LILI LEVI
Media ownership is now both directly and indirectly at the center of the Trump Administration’s press-control strategy. With the deployment of censorship efforts and lawsuits aimed at press owners critical of the President, the regulatory activities of a Trump-aligned Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the grant of benefits to politically partisan, pro-Trump media owners, the defunding of public media, the adoption of multiple hurdles to independent newsgathering, and the involvement of the President in the joint venture to spin off an American TikTok, the Trump Administration has been systematically engaging in a multi-pronged scheme of press control by proxy, focused on ownership.
Today’s media ecosystem is complex, with news outlets reflecting a range of ownership patterns with varying characteristics, legal rules, and owner incentives. In theory, such a mix could generate a range of owner responses to government pressure. However, if the Administration strategically continues to tailor governmental sticks and carrots to the characteristics and vulnerabilities of the various forms of ownership—and particularly while permitting increased media consolidation—it is realistic to expect more capitulation than resistance from media owners in response.
Although there is no way to insulate the press completely from the threat of ownership-focused control, this Essay makes five recommendations to reduce the press function’s exposure to proxy censorship: (1) exacting scrutiny of proposed media mergers and acquisitions from the vantage point of their impact on concentration in the market for news production; (2) constraints on FCC Chairman Carr’s sweeping and politicized expansions of Commission intrusions into content; (3) rejection of proposed expansions of corporate boards’ fiduciary duties of oversight to news units; (4) a skeptical review of the statutory compliance of the new TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC; and (5) development of funding models that would materially promote the work of journalistically-trained independent “evidence-based creators.”