#media-consolidation

#media-consolidation

has a 20-year history of suppressing speech that she finds objectionable, especially when it's speech championing the rights of Palestinians and criticizing the state of Israel,

Trumpism wants to capture your attention. And it won't hesitate to colonize, with the approval of its leader, all the world's main information outlets, streaming media and video game platforms. Emerging from the effervescent magma of the MAGA universe, a group of powerful businessmen are in orbit around Trump, fattening his businesses and helping him expand the reach of his ultraconservative rhetoric.

The clearest sign yet of Ellison's willingness to ruffle feathers and fundamentally remake iconic American media brands was his Monday installation of Bari Weiss atop Paramount's CBS News, the 98-year-old institution home to the likes of Walter Cronkite and "60 Minutes." Weiss, a former New York Times Opinion writer who resigned from The Gray Lady in 2020, has spent the years since building an anti-woke alternative to traditional media. That effort, The Free Press, is far from CBS News in sensibility and approach.

The United States media conglomerate Paramount has announced a deal securing the acquisition of the commentary website Free Press and naming its founder, conservative media figure Bari Weiss, as the editor-in-chief of CBS News. The appointment of Weiss, known for her pro-Israel positions and frequent criticism of woke politics, comes amid what critics have called an effort to steer CBS in a direction more aligned with the administration of President Donald Trump.

The deal, valued at roughly $150 million in cash and stock, brings Weiss's growing subscriber-driven platform under the same corporate roof as CBS, Showtime, and Paramount, according to CBS News. It also places Weiss, who rose to prominence as a conservative-leaning critic of liberal media culture, at the helm of one of the nation's oldest and most trusted news brands.

we have seen a tech titan gut a once-great newspaper in an apparent act of capitulation to the commander in chief, government accounts gleefully spreading hateful memes on X (the far-right platform owned by a billionaire tech oligarch), a defamation lawsuit filed by Trump against The New York Times (and quickly dismissed by the judge as "superfluous"), and, of course, the assault on free speech carried out by Trump's Federal Communications Commission chairman.

We made a decision last week to preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! following what ABC referred to as Mr. Kimmel's ill-timed and insensitive comments at a critical time in our national discourse. We stand by that decision pending assurance that all parties are committed to fostering an environment of respectful, constructive dialogue in the markets we serve. Nexstar has 32 ABC affiliates among its 200 stations nationwide.

Jimmy Kimmel was kicked off the air for making fun of Trump. Not because he joked about Charlie Kirk's assassination, which he didn't do, or because he lied about it, which he didn't do either. Comments about the "MAGA gang" trying to score political points off Kirk's murder were just the setup to a punchline about how Trump can't even muster a crocodile tear over the right-wing podcaster's death before gushing about his White House renovations.

Kimmel, a late-night host who's long criticized and mocked President Donald Trump, had his namesake show on ABC suspended "indefinitely" after his comments about Charlie Kirk, the right-wing influencer who was killed in public last week. Carr, a Trump appointee, suggested on a conservative podcast on Wednesday that owners of local broadcast stations that license ABC programming should pressure the network to cancel Kimmel. He said broadcasters who don't act "in the public interest" could get their licenses reviewed.

Back in the 90s and 2000s, much ink was spilled as the major networks grappled for ratings in the now-quaint real estate of post-11PM programming. Johnny Carson retired. David Letterman jumped to CBS. Conan O'Brien was plucked from obscurity, eventually handed The Tonight Show, and then had it essentially clawed back by Jay Leno for a few more years of appalling hackwork.

whose show ABC suspended after Brendan Carr complained about the things Kimmel said about Charlie Kirk's killer. But sure, Kimmel's suspension removes a familiar voice from the living rooms of a certain aging demographic, but more importantly, points to the system of power behind the suspension: not just the cancel campaign to silence discussion of Charlie Kirk's real statements, but Brendan Carr's egregious politicization of the FCC, and in response, the abject cowardice from multinationals like ABC, Sinclair, and Nexstar.

Driving the news: ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel off air "indefinitely" on Wednesday in response to the late-night host's comments about Charlie Kirk's assassination. The extraordinary move came after Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr warned ABC that it could face fines or license revocations if it did not "operate in the public interest." Trump celebrated Kimmel's removal - just as he did CBS's decision to cancel Stephen Colbert's show -

At the same time a long-running family feud among Rupert Murdoch and his children was settled with a deal that will assure Fox News and other powerful media outlets run by the family will retain their conservative bent. The moves deepened concerns among many US media critics and observers of authoritarianism that press freedoms in the US were undergoing capitulation to the Trump administration's rightwing authoritarian leanings.

Last month, federal regulators approved the long-anticipated merger of Skydance Media and Paramount Global, positioning David Ellison the founder of Skydance and the son of megabillionaire Larry Ellison as one of the most powerful figures in US media. Paramount Skydance Corporation, as it is now officially known, is one of a small handful of American media conglomerates, with Paramount Pictures, cable networks such as Comedy Central and MTV, and CBS all under its umbrella.

Almost immediately I began to get intensely pressured about the contents of my columns, not from anyone within ATL, but from the partnership at the law firm where I was then employed. My God, what if someone realized their lawyer wasn't the intellectual equivalent of a genital-less Ken doll and was instead a real, live person with agency who actually had opinions about things?