications company's overall AI usage, including helping manage its network, said AT&T Chief Data and AI Officer Andy Markus, "and we believe we can get way higher than that."The Mexican government is pushing the U.S. to lower tariffs on North American automobiles as part of conversations over reworking the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, according to people familiar with the matter. U.S. Army troops faced off against Ukrainian drone operators at a military exercise in Germany earlier this year. It didn't go well for the Americans. The exercise, coupled with U.S. casualties in Iran, shows American vulnerabilities to drones -- years after the U.S. made uncrewed systems an essential part of warfare. Two media organizations on Wednesday sued President Trump over his namesake company's real-time feed of top Truth Social accounts, arguing that selling preferential access to the president's statements is unconstitutional. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is running into a problem: Many of his customers can't afford to buy his company's coveted AI-powering chips. That explains why Huang teamed up with an array of Wall Street firms on a $500 billion plan that will theoretically standardize chip financing, creating asset-backed pools of capital for AI companies -- while leaving Nvidia partly on the hook if things go wrong. State insurance commissioners have been meeting privately with insurers to hear their views on risk in private credit, which now makes up as much as a quarter of total insurer holdings. Bank of America said it plans to inject $250 billion into an infrastructure push that aims to boost U.S. investments in data centers, energy and critical minerals, the latest big bank to roll out flashy initiatives to enhance national competitiveness. Mohamed Al Fayed was a rags-to-riches story. He was also, according to claims made after his death, one of the most notorious sex offenders in modern business history. Hundreds of women are trying to get compensation, which has set off a fight between the current owners of Harrods and the late tycoon's family estate over who should foot the bill. Wealth management has a $3 trillion problem: investors are keeping too much cash. The race to build artificial-intelligence infrastructure is fueling demand for new warehouses. Warehouse developer and operator Link Logistics said 15% of new leasing so far this year is tied to the data-center buildout, up sharply from a year earlier. Cracker Barrel's CEO Julie Masino was plotting a turnaround -- but opened the door to her own exit. It was supposed to be the hottest hotel opening of the year. Less than a week after its debut, the hotel was at the center of a viral controversy. What Else MattersMilwaukee County Executive David Crowley narrowly won the Democratic nomination for governor in Wisconsin, upsetting Democratic socialist Francesca Hong and delivering a significant blow to the party's insurgent far-left flank. Federal aviation officials are planning to move air-traffic control antennas and implement new procedures to avoid a repeat of last week's safety incident with Marine One near a busy Washington, D.C., airport. A group led by Bob Iger and Joshua Kushner have agreed to buy a controlling interest in the Los Angeles Lakers from Mark Walter, the billionaire who also owns the Los Angeles Dodgers and whose financial empire is the subject of a federal probe. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, one of President Trump's closest advisers, is stepping down at the end of the month. Millions of people are estimated to have flocked to northern Spain this week to see the total solar eclipse -- the first visible in mainland Iberian skies since 1912 -- after it swept down from the Arctic and over the Atlantic Ocean before sunset. About Us Follow us on LinkedIn. Send tips to our reporters Max Fillion at [email protected], Clara Hudson at [email protected], Yusuf Khan at [email protected] and Richard Vanderford at [email protected] can also reach us by replying to any newsletter, or by emailing our editors Perry Cleveland-Peck at [email protected] and David Smagalla at [email protected] this email with a friend. ForwardForwarded this email by a friend? Sign Up Here