#media-consolidation

#media-consolidation

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?

As US President Donald Trump late on Sunday lashed out against the American media and threatened to pull broadcasting licenses from networks for their alleged "biased" coverage of him, media experts said the danger to the news media lies partially in corporate outlets' potential capitulation to the Trump administration.