Trump's Media Takeover -- Digby

[erronis]

https://digbysblog.net/2025/12/14/trumps-media-takeover/

Speaking of network takeovers, this analysis from Mediaite about the attempt to take over CNN is worth reading.

Imagine if Hunter Biden were helping assemble billions in Saudi and Qatari financing so a progressive media owner could take over Fox News while quietly assuring the White House that he planned to replace hosts and reshape the network’s direction. The national reaction would be immediate. Congressional hearings, emergency ethics panels, a weeklong media frenzy.

Now consider what is actually happening. The developing Paramount–Skydance effort to acquire Warner Bros Discovery involves outreach to sovereign wealth funds in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE. Reuters reported that Jared Kushner helped connect David Ellison’s team with those funds as they explored financing options for a potential hostile bid. These investments are not confirmed or finalized, and Axios has reported that the foreign investors “have agreed to forgo any governance rights – including board representation – associated with their non-voting equity investments.”

. . .

This is not a narrow corruption story. It is much worse — evidence of a structural weakness in the American democratic system that has only recently been exposed, and shockingly ignored. The United States has few meaningful guardrails preventing political families, foreign sovereign wealth, and corporate acquirers from converging inside a transaction that reshapes national news. That is media capture in the modern sense. It rarely looks like censorship. It looks like a phone call before a regulatory decision. A meeting that never happens because someone signals it shouldn’t. A tonal shift in coverage that feels organic but reflects the results of pressure nobody documented and nobody needed to. Influence that is subtle, diffuse, and consequential.

. . .

This is emerging as one of the central problems we face with this newly empowered authoritarian oligarchy. I am not sure what anyone can do about it. I would guess there are lots of ideas circulating and I’ll try to keep up with it as well as I can. But this is bad, very bad.

And it’s not like social media is going to come to our rescue. Facebook, X and tik tok are now in right wing hands and I’m not at all confident that the Google platforms aren’t going to fully join that crowd.

. . .

[Brainstormy]

1. we can thank Ronald Reagan for all of this

monopolization of industries