Free Press ‘Media Capitulation Index’ Reveals How the Nation’s Biggest Media Companies Are Responding to Trump
The sweeping investigation into the 35 largest American media conglomerates finds many are failing to defend democracy and a free press against authoritarian threats.
NEW YORK — On Tuesday, Free Press released the Media Capitulation Index, a detailed investigation into the independence of the 35 largest media conglomerates in the United States.
Accompanying the launch of the index is the publication of A More Perfect Media: Saving America’s Fourth Estate from Billionaires, Broligarchy and Trump. The report analyzes how far too many massive media companies are failing to hold power to account and defend our democracy in the face of persistent threats from the Trump administration.
In this investigation, Free Press found that to varying degrees the owners of America’s largest media firms are caving to pressure from an authoritarian-minded president and his captured federal agencies. This capitulation is not unique to owners of news outlets — like Paramount (which owns CBS), Disney (ABC) and Warner Bros. Discovery (CNN). Rather, it’s a pervasive trend that applies to nearly all commercial media, including cable and telecommunications firms and online platforms.
In evaluating the 35 companies, Free Press found that media owners capitulated to the current White House in four principal ways:
- through payments to Trump in the form of legal settlements, production contracts, campaign contributions and other donations;
- by rolling back prior commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion practices in hiring and community outreach;
- through editorial manipulation and censorship: pressuring their newsrooms to soften criticism of the administration, firing staff and even pulling content that might anger the president; and
- by attempting to curry favor with the president during inaugural ceremonies, private dinners at Mar-a-Lago and meetings in the White House.
The index rates the companies on a scale from “independent” to “vulnerable” to “compromising” to “capitulating” to “obeying” to “propaganda.” Trump Media (the Donald Trump-owned enterprise that operates Truth Social) and Elon Musk’s X/Space X received the full “propaganda” ranking.
Of the 33 other companies, Free Press ranked only two, Bloomberg and Netflix, as “independent” — their owners willing to face down pressure from the Trump White House and federal agencies. Paramount is one of many companies rated as “obeying.” The broadcasting and entertainment behemoth made headlines throughout the summer as its owners bent a knee to the administration to gain official approval of its multibillion-dollar Skydance merger.
The index focuses on the subsidiaries that each media conglomerate controls, and examines how this ownership influences public discourse and political outcomes across the country. Free Press then rates the independence of each of these giants, analyzing their commitment to democracy at a time of rising authoritarianism worldwide.
Free Press Senior Director Timothy Karr, who led the media-capitulation investigation and authored A More Perfect Media, said:
“The nation’s biggest and wealthiest media companies have become so deeply embedded within the power structures of society — and so entangled with and dependent on government contracts and other official favors — it’s easy to see how they bend to the whims of an abusive leadership. It wasn’t meant to be this way. The framers of the Constitution explicitly established our media system as a reliable counterweight to tyranny. But too many media owners in the 21st century put their profits first.
“Media capitulation is a slippery slope. Once these owners compromise their companies’ editorial independence — once they step across the line into compliance — the temptation to cave further to official pressure grows even stronger. The editorial slide toward state propaganda becomes inevitable when a media owner’s financial interests align fully with those of a corrupt and bigoted regime. Jeff Bezos, Shari Redstone and Mark Zuckerberg aren’t alone in this failure; media capitulation to government power is pervasive to varying degrees across the entire cohort of big-media billionaires.
“The problem is one of structure and greed. Media policy too often cements in place the power of profit-seeking conglomerates over local, independent and noncommercial outlets. Their resulting wealth has billionaire owners striking a dangerous compact with political power to maintain their dominance. Lost in the equation are the people the media are intended to serve.”
The report provides a roadmap to repair America’s fourth estate. This includes four policy recommendations:
- Fully fund public media and independent, local-accountability journalism;
- Restore and strengthen media-ownership limits;
- Embolden the FCC’s and FTC’s role in stopping media mergers that harm the public interest; and
- Reestablish federal agencies’ independence from the executive branch.
Read A More Perfect Media for more details on these remedies and other efforts to stop media capitulation and build a healthier media system — one that fosters trustworthy journalism, defends democracy and holds corrupt and abusive leaders accountable.