Why Threats to a Free Press are also Threats to Democracy
Part Two of a look at America's media landscape
A few days ago, I wrote about why I thought we should redefine our perceptions of the American media. I proposed that we see the media as being composed of at least four different interest groups, each with its own goals and needs.
A legacy media torn between its historical role as a vehicle for facts and objectivity, on the one hand, and a world in which opinion rules and Americans often can’t even agree on basic facts.
A corporate media in which (not all, but a number of) influential owners/publishers have decided that the pursuit of profits and their fear of the president overrules any impetus for protecting the First Amendment.
A MAGA media that no longer promotes traditional conservatism, but rather is largely a mouthpiece for a political movement dedicated to a philosophy of white nationalist authoritarianism.
A progressive media that is also a mouthpiece for a political movement, but which pales next to the size of the MAGA media and which is striving for more relevance while trying to reconcile a myriad of both centrist and far left voices.
I perhaps should also have included a fifth category to account for the increasing number of independent journalists who are not aligned with either a legacy media organization or with a partisan movement.
But there is one topic I didn’t pursue in the last post which I’d like to cover today — the threats to a free press proliferating in America and the reason why this is equivalent to an attack on democracy.
Along with this, I’m suggesting that a Corporate/MAGA media nexus is chipping away at the First Amendment and at the foundations of American government. I don’t believe the corporate and MAGA media are deliberately working together, as they’re separate interest groups each with their own goals — one cares about power, the other about profits. But the goals of each group now overlap, so when we see American democracy being upended before our eyes it’s these sectors of the media that are helping to topple it.
1. The emerging Corporate/MAGA media nexus
It’s not a surprise that the MAGA movement is on the side of an authoritarian presidency, as various polls indicate that a decent percentage of Donald Trump’s supporters are comfortable with autocracy. In fact, the data literally shows that “the Maga mindset is much closer to that of Vladimir Putin’s Russia” than it is to the beliefs of conservative political parties in other Western countries. And when a MAGA president calls the media “the enemy of the people,” it’s in line with how other authoritarian movements treat the press.
What is more surprising is to see some legacy media organizations, which have long stood on the side of freedom of speech and the press, so easily accede to the wishes of an authoritarian president. Actually, it wasn’t the legacy media itself that caved but rather owners such as Disney, Paramount, and Jeff Bezos (who control ABC, CBS, and the Washington Post), even in instances when the law appeared to be on their side.
In every case, these corporate owners had other business interests they were trying to protect and which were reliant on approval from the government. Profits thus proved more important than protection of the First Amendment. So while these two sectors may not be actively working together, it’s apparent they still fit together like hands and gloves:
The MAGA movement can more easily maintain power if media organizations are reluctant to run pieces critical of the president or his administration.
The best way for the corporate/billionaire owners of these media outlets to ensure continued profitability is to stay on the good side of a MAGA president.
This is the real danger arising from the corporate media. That, in its quest for profits, it will discard its own First Amendment rights in order to curry favor with a president who could threaten their wider business empires.
2. The conservative makeover that could soon transform CBS (and maybe CNN)
CBS is now owned by Paramount-Skydance. The company’s new CEO is David Ellison, son of Larry Ellison of Oracle, a Trump ally.
It’s unclear if Ellison’s son, David, the new head of CBS, is as aligned with the president as his father. Nevertheless, just as other corporate leaders have given in to Trump’s wishes, this is what CBS did immediately prior to getting government approval for Paramount’s merger with Skydance:
The network settled with Trump for $16 million over the president’s demonstrably false claim that 60 Minutes had deceptively edited an interview with Kamala Harris last fall.
Trump himself reported that the settlement also includes a side promise for $20 million in free advertising from CBS.
Just days after meeting with administration officials about the proposed merger, CBS announced it was canceling The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, a decision celebrated by the president.
Then, since the merger was approved, CBS has done the following:
As part of the government’s approval for the merger, CBS agreed to install the former chief executive of a conservative think tank with no media experience to serve as a “bias monitor” with the power to review complaints about the network’s news coverage.
Paramount paid $150 million to buy The Free Press, a digital news site known for its anti-woke, anti-trans, and anti-DEI views.
Paramount also installed Bari Weiss, editor of The Free Press, as the new editorial head of CBS News. Weiss describes herself as a radical centrist who is opposed to extremism on both the left and the right. Which, honestly, sounds great. On the other hand, the news philosophy of The Free Press has been described as believing that liberal “wokeness” is the greatest threat to American democracy, a position that doesn’t seem particularly centrist unless similar attacks are also being unleashed on MAGA authoritarianism.
So, I’m all for new ideas at a major broadcast network. The legacy media could probably use an injection of new thinking for its business model, and there’s nothing wrong with giving Weiss the benefit of the doubt and seeing how things develop.
Still, when you look at these facts all together, it’s hard to see this as anything other than a major news network willingly giving up its journalistic independence and caving to the demands of Trump and the MAGA movement.
And if you’re going to tell me that a more conservative version of CBS will somehow help by injecting a conservative perspective into the national conversation, may I remind you that this was literally the reason behind the founding of Fox News in the 1990s.
But Fox did not turn out to be a more thoughtfully conservative version of NBC or ABC or whatever. Moreover, even when the news division does occasionally try to serve as a responsible voice, the gravitational pull of the MAGA base manages to keep Fox in its orbit.
Consider the 2020 election, when Fox first tried to objectively report the news of Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election. When Trump insisted the election was fraudulent and the MAGA movement believed him, a sizeable number of Fox viewers deserted the network for the more extreme confines of Newsmax and OANN. So Fox backtracked and began reporting the lie of a fraudulent election in order to win back its audience. Even to the point of later agreeing to a $787 million settlement with Dominion to avoid a trial that would have exposed Fox’s lies about the election.
Now, interestingly, there actually is a conservative media organization that doesn’t base its business model on pushing MAGA outrage. That would be the Wall Street Journal, which mixes a conservative opinion page with traditional reporting. However, the very existence of the Journal even kind of proves my larger point.
Why? Because the Wall Street Journal is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns Fox News. So why in the world does Murdoch allow the Journal to remain a traditional media organization while pushing Fox to be a source of conservative outrage? I think you can answer that: It’s all about the audience.
Most people who read the Journal are there for the journalism or the business news or the conservative op-ed page. Or all of the above. On the other hand, (not all, but many) Fox viewers are there for the outrage. And Murdoch is in it for the profits. These media outlets rely to a large degree on different audiences for their business models to succeed.
Of course, even a traditionally conservative paper like the Wall Street Journal doesn’t always cut it in a MAGA world that demands total fealty. When the Journal printed an article linking Trump to Jeffrey Epstein recently, the president called the paper a “useless rag” and sued Murdoch and the Journal for $10 billion.
So if CBS succeeds in becoming a radically centrist, iconoclastic news organization, good for them. Maybe the network will transform the broadcast media in a positive way. But given the political and media history of the past few decades, I’m not holding my breath on that bet.
On the other hand, if David Ellison instead turns CBS into another MAGA mouthpiece, or even just a middle of the road network that still willingly accedes to the wishes of a MAGA president, well, that’s when you can start worrying. You have to skip down a bit more for the reasons why this is a problem for democracy. But before you do, keep in mind two other facts:
Paramount-Skydance is now in talks to buy Warner Brothers Discovery, which owns CNN. So the same corporate owner could soon have an astounding amount of media clout with control of both CBS and CNN.
And, see point #3 …
3. The MAGA media is also coming for TikTok
David Ellison now runs CBS. He may soon run CNN. And his dad, Larry Ellison (the Trump ally who is also the second richest man in the world) happens to be one of the main investors in the reported purchase of the U.S. TikTok business.
Another TikTok investor is Jeff Yass, who was the sixth largest contributor (to the tune of $100 million) to Donald Trump and Trump-affiliated organizations during the 2024 election. Another report includes Rupert Murdoch’s son, Lachlan, CEO of Fox News, as among the buyers.
Which is all, uh, interesting, to say the least. If you remember, a large bipartisan majority in Congress in 2024 banned TikTok from the U.S. because of the supposed influence of the Chinese government over the platform. The law was upheld by the Supreme Court. You can argue that the legislation wasn’t needed or even that it was stupid, if you’d like, but the fact remains that it was passed into law and upheld by the courts. After taking office, however, Trump ignored the law (without any pushback from Republicans in Congress who had just written and passed the legislation). And the president has now engineered a sale of TikTok’s American business to some of his closest billionaire supporters.
So instead of the Chinese government being able to amass data on Americans, or control the TikTok algorithm to influence public opinion, the popular social media platform will now be in the hands of Trump allies. A MAGA makeover might soon be coming to TikTok, not unlike the way that Twitter/X was transformed after being bought by Elon Musk.
As Political Wire noted:
For younger Americans, TikTok is not just entertainment — it’s one of their primary sources of news. The original push to ban TikTok was rooted in concerns that Beijing could manipulate the app’s algorithm to sway American politics. But this deal would place that same powerful algorithm in the hands of people with every incentive to promote Trump and his agenda.
Meanwhile, Trump recently put out a video (on TikTok, of course) telling young people that he “saved TikTok, so you owe me big.”
4. Why does any of this matter for democracy?
OK, so some billionaires don’t care about the First Amendment if it cuts into their profits. Should we care? And why does the rest of it matter? So what if some conservatives take over more media organizations, or TikTok?
Well, because we’ve seen this movie before.
The playbook is always the same, and it always leads to a rise in authoritarianism and the decline of democracy.
The examples of Turkey and Hungary are most relevant, not only because both nations have some history with democratic voting and an independent media but also because Turkey still maintains a veneer of democracy, while Hungary belongs to the European Union and also holds regular elections.
However, what Hungary and Turkey have in common is that they’ve rigged the system to such a degree that the ruling party maintains near total control. And one of the first things that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey and Viktor Orbán in Hungary did after initially winning democratic elections was to begin trying to control the media in their respective countries. These days, it’s gotten to the point where Hungary is being accused of “effectively outlawing the free press,” and Turkey earlier this year arrested numerous journalists merely for reporting on anti-government protests.
The Hungary example is especially instructive for understanding what could happen here (even if you exclude the fact that the MAGA movement has openly praised Hungary as an example of what to strive for in the U.S.) After Orban gained power in 2010, oligarchs friendly to the government began purchasing major media organizations. And today, 90% of all media in the country is controlled by allies of the ruling party. Meanwhile, any independent media that remains is subject to attacks by the government in an effort to intimidate it into falling in line.
What do government attacks against the media look like? They look a lot this:
The editorial demands made by the U.S. government to Paramount before approving its merger with Skydance.
The FCC’s threat against ABC for airing Jimmy Kimmel broadcasts.
The barring of the Associated Press from the White House press pool for not changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
Donald Trump’s lawsuits against ABC, CBS, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Des Moines Register. Even if the president loses each lawsuit, he forces these organizations to commit financial resources to legal attacks, while issuing an implicit warning to other media outlets not to cross him.
The elimination of funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, an act that will decimate numerous stations around the country, which “are often the only sources of local news in rural communities due to the decline of local newspapers.”
All of it, together, is an effort to silence free speech and crush an independent media.
The United States has larger and more powerful media than Hungary did before Orban’s takeover, and at least parts of it are unlikely to be intimidated by the Trump administration. Still, what if some parts of the media are intimidated into silence? And what if CBS, CNN, and TikTok are indeed transformed into administration-friendly outlets? Vox published a piece recently contemplating this very scenario:
Imagine all of this together not just with the Murdoch network, but Jeff Bezos’ right-wing remaking of the Washington Post, Mark Zuckerberg’s pro-Trump turn, and Elon Musk’s control over X.
The government and its allies would have control over a massive portion of the informational landscape for young and old Americans — encompassing unprecedented portions of television, digital, and social media, plus what remains of print …
This would matter a great deal. High-quality political science research has repeatedly demonstrated that Fox News significantly increased the GOP’s vote share, the effect large enough to swing presidential elections. Now imagine not one Fox, but several — spreading regime-friendly propaganda across new and old media.
This is the warning from Hungary. As the historian Timothy Snyder wrote in his book, On Tyranny: “The mistake is to assume that rulers who came to power through institutions cannot change or destroy those very institutions.”
An authoritarian regime doesn’t have to legislate the end of press freedom or abolish elections, but the result can be the same. All it has to do is gerrymander elections, exert control over the judiciary, and intimidate or take control of the press and other bastions of independent thinking, such as universities.
Hungary and Turkey still have elections, but only one party can ever win them. Between a compliant media, a compliant judiciary, and the gerrymandering of elections, the opposition has little voice and a vanishingly small chance of winning a legislative majority. It’s not a dictatorship in the traditional sense, but it’s authoritarianism all the same.
For an authoritarian movement to succeed, one of the key dominoes that needs to fall is that of an independent press. You can thus see why the MAGA movement is so intent on intimidating or controlling American media outlets.
When Thomas Jefferson said he preferred newspapers to government, this is why. Without a free press, there can be no democracy.
Also see: Other Riel World pieces on the American media.