Twenty-First Century Fox “would never be interested” in buying CNN, Fox executive chair Lachlan Murdoch said on Wednesday at the Business Insider IGNITION Conference in New York.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit to block AT&T’s planned $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner, the parent of CNN, over antitrust concerns about the merged company owning too much content and distribution.
Before the suit, Department of Justice staff had recommended that AT&T sell either its DirecTV unit or Time Warner’s Turner Broadcasting unit – which includes CNN, to gain antitrust approval, sources have told Reuters.
Earlier this month, Reuters first reported that Rupert Murdoch, who shares the title of executive chair of Fox, telephoned AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson twice to discuss CNN over the past six months.