"President Donald Trump's reign as the defining political figure of the last decade has demonstrated how quickly that tactic can take hold here. In courtrooms, agencies, and White House briefings, Trump and his allies have sought to punish and delegitimize journalists. In the second Trump term, the bully pulpit has been turned into a battering ram, with open or implied threats to withhold the broadcast licenses or block the media mergers of insufficiently loyal companies."
"The truth is that the administration's threats have rippled across a media ecosystem buckling under the weight of commercial pressures-pressures that existed long before that fateful golden escalator ride more than a decade ago. It's these long-standing commercial imperatives that Trump knows how to weaponize to manipulate media institutions. He understands that newsrooms accountable first and foremost to investors will sell out their accountability function to survive. Likewise, media conglomerates pursuing mergers cannot afford to anger the administration holding the regulatory pen."
Authoritarian efforts to attack and control media use legal, regulatory, and rhetorical pressure to punish and delegitimize journalists. Political threats to broadcasters and merger approvals amplify leverage over news organizations. Long-standing commercial pressures leave newsrooms beholden to investors, undermining journalistic accountability and incentivizing survival-driven compromises. Media conglomerates fear regulatory retaliation during mergers, further chilling independence. Concentrated billionaire ownership allows private actors to decide outlets' fates and align media with political interests, eroding distinctions between state-run and state-aligned outlets. The convergence of state coercion and commercial consolidation produces a media ecosystem unable to resist political influence.
Read at The Nation
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