Broadcasters Strike a Devil's Bargain with the Trump Regime

At a time of serious attacks on press freedom, in the face of government censorship and shakedowns, when reporters are literally being clubbed in the streets, the nation’s television broadcasters are united — in their quest to kill off the few remaining limits on how much local media they can control.

Yes, at a moment of rising authoritarianism, the National Association of Broadcasters’ No. 1 priority is eliminating the “national broadcast ownership cap” — the congressionally mandated limit on the national reach of TV stations a single conglomerate can own. (It is currently set at 39 percent of the nationwide audience.)

The largest TV broadcasters are so confident the regulations will be trashed, they’ve already started proposing mergers that are illegal under existing law — most recently floating a mega-deal to unite Nexstar and Tegna, two of the country’s four-biggest broadcasters.

Under any previous administration, such a combination would have been unthinkable. Under Donald Trump, it’s just a question of how much of your independence and integrity you’re willing to sacrifice to get a deal done.

Whether motivated by right-wing ideology or pure greed — or an unholy combination of the two — broadcasters are striking a devil’s bargain. Every merger proposal is now an opportunity for Trump and his FCC censorship czar to extort concessions and distort the coverage of any media companies seeking regulatory approval.

With so much happening in the world, this story is flying way under the radar. But it has huge implications for the future of media and election coverage — and Trump’s ability to control the political narrative and hold onto power.

Why should we still care about who owns local-TV stations?

Even with the internet and social media, local TV is the most-watched source of local news and information, especially around elections. With the decline of newspapers and the dismantling of public media, local TV is only becoming more dominant at the local level.

Unfortunately, over the past few decades, runaway consolidation has put hundreds of stations in the hands of the broadcast networks and a few big companies like Gray Media and the notorious Sinclair Broadcast Group. Industry lobbyists and captured regulators have clear-cut public-interest protections while getting very rich from attack ads during election seasons.

With Trump’s restoration, broadcasters saw a new opportunity to gorge themselves.

“It’s evident that the antiquated ownership caps applied to broadcasters do not reflect the reality of today’s competitive media environment,” declared Perry Sook, the chairman of broadcast giant Nexstar, on an investor call just two days after the 2024 election. “We believe that there is value to be created for our shareholders through further consolidation, while driving true and new benefits to the American people who want and deserve fact-based, unbiased local news.”

In case any incoming Trumpers missed his fair-and-balanced dog whistling, Sook then restated his commitment to “eliminating the level of activist journalism out there.”

Nexstar has lived up to its promises, sacking a journalist at its newspaper The Hill to avoid Trump’s ire and evade a lawsuit. The company pumps out Fox-lite content to its 160-plus stations and puts on “town halls” soft-peddling Trump’s anti-democratic threats.

Nexstar also uses the public airwaves to push the corporate policy agenda. In April, it forced affiliates to air newscast segments with pro-consolidation pleas that pushed viewers to a website lobbying for looser ownership rules.

No cap: What the FCC is doing is illegal

In June, the Trump FCC started a proceeding to dump the national cap. There’s one big problem: It doesn’t have the authority to do it. Congress set the cap, and it will — or should — take an act of Congress to remove it.

“But as Chairman Carr’s tenure so far demonstrates,” my colleague S. Derek Turner wrote, “his Commission is not going to let little things like the law, settled precedent, or even the First Amendment get in the way of its partisan and ideological aims.”

The broadcasters’ arguments for more consolidation basically boil down to the following: Big Tech is stealing our lunch money, and we need to scale up to survive. But as Free Press detailed in a 93-page legal filing with the FCC last week, these claims don’t withstand scrutiny. Broadcasting is still very profitable, and more mergers will only cost jobs and undermine competition.

And evidence shows that when these big chains consolidate, they actually reduce news coverage. From 2009 to 2024, according to Turner, the number of local-TV stations producing original news declined by 10 percent, even as inflation-adjusted revenues increased by 49 percent.

More consolidation is bad for local communities. Of course, the companies leading the charge for more consolidation see local news only as a vehicle for serving political ads and spreading right-wing propaganda. For them, this is going as planned.

“Scale wins in today’s broadcast industry, and we intend to lead that consolidation,” Sinclair’s chief executive recently crowed to investors.

An offer we must refuse

Under a normal administration, this proposal would be despicable. Under the Trump regime, it’s extremely dangerous.

“Chairman Carr has made it known that every FCC-licensed firm’s continued existence will now be contingent upon that company’s editorial and internal personnel decisions aligning with the White House’s wishes,” Turner said. “Media consolidation and deal approvals are now explicitly a way for President Trump to further consolidate his dictatorial power through explicit loyalty tests and pledges to use the public airwaves as a propaganda tool against the American public.”

Too much of the broadcast industry is looking the other way. But there are notable exceptions.

Harry Jessell, the longtime industry cheerleader and journalist behind the TV Newscheck site, warned his colleagues in a recent column to beware of Trump and Carr’s extortionist racket.

The regime’s shakedowns follow a pattern: First comes the frivolous lawsuit seeking billions. Then the threats from the FCC. Then companies pay millions to settle, as Jessell writes, with “the implicit understanding that the corporate bosses will keep a tight rein on their newsrooms and make sure they lighten up and avoid offending Trump.”

I don’t see eye to eye with Jessell on most policy issues, but I agree 100 percent with his conclusion: “This abuse of power by the White House and the FCC constitutes the most serious breach of broadcasters’ First Amendment protections in the 45 years I have been paying attention to such things.”

Left unchecked, broadcasters’ greed and perfidy are threatening to turn the public airwaves into a full-fledged propaganda arm of the Trump regime that could topple our already teetering democracy.

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