All posts tagged "cnn"

This super-rich Trumper has a secret weapon

Larry Ellison, founder of the software firm Oracle, is the second-richest billionaire in both the US and the world, and for a brief moment was No. 1 in the world. But for a long time, unlike many of his peers, he was unable to boast that he controlled a chunk of the news and opinion reaching the American public.

On Forbes‘ US list, he is sandwiched between Elon Musk, No. 1, who bought the social media network Twitter and rebranded it as X, and Mark Zuckerberg, who runs Meta, which operates Facebook and Instagram. Jeff Bezos, at No. 4, has the Washington Post. Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Nos. 5 and 6, operate the leading search engine as well as one of the most important news aggregators, Google News. Michael Bloomberg, at No. 13, the former New York City mayor, has Bloomberg and its various outlets.

Ellison seems to have joined the club, as TikTok, under US government coercion, is selling 80 percent of its US operations to an investor consortium that includes Oracle, along with investment firms Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz.

Ellison is a big Trumper, joining in the reactionary denial of the 2020 presidential elections. Like some of the others in the deal, he is part of the inner circle of Trump’s favorite corporate ideologues. This TikTok deal is not just about money. It’s about control of the political narrative.

CBS shifts

But owning a big chunk of the US’ leading short-form video platform is not Ellison’s only claim to being a media mogul. Eyeing the corporate media throne, you can almost hear Ellison channeling Seinfeld’s Frank Costanza, confronted with the daunting prospect of competing in computer sales against IBM and Microsoft, declaring: “I’ve got a secret weapon. My son.”

Enter Larry’s son David Ellison, who was born into the kind of riches most can barely dream of. As I wrote for FAIR, the younger Ellison is the CEO of Skydance, which recently merged with Paramount, giving him control over CBS. David’s campaign contributions trend more to the Democratic establishment, but it’s his father’s politics that seem to be reshaping the newly bought network: “CBS Shifts to Appease the Right Under New Owner,” as an NPR headline put it.

Anti-woke zealot Bari Weiss is nearing “a top role at CBS News,” which “left-leaning staffers at the network fret could amount to ‘dropping a grenade’ in the newsroom,” the New York Post reported. It added that the network “is weighing naming Weiss editor in chief or co-president of the network,” and that Ellison is looking to buy her “news site, the Free Press, in a deal valued at upwards of $100 million.” According to Reuters, it was David Ellison who “installed Kenneth Weinstein — a supporter of President Donald Trump and the former CEO of conservative think tank Hudson Institute — as ombudsman of CBS News.”

‘Hard to be optimistic’

The New York Post reports that Ellison father and son are now looking to buy Warner Brothers Discovery, which carries with it CNN, creating an unprecedented level of media consolidation. While the Post said such a purchase could be difficult, because Warner Brothers “has a market cap of around $38 billion,” that might not matter, as “Larry Ellison’s net worth leaped by $100 billion following Oracle’s latest blowout earnings report.” He is “closing in on being the richest dude in the world, with a net worth … of more than $370 billion.”

CNN reports 1.8 million viewers, and CBS reports an average total audience of 1.4 million viewers, for a combined 3.2 million, which eclipses ABC’s 2.3 million, NBC’s 1.4 million, and MSNBC’s 1.2 million viewers.

The CNN/CBS combo would reach far more Americans through online news, with CNN.com‘s 276 million visits per month already making it the nation’s second-biggest news site. Add CBSNews.com‘s 63 million visits, and you’ll have an entity that edges closer to the heretofore undisputed leader, NYTimes.com, with its 425 million visits a month.

Former CBS Evening News star Dan Rather said Americans “have to be concerned about the consolidation of huge billionaires getting control of nearly all of the major news outlets.”

Rather added, “It’s pretty hard to be optimistic about the possibilities of the Ellisons buying CNN.”

‘Not a sign of a healthy democracy’

Fast Company summarized the dangerous nature of the deal this way:

If the Warner Bros. Discovery deal were to go through, Ellison would control streaming services with a combined 200 million-plus subscribers, says Barclays (though there will be overlap between the Paramount+, HBO Max, and Pluto services). It’s something Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren warned against on X on September 11. The deal with Warner Bros. Discovery, she wrote, “must be blocked as a dangerous concentration of power.” Add TikTok’s 170 million-plus users and one of the hottest properties in the social space, and you get to a position of dominance in the media….

“It is not a sign of a healthy democracy when billionaires are buying up all of the means of cultural consumption,” says Steven Buckley, lecturer in media and digital sociology at City St George’s, University of London.

Others have pointed out that the potential playbook, if this were to go ahead, draws comparisons with Elon Musk’s takeover of a social platform to dominate public discourse. Musk has previously taken credit for helping Trump secure the White House in 2024 through his positioning of X as a supportive social network…

“It is naive to think that over time [Ellison’s] business and political philosophy, combined with the external political pressures from this and future administrations, wouldn’t have an impact on how the American public experience TikTok,” Buckley says.

Conservative media capture

The United States has seen a tremendous amount of conservative media capture since Donald Trump returned to the White House. Bezos has moved to cull viewpoints at the Washington Post that might offend Trump, Zuckerberg has taken steps to make Facebook friendlier to MAGA, and Musk has turned X into a vehicle for his far-right politics. All three men sat together at Trump’s inauguration.

The Los Angeles Times under billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong has also made strenuous efforts to be more Trump-friendly.

Both Ellisons, the Hollywood Reporter said, “have shown support for Trump in the past,” and they certainly buck the rising outrage against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

“Paramount, under its new owner, David Ellison, has become the first major Hollywood studio to condemn a boycott of Israeli film institutions that more than 4,000 actors and directors now support,” the New York Times said.

With the Trump regime shutting down the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS, the space for semi-skeptical media is shrinking as the space for regime-friendly broadcasters (Fox News still beats out both CNN and CBS in terms of viewers) is growing.

As for social media, given that Andreessen Horowitz’s cofounders are also Trump supporters, it seems that, along with Ellison, these oligarchs could steer TikTok in the same direction as Facebook and X.

Worse, critics of TikTok’s Chinese ownership fretted that data collection of American users eventually led to surveillance by the Chinese government. Data collection is a given with social media generally, but now that power rests partly with Ellison, who has gotten rich off such technology.

Fortune reported, “Oracle founder Larry Ellison… sees a growing opportunity for his company to help authorities analyze real-time data from millions of surveillance cameras.” And funnily enough, an AP investigation showed that Oracle was among the many Silicon Valley firms whose technologies have supported Chinese surveillance systems.

Just imagine what he could do with a large social media network like TikTok.

Rather and others are right that the Ellison duo taking over both CBS and CNN, as well as controlling a major social media network like TikTok, would be dangerous for democracy. And given their closeness to the Trump regime, that seems to be the point.

Ari Paul is a New York-based journalist who has reported for the Nation, the Guardian, the Forward, the Brooklyn Rail, Vice News, In These Times, Jacobin and many other outlets.

This groveling surrender to Trump might be the worst of all

Let’s start here today: Our legacy media is dead.

For some, this pronouncement is long overdue, and might be best labeled “old news.” For people like me, who spent their professional life in a newsroom as part of a team that turned around timely content called “real news” to their readers, while also calling power into account, this declaration officially wipes out everything I once believed in and held dear.

Watching our old, tired legacy media like The New York Times and The Washington Post cover this Russia charade, mislabeled a “summit,” and Trump's meeting with European leaders in Washington this week has completely knocked me over the edge. I’ll let you tell me how badly the gushing toothies on TV are botching this up, because I quit watching their 24/7 screeching with any regularity years ago.

We have reached the point where these incompetents can’t even get the nut of the story right. It’s no longer news that the nuclear-powered narcissist, Donald Trump, is posturing to get every spotlight turned in his direction no matter how big or small a story. Yet the media comes running with their hair on fire every time he beckons.

However … It IS news — URGENT NEWS — when European prime ministers and presidents drop everything they are doing and fly into the United States with their hair on fire to oppose the actions of its unstable, authoritarian leader, and back the man who is fighting for his life and his country’s democracy, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

It’s news because THAT HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE.

Yet, in their breathless play-by-play coverage you never saw it reported that way. Instead, here is what we got all day Monday and into Tuesday as these incompetent morons, who dare to call themselves “journalists” were led around by their noses, which are always in the general vicinity of Trump’s two-ton ass:

"Trump just said this!"
"Now Trump said that!"
“Trump is doing this!”
“And now Trump is doing that!”
"What will Trump do next????”

There was literally no fact-checking, nor important context. They just repeated his endless bullshit that was all designed to go absolutely nowhere, because the most important person in these negotiations wasn’t even on location. And why should he have been? Russian President Vladimir Putin had already emasculated the President of the United States after getting red-carpet treatment in Alaska on Friday, and had gone home to Russia to resume bombing the bejesus out of Ukraine.

So Trump did what he does best, and spoke on behalf of Putin, while arguing against everybody else.

It was appalling.

But there was our legacy media, who somehow thought reporting all that bullshit in real time was some sort of journalistic feat, when in reality they just come off like a bunch of drunken parrots.

Things are no better than they were on Thursday, when it comes to Russia’s inhumane, illegal attack on Ukraine, they are miles worse. Because God only knows what the two most dangerous leaders in the world talked about while the cameras were mercifully shut off during their dangerous, private meetings the past five days.

I can guess it sounded something like this:

PUTIN: “Never forget who put you in office, Donald.”
TRUMP: “No worries there, sir. I got everybody, but mostly the idiots in the media, eating out of my hand.”

Here is the vitally important context I didn’t read ONCE in all the legacy media’s atrocious coverage of this sh–– show the past 24 hours:

“Putin, who Trump actually asked for help in the 2016 campaign …”

“Putin, who Trump has repeatedly fawned over, even calling the murderous dictator among other things ‘a genius' …’”

“Putin, who Trump surrendered to in Helsinki in 2018, when pressed if there was Russia interference into the 2016 election, when his own Republican Party had determined there was …”

“Putin, who after winning the 2007 Time Magazine Man of the Year Award, received a letter from Trump that gushed: “As you probably have heard, I’m a big fan of yours!”

“Putin, who allowed Trump to host his Miss Universe beauty pageant in Moscow in 2013, and received yet another note from Trump which read: “Will you become my new best friend?”

I could go on and on here, but you get the point, even if the dangerous dummies in our legacy media don’t: Any relationship Trump has with his BFF Putin is at best suspect, but most likely is completely compromised.

Shouldn’t readers and viewers be aware of this right off the top and reminded of it repeatedly?

And what of the 50-plus times Trump said on the 2024 campaign trail that he would end Russia's attack on Ukraine during his first 24 hours in office. I read scores of stories in the legacy media Monday, and this was never reported even ONCE. Further, he was not asked about this even ONCE in those weird sit-downs with the press in that grotesque, golden room, where his tie drags on the floor and he does that weird accordion thing with his hands.

They aren't even bothering to try to hold this lying SOB accountable anymore.

And what about that lying? Because it is all this blabbering loudmouth does.

In just the last 10 days he’s told preposterous lies about Russia, the 2020 election, Jeffrey Epstein, jobs, crime, inflation, Project 2025, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and mail-in voting.

Add this to the tens of thousands of times he has lied in his professional life about all things big and small, and you’d think he would have lost ALL benefit of the doubt 10 years ago.

Instead, our legacy media still hangs on his every word.

It is ABSURD.

They don’t even make lying a small feature of the story, when in fact all his lying IS THE DAMN STORY.

There is not one report or story about about Trump that should make it past the third paragraph without this being inserted for context:

“Trump, who has a long history of lying about <insert subject> …”

WHY isn’t this being done?

Here is the thing that should keep us all awake at night: If Trump, a convicted felon, can wipe out the truth — and he is well on his way — he can wipe out everything this country was founded on, and begin working to wipe us out, and everything we once stood for.

This is exactly what Putin, and every other fascist leader on earth wants.

It can never stop being headline news that Trump is the most notorious liar in the history of the United States.

It should have never become headline news that our legacy media decided to quit reporting that.

But here we are, and neither one should ever be trusted again.

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)

Conservative's Epstein claim leaves puzzled CNN host scratching her head

CNN's Kate Bolduan was left scratching her head in puzzlement after a conservative panelist declared the Jeffrey Epstein scandal had passed out of the public consciousness.

President Donald Trump has been trying to shift the narrative after his long-standing ties to the late sex offender were pushed back into the spotlight when his Justice Department announced that no new information about his alleged crimes would be released, as multiple administration officials had promised, but conservative pundit Scott Jennings insisted the matter had been put to rest.

"I don't have any problem with them following the facts where they go here," Jennings said. "I mean, the polling on this, this is a political analysis, is pretty clear: Nobody cares. This is like the least important thing to the American people, and that includes Republicans, too."

Bolduan asked why Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY) were planning to bring survivors of abuse by Epstein and co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell to a news conference on Capitol Hill when Congress returns from recess Sept. 3, and Rep. Paulina Luna (R-FL) called on former prosecutor Alex Acosta to testify about the plea deal he reached with the disgraced financier.

"Well, I mean, there have been questions about this, and so if you want to talk to folks, I don't know," Jennings said. "I don't know why anybody would be mad about that but, at the same time, I think we shouldn't mistake this for something other than a Washington story, because out in the country, this is not a big deal for the American people."

Bolduan was caught off guard, and she stammered out a protest that it was actually more than a Washington story, but Jennings pressed on.

"That is not what our or any other polling says," he said.

Bolduan was left scratching her head by his comment, and she questioned the polls' methodology.

"If yes, maybe when you ask a voter what their top issue is, it's not going to be the Jeffrey Epstein saga, but, you know, that lawmakers have said this is the top call they're getting into their congressional office," Bolduan said. "They are hearing this when they go home. I asked [Rep. Robert Garcia], the top Democrat on oversight, who was on with me last night about this, and he says Democrats are ready to stand with Congresswoman Paulina Luna if she continues with this move."

Watch below or click the link.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

'Beyond sick': Jim Acosta pummeled for stunt with AI-generated Parkland victim

Former CNN anchor Jim Acosta was derided as a "ghoul" for his virtual interview with an AI-generated avatar of Joaquin Oliver, one of 17 students and faculty killed in the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL.

Acosta promoted the event on his X account, writing, "I’ll be having a one of a kind interview with Joaquin Oliver. He died in the Parkland school shooting in 2018. But his parents have created an AI version of their son to deliver a powerful message on gun violence."

Oliver's parents created the bot "to honor their son on what would have been his 25th birthday," according to HuffPost.

“I felt like I was communicating with him, which is just so remarkable,” Acosta said of the interview. He touted it as an example of how AI "might actually do some good, it might help some people who have suffered tremendous losses like your family have a way to hold on to who this person was, which I think is a beautiful thing.”

@CollinRugg, co-owner Trending Politics, called the whole situation "Insane," while @Breaking911 posted, "WTF?! Former CNN host Jim Acosta published a fake AI interview with Parkland shooting victim Joaquin Oliver This is beyond sick."

Conservative watchdog group the Media Research Center, wrote, "Former CNN host Jim Acosta airs macabre AI 'interview' with Parkland shooting victim Joaquin Oliver on what would have been his 25th birthday. If you thought news couldn't get any faker, you were wrong."

@TwitchyTeam posted an article about the event, calling Acosta a "GHOUL!"

Podcaster @JoeTalkShow called Acosta a "garbage human." They added, "I don't care if the father of the innocent teen who was killed is okay with it. Maybe that's his way to deal. Acosta is a ghoul who thinks he deserves protection that teen did NOT get that day."

See Jim Acosta's Substack here.

'Putting words in my mouth!' TX Republican clashes as CNN host grills him on redistricting

CNN's Boris Sanchez went toe-to-toe with Texas state lawmaker Brian Harrison (R) on Monday over the issue of gerrymandering in his state.

Democratic lawmakers fled the state in droves over the weekend to protest new redistricting proposals that would give Republicans as many as five more congressional seats. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is demanding that they return to the statehouse by 3 p.m. CDT for a vote.

Illinois Gov. Pritzker is hosting several of the lawmakers in his state, and Harrison called him out, while also slamming CNN.

"Let's talk about this hypocrisy here!" Harrison began. "I mean, Illinois and California have been much more aggressive on redistricting than even the new maps that Texas is contemplating. These are very inconvenient facts. I mean, CNN — why don't you have on your chyron right now? Every time you play Governor Pritzker, why don't you point out that Illinois, under his leadership, 45% of the vote goes to Republicans in Illinois. but the Governor, Pritzker, only gives Republicans 15% of the congressional delegation?"

Sanchez attempted a follow-up question about whether Harrison supported a federal law to prohibit gerrymandering, but the two ended up talking over each other.

"Sir, let me ask the question!" Sanchez protested. "Why not quit the gerrymandering altogether and put the power in the hands of voters to make the Republic more efficient?"

Harrison claimed that "this type of redistricting" is perfectly legal and that he was going to do everything in his power to ensure Republicans hold their majority in Congress.

"So, then, is your objection against Pritzker or Newsom doing the same thing purely that it doesn't advantage your party?" an incredulous Sanchez asked. "That's not consistent."

"No, I've never said something like that," Harrison argued. You're putting words in my mouth!"

Watch the clip below via CNN.

'He's freaked out': CNN analyst taken aback as Trump move showed he's 'clearly rattled'

Political analyst David Chalian practically spat fire Friday on CNN after President Donald Trump announced he was canning a labor official because he didn't like the job numbers she released Friday.

Trump posted to Truth Social that Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of Labor Statistics and a Biden appointee, published an "inaccurate" report revealing weaker-than-expected job numbers for May and June.

"There are two things here, just stepping back for a second, that I think are pretty clear," Chalian began. "One, Donald Trump's kind of giving away the fact that this is not a healthy, robust, growing economy at the moment. It's a weakening economy, and he's freaked out about it, right? I mean, just by the behavior."

Chalian continued, "So, I mean 106,000 jobs over the last three months added — that's not gangbusters. And he is concerned as he is selling his tariff policy that perhaps some of the predictions that a lot of economists made may come true here."

Chalian described Trump as "clearly rattled" by the report.

"Two, this is like...firing your pollster for telling you that you're way behind in the race! It's like, no, like these are just numbers and facts," Chalian said, noting that collecting the numbers isn't an exact science but is meant to "get the best usable information for the government" at the moment.

"And so to think that you're just going to fire — So, what does that mean?" Chalian sputtered. "He's going to put in an ally now and he's going to get different numbers? If this is the economy, if this is how many jobs are being added, he's going to have to accept bad information from an ally."

Earlier, CNN's Phil Mattingly posted to X in response to the news of McEntarfer's firing, "This displays an intentional ignorance toward the way economic data is collected, presented, revised and the federal employees and appointees who do it. It's extraordinarily counterproductive and there's simply no net long game benefit to going down this path."

Watch the CNN report below.

'Trying to trap me!' Chaos as 'all but hopeless' Republican takes CNN interview off rails

Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears (R) unravelled as CNN's Manu Raju asked her about Donald Trump during an interview Friday, hitting out at the host for focusing on "the past" and trying to "trap" her with his questions.

Raju began asking about why President Donald Trump hadn't endorsed her in her run for governor — a contest many Republicans are nervous about because they consider her "all but hopeless."

"This is one of the biggest races in the country. We're two months from the campaign," Raju said, suggesting puzzlement at Trump's silence before Sears interrupted.

"Oh, here we go! You want to talk about the past, and nobody wants to talk about the past," Sears complained, as Raju tried to move the subject along. But Sears wasn't having it and continued to talk over him.

"Do you want to talk about my opponent supporting Biden 100% of the time? Do you want to talk about the past, where she is part of the Clinton machine? Do you want to talk about the past, where the rogue nations of the world understood that Joe Biden was not altogether there, and they were with him and saw his action and saw he was delayed? Do you want to talk about where my opponent has said she was always in the room with Joe Biden, and so she knew that he was in cognitive decline and yet she did nothing?

Raju attempted to interrupt, saying, "Hold on, hold on. Let me just get in because we have actually tried to talk to [Democratic opponent] Abigail Spanberger —"

"You're trying to trap me and that's not why I'm here!" Sears exclaimed.

"No one's trying to trap you!" Raju protested.

"Yes, you are! And I'm from a third-world country where I've seen this happen. I did not think that here in America we would be talking like this. The people want to talk about the issues."

"And I want to ask about the issues right now!" Raju managed to say.

Watch the clip below via CNN.

'Absolutely hate it!' CNN data guru warns GOP reps about to be 'eaten alive' by voters

CNN data analyst Harry Enten claimed Friday that constituents hate President Donald Trump's Big Beautiful Bill so much that the issue is threatening to eat lawmakers alive this summer.

All across the country, voters have been voicing their displeasure with the bill that gives tax breaks to the rich and puts conditions on Medicaid and Social Security, among other provisions.

In addition, the bill is expected to add $3.4 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

"Yeah, they hate the Big Beautiful Bill. They absolutely hate it," Enten told Wolf Blitzer on Friday, showing major disapproval from multiple polling results.

Enten's point was illustrated by a town hall appearance by Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI) that devolved into heckling and booing over the bill and President Trump's tariffs.

Enten listed four different polls to prove how much voters disapprove of the bill.

"The Big Beautiful Bill, the net favorable rating, minus 22 points; CNN, minus 22 points; CBS, minus 19 points; Fox and Wall Street Journal — the best of the bunch — minus 10 points," Enten said, adding, "All way, way under water!"

Enten also compared the unpopularity of the bill to the 2017 tax cuts.

"Minus nine points. Not too hot to trot, but clearly much better than the average of polling right now in the Big Beautiful Bill," Enten said, adding, "18 points underwater. This bill is twice as unpopular as those tax cuts were."

"That town hall ...in my mind, is just the beginning of what we're going to see: Constituents just eating those representatives alive on the Big Beautiful Bill," Enten said. "Simply put, it's one of the most unpopular, if not the most unpopular bill I've ever seen passed and signed into law when it comes to the budgetary process."

Watch the clip below via CNN.

These grovelers are greedily betraying us all

The rules of authoritarianism are pretty simple: Do as the leader says... or else.

This lopsided power equation runs counter to the checks and balances that are baked into the DNA of any healthy democracy. The early framers of American democracy understood this, which is why they codified the basic rights to free expression and an independent press as checks against power.

Free Press this week released the inaugural Media Capitulation Index to examine how this information ecosystem is fairing nearly 250 years later. This sweeping investigation analyzes and rates the independence of America’s 35 largest media companies, including the many conglomerates that have recently caved to pressure from an authoritarian and corrupt Trump administration.

I led the investigation, produced the performance-based ratings of these companies, and authored the report, A More Perfect Media: Saving America’s Fourth Estate from Billionaires, Broligarchy, and Trump, which accompanies the index.

The findings are sobering. After digging into the many failures of America’s hyper-commercialized media system, we present a series of recommendations to help dig the United States out of the authoritarian quicksand into which we're sinking, and build toward a more independent, democratic, diverse, and free press.

This work is crucial at a time when some of the most dominant news media companies empires including Disney (which owns ABC), Paramount (CBS) and Warner Bros. Discovery (CNN) are capitulating and compromising in the face of this administration’s political extortion and thuggery.

In addition, The New York Times is becoming increasingly “vulnerable” to pressure from the White House. In many ways it's a vulnerability of its own making. As we report, the newspaper's “ill-advised attempt at both-sides objectivity [has the Times] routinely normalizing the most extreme elements of Trumpism.”

The index also investigates the questionable and often lucrative government entanglements of billionaire media owners like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk.

In evaluating the 35 companies, Free Press found that media owners capitulated to the current White House in four principal ways:

Through payments to U.S. President Donald Trump in the form of legal settlements, production contracts, campaign contributions, and other donations;
By rolling back prior commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion practices in hiring and community outreach;
Through editorial manipulation and censorship: pressuring their newsrooms to soften criticism of the administration, firing staff, and even pulling content that might anger the president; and
By attempting to curry favor with the president during inaugural ceremonies, private dinners at Mar-a-Lago, and meetings in the White House.

The social compact

This small cartel of billionaire- and equity-fund-controlled conglomerates determines much of what Americans read, see, and hear. Their coverage and amplification too often sets the agenda around nation-defining political issues. Through a history of mergers and acquisitions, these companies have consolidated their control over public discourse.

Our founders sought to protect the U.S. press from government meddling so that reporters and publishers could act as reliable checks against tyranny and other political corruption. But it’s up to the media to exercise these freedoms. Many modern-day media owners, instead, have put their pursuit of power and profits over First Amendment principles.

I can’t imagine that the drafters of the Constitution foresaw a time when so much control over information would fall into the hands of so few. We need to examine the systemic failures that have led us to this point and understand how such accumulation of power and wealth makes it next to impossible for these media giants to fulfill the social compact embodied in the notion of the Fourth Estate.

I spoke with former New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan, who later wrote the Free Press project was a “thorough new examination of how well — or poorly — the American press is doing that core mission. And why it’s mostly failing.”

Each conglomerate in the Media Capitulation Index is ranked on a scale from “independent” to “propaganda.” The report analyzes the root causes driving commercial media’s inability to defend democracy at a time of spreading domestic and international authoritarianism.

Who owns the owners?

As I was writing, researching, and creating these materials, many people asked me: “Who owns the media?”

The Media Capitulation Index helps answer that question, but it also raises an even more essential (and disturbing) one: “Who owns the media owners?”

The report that accompanies the index reveals the systemic problems behind the media’s failure to meet this moment. But it concludes on a more hopeful note, outlining steps people can take to make “a more perfect media” for everyone.

These include fully funding public media and independent, local-accountability journalism; restoring and strengthening media-ownership limits; and emboldening the Federal Communication Commission’s and Federal Trade Commission’s role in stopping media mergers that harm the public interest.

We will continue to update the index, capturing both instances of media capitulation and examples where media stand up to this extortionate regime. It’s hoped that this structural critique of our current media system will help instill in more media outlets the courage needed to challenge a bullying and power-hungry president.

Tim Karr is a senior director at Free Press, the U.S.-based organization that advocates for more just and democratic media