Regardless of lower Nielsen ratings, the timing of Paramount’s decision to cancel one of its flagship series may itself indicate that the move was driven by more than just profit. Notably, within days of both the cancellation and the settlement of the Trump lawsuit, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) finally approved the Skydance-Paramount merger, an $8 billion deal that had been stalled for months. This approval further contributes to the growing trend of monopolistic practices in US media.
“This is pure cowardice,” stated David Letterman, who hosted The Late Show from 1993 to 2015, in reference to Paramount’s recent decisions regarding the show’s cancellation and the Trump lawsuit settlement. The relentless focus of the US news media on everything related to Trump over the past decade, coupled with constant debates surrounding his politics, policies, and practices, has significantly contributed to its decline. As the United States moves closer to autocracy, the Fourth Estate (the press) has increasingly adopted the role of a stenographer, normalizing lies, gossip, craven policies, and corruption under the guise of “disinformation” and “misinformation.”
However, the Trump era represents just the surface of a larger issue. The combined effect of media corporations constantly realigning themselves to appease the political class and their monopolization of US media over the past 45 years has severely undermined the field. This retreat has significantly distorted news coverage and eroded the concept of a free press.
The Evolution of Media Deregulation
The landscape of US media began to transform with the gradual deregulation of both media ownership and editorial freedom in the 1980s. After 40 years of the Fairness Doctrine in US media law, which mandated multimedia broadcasters to present opposing viewpoints on issues of national importance, the FCC voted to abolish this requirement in 1987. This occurred after Congress failed to override President Ronald Reagan’s veto of their attempt to codify the doctrine into law. Subsequent efforts to re-establish the Fairness Doctrine, including the “Restore the Fairness Doctrine Act” sponsored by former Congresswoman (now Director of National Intelligence) Tulsi Gabbard in 2019, have not succeeded, with Gabbard’s bill never reaching the House floor for a vote.
In a rare display of bipartisan cooperation during the 1990s, many of the remaining regulations designed to protect US media from monopolization and the influence of billionaires and mega-corporations were dismantled. The Telecommunications Act of 1996, heavily influenced by lobbyists, passed through Congress with overwhelming support, receiving only 16 “No” votes out of 430 in the House of Representatives and just 5 “No” votes out of 96 in the Senate.
The Rise of Media Monopolies
Paradoxically, these deregulations, intended to foster greater competition among media corporations and their multimedia platforms, achieved the opposite by extending media monopolization. Between 1983 and 2015, the number of corporations that collectively owned 90 percent of the entire US media market plummeted from “more than 50 to just six companies.” This included various sectors such as books, newspapers, magazines, mobile and cable television, internet, music, films, and professional athletic teams. In the years since, driven by developments like Viacom’s ownership of CBS and Paramount, and Amazon’s significant expansion into streaming services and multimedia productions, five megacorporations now control 90 percent of all US media.
Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch became a pivotal figure in the monopolization of US media. He acquired stakes in the New York Post and founded the tabloid Star. In 1985, the FCC approved a deal allowing Murdoch to purchase 20th Century Fox and acquire Fox broadcast stations. This was possible because Murdoch had become a naturalized US citizen, as federal regulations at the time restricted foreign ownership and investment in broadcasting. Eleven years later, just months after the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Murdoch and media executive Roger Ailes founded Fox News under the ironically misleading slogan “Fair and Balanced.” With the Fairness Doctrine abolished and the need for balanced media coverage removed, Fox News’s distinctly biased, far-right slant was a deliberate choice, designed solely for profit. The late Ailes reportedly stated more than once, “People don’t want to be informed, they want to feel informed,” to justify Fox News’s approach to news coverage.
Declining Trust and Biased Coverage
In recent years, with billionaires acquiring major news outlets such as The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal and dictating editorial decisions, Americans have largely lost trust in the Fourth Estate. This monopolization and the accompanying business pressures have resulted in “fewer journalists, thinner reporting, and increasingly desperate advertising content” over the past three decades. This trend is particularly telling when combined with the rise of social media as the primary source of news for Americans over television and internet media sites (54 percent compared to 50 percent and 48 percent, respectively). There are no indications that media monopolization and biased, fact-reduced, or fact-free coverage will cease anytime soon.
Murdoch’s strategy of utilizing deregulation to build a monopoly and usher in an era of fact-free journalism spurred this buying frenzy, consistently prioritizing profit over fairness. By the end of the 1980s, conservative and far-right radio talk shows began to dominate, with the late Rush Limbaugh leading the charge with his nationally syndicated The Rush Limbaugh Show. His constant barrage of racism, sexism, queerphobia, and other hyper-masculine talking points created an echo chamber for approximately 15 million listeners over the next 30 years.
While center-left radio programming, such as Air America, made minor inroads in the 2000s, progressive ventures have often failed. They have frequently lacked sufficient financial backing and political protection in an increasingly monopolized and ideologically skewed media landscape. During MSNBC’s “Lean Forward” era (2010-2016), when its merely centrist political news coverage was criticized as “liberal,” executives denied that MSNBC was the leftist equivalent of Fox News. Phil Griffin, who led MSNBC from 2008 through early 2021, once asserted, “No. We don’t put out talking points all day” like Fox News. “Corporations are … like sharks. They just move toward the money. That’s all they do,” a former executive for the news organization remarked. In 2016, eugenicist tech billionaire Peter Thiel effectively dismantled the progressive tabloid Gawker. Incensed that Gawker had outed him as queer in 2007, Thiel assisted the late wrestler Hulk Hogan in winning a $140 million lawsuit against Gawker for publishing his sex tape.
It is often said that good journalism reflects the world’s happenings like a mirror, without bias and with every effort to uncover the truth behind news events. If this is truly the definition of good journalism, then US journalism has been gazing into a fractured mirror for decades. In 2025, it’s not simply that many Americans distrust the media they consume or only believe news that aligns with their personal narratives. Many in the US are aware that the nation’s media regularly disseminates lies, half-truths, and gossip in a relentless pursuit of easy profit, all while simultaneously diminishing the intellectual capacity of its consumers.
Reporting on the spread of autocratic rule, exposing complicity in genocide, or scrutinizing the ethics of billionaires and mega-corporations in a monopolized media world? Any efforts toward fairness and truth can easily cost media professionals their jobs, or worse, even someone as influential as Stephen Colbert.
