The Media Is Eroding Under Trump

Written By Leeja Miller

Sources:

Transcript:

You’re tuned into Why, America? I’m Leeja Miller. The last week has seen further moves by the Trump regime to strip whatever little independent media and voices of dissent exist in the United States back to the bone. He has sued the Wall Street Journal as well as parent company News Corp and owner Rupert Murdoch for the allegedly defamatory article claiming Trump sent Jeffrey Epstein a lewd birthday card 2 decades ago. The most popular late night show on television, hosted by a longtime Trump critic, has been cancelled. And all federal funding for public media has been clawed back for years to come. That’s just all in the last week. We’ll get into these details as well as how this latest news pushes us further down the wellworn path to authoritarianism in a way that will take a generation at least to recover from.

First, the latest Trump defamation lawsuit. Trump looooves a good defamation lawsuit. Claiming someone defamed you is a great way to silence free speech and make it really inconvenient for people to criticize you, even if your lawsuit has no chance of winning to begin with. The Wall Street Journal published an article on July 17th claiming it had reviewed a birthday card Trump had sent to Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday back in 2003. The card was scrawled with Trump’s signature sharpie script. According to the Wall Street Journal Report, “It contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly “Donald” below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.

The letter concludes: “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”” The article includes Trump’s denial that he had anything to do with the card, including the line “I never wrote a picture in my life.” This was then further refuted when a number of doodles allegedly drawn by and signed by the president were unearthed. Trump openly threatened to sue the Wall Street Journal if it published an article about this card, and so when it did, in fact, publish the article, Trump was ready and filed his defamation lawsuit the very next day. It is standard, and likely especially so in this case given the open threat of litigation, for publications to consult internal legal departments and heavily vet articles before deciding to publish, so I have no doubt that the Wall Street Journal believed Trump’s threats, did a legal analysis, and decided it had enough proof to ward off any defamation lawsuit in the wake of the article. And so they published it.

Often, the way news outlets report on a story differs depending on the bias of the publication. And it’s hard to know how YOUR own perception of bias influences your interpretation of the news. This headline from PBS Newshour caught my eye “Trump sues Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch over story reporting on Epstein ties.” Using the Ground News browser extension, I can see that in the US the PBS Newshour is considered “left leaning.” To get a fuller picture of the story on all sides of the political spectrum I can click on Full Coverage, which will show me coverage of the same story from publications across the political spectrum.

My partner on today’s video, Ground News, uses 3 independent monitoring organizations to assess the bias rating for each publication. Each news monitoring organization has their own methodology - including editorial reviews, blind bias surveys, independent reviews, and third party research. These are legit INDEPENDENT organizations, but they are limited by the data available to them: their analysis is done in the context of the U.S. political system. Our overton window has shifted so far right that PBS NEWSHOUR is considered “left leaning.” That tells you a lot about the context within which the media you’re consuming operates. And thanks to Ground News, I get even more context, including how factual each publication is and who owns it, giving me a well-rounded idea of the motivations, biases, and accuracy of the news I’m consuming. Wouldn’t it be great if everyone in America had that much information about the news they consume??

Because depending on where you or your family members get the news, you’re going to get very different takes on the same story.

This is where Ground News comes in - and why I've been using them for over a year. Today’s partner Ground News is an app and website that offers tools to help you critically analyze the news you read, providing context to understand the full picture. I feel better equipped to make sense of what’s happening in the world without being influenced by just one perspective. And listen I’m not the only one who loves Ground News, the Nobel Peace Center even called it "an excellent way to stay informed, avoid echo chambers, and expand your worldview.”

I’m always really impressed with Ground News and genuinely think they’re a great resource. If you want to stay informed on US Politics and more Subscribe through this QR code or our link below at ground dot news slash leeja for 40% off this unlimited access Vantage Plan. It comes out to $5 a month for unlimited access to ALL the features I’ve mentioned. Thanks Ground News!

The point of this lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal, like much of Trump’s defamation lawsuits, is not necessarily to win but instead to intimidate the Wall Street Journal as well as any other news publication that may seek to criticize Trump into silence. Because even if his claims are frivolous, even though his request for $10 BILLION DOLLARS in damages is actually asinine, there’s no way he could prove he suffered that much in damages, it will still be a major headache for the Wall Street Journal to now defend against this lawsuit. Not only the Journal, but also Dow Jones, which owns it, News Corp, which owns Dow Jones, and Rupert Murdoch, who owns News Corp, which were all also named in Trump’s lawsuit. That’s right, Trump is suing his pal Rupert, clearly meant to send the message that nobody is above Trump’s wrath if they step out of line, not even the parent company of Trump’s greatest champion and mouthpiece: Fox News.

In announcing the lawsuit, Trump posted on social media that he hoped they were ready for hours and hours of depositions and turning over documents, indicating his entire point for filing the lawsuit was to punish and inconvenience the publication. The move could drastically backfire for Trump, though, because if they don’t manage to get the case dismissed outright at the beginning for being frivolous, which could happen, the parties would enter the discovery phase, during which time it’s very possible the lawyers would dig up all sorts of evidence further linking Trump to Epstein, including potentially deposing the President himself, which could be a major embarrassment. But Trump has also made claims that he wants to change libel law to make it easier to sue. Because for public figures like himself, the standard is higher for bringing a defamation case. He has to prove “actual malice” meaning that the publication knew or should have known that what they were publishing was false. That is a very difficult thing to prove, and because of this it is really hard to win a defamation lawsuit if you are a public figure. That is for very good reason–if you put yourself in the limelight, especially as a politician, there comes with that some inherent risk to your reputation, but that risk is justified in favor of open and robust debate about our public figures. If everyone was scared that they could get sued for accidentally publishing something incorrect about the president, that would have a chilling effect on the very important robust public debate that is necessary in a democracy. Which is exactly why Trump hates it. And bringing this case up to the supreme court would offer him the opportunity to challenge the court’s precedent for that actual malice standard. It’s way too early to tell what direction the case will go, though Thomas and Gorsuch have both indicated willingness to revisit the actual malice standard set in 1964. All that being said, though the Wall Street Journal’s lawyers for now have indicated they plan to continue to fight this case, the very likely outcome of this will be another capitulation to Trump in the form of a settlement for some millions of dollars, just like CBS parent company Paramount did when it paid Trump $16 million dollars to settle a dispute related to 60 Minutes earlier this year.

Which brings us to our next topic du jour: CBS’s cancellation of Late Night with Stephen Colbert, the most popular late night show on television. Last week, Colbert announced the cancellation of the show, not just of him as the host but the entire show, which will go off the air in May, 10 months from now. This announcement came just a week after an episode in which Colbert openly criticized the president. CBS claims the decision was a difficult one but the result of losing millions of dollars due to the general lack of viewership for late night TV. While that may or may not be true, it’s hard not to look at the firing of Stephen Colbert and shuttering of a major late night show in the context of the lawsuits I just mentioned and a greater push generally by this regime to get all major media to fall in line. And Trump has some major leverage over CBS’s parent company Paramount because of a merger in the works that would further consolidate media holdings in this country.

You see Paramount needs approval from the FCC to do its major $8 billion merger with media company SkyDance. On top of that, Trump’s FCC chair Brendan Carr has been investigating CBS for violating the FCC’s “news distortion” policy by making Trump look bad.

If the merger were allowed to go through the new owner of the renamed New Paramount corporation would be David Ellison, current owner of SkyDance Media. Ellison has been in close talks with Bari Weiss, according to CNN. Bari Weiss owns the publication The Free Press. Weiss’s publication has a large volume of “anti-woke” columns, Weiss is a strong supporter of Israel, and her publication is aimed at attracting the NEW centrists in America–basically anyone who isn’t progressive but also isn’t a die-hard MAGA enthusiast, which in most other Western Democracies would make the Free Press a right wing publication but in the US today to some people it’s seen as “centrism”. And it’s an indication of the direction Ellison would want to take the news arm of the New Paramount company after the merger–soft on Republicans and in favor of corporate interests. Skydance has already promised the FCC it will eliminate DEI and commit to a comprehensive review after the merger.

But here’s the thing, the merger is bigger than just Skydance buying Paramount. It is a multi-phase merger that includes SkyDance buying National Amusements, which is the holding company that owns not only Paramount but also owns hundreds of movie theaters across the world but is also a holding company that has overseen a HUGE swath of media mergers over the last couple decades. They merged Viacom with Paramount Communications, bought out blockbuster, merged with the original CBS Corporation, acquired BET holdings, they also own MTV networks, merged Viacom with CBS Corporation, renamed that whole company to Paramount Global, so now National Amusements owns yes Paramount and Viacom but also TONS of other networks including CBS, BET, MTV, Nickelodeon, Showtime, Vh1, and Simon & Schuster publications, among many others. Basically when you hear that 90% of the media in the US is owned by 6 companies, one of those companies is National Amusements, and now David Ellison’s SkyDance is buying National Amusements and doing some complex mergers probably to evade taxes or something to combine all of it with Skydance into the New Paramount Corporation.

And it’s worth taking a second to focus on SkyDance owner David Ellison and the Ellison family. David Ellison is the son of Larry Ellison, founder of the company Oracle. Larry Ellison is the second richest man in the world and is reportedly helping to finance this merger. Oracle has numerous government contracts in the US, including a new venture called Stargate, a joint venture with OpenAI, aiming to invest 500 billion dollars in artificial intelligence infrastructure in the US over the next four years, including a new 5 gigawatt AI data center.

Oracle is also in talks with Skydance Media, again Oracle owned by father Larry, Skydance owned by son David, they are in talks for a $100 million dollar per year contract for Oracle to provide cloud computing and software after the merger with Paramount. The more you follow the money in this country it’s like pulling one long connected thread of billionaires influencing other billionaires and buying and selling shit while we all fight over the scraps.

All of this to say, Stephen Colbert’s firing will not silence Stephen Colbert, he will land on his feet somewhere else, but it is a sign of the times–this is what happens when you do not enforce antitrust laws: major media monopolizes into major multi-billion dollar conglomerates, including owning the sources where we get our news, those owners make billions, and we allow our politicians to be freely bought out by those billionaires, to become buddy buddy with them, and then to put one of them in the white house, so they are willing to play ball with each other to make as much money as possible without angering dear leader. And so we have $16 million dollar bribes from Paramount to allow further mergers to go through, and you have Trump suing News Corp, one of the big six, for stepping out of line, and the fallout is going to be anyone who speaks out against the regime like Stephen Colbert and all the people working for those shows behind the scenes who will lose their jobs and don’t have a platform like Colbert does, and a continued stifling of an already stifled media landscape, but the fallout will also be less and less trust in our media, news media increasingly influenced by nothing other than corporate interests, corporate interests that are often directly at odds with the interests of the general population.

And what do you do if the private sector will not or cannot provide an essential service such as the dissemination of factual, truthful journalism without a corporate bent? The government funds it. That is why we have the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I mean that is also why we have antitrust laws but those haven’t been enforced since the Reagan era which is why we have the media conglomeration to begin with but at the VERY least, we have the government to fund media where the private sector will not.

And so while Stephen Colbert is a big story right now, the important story, the thing that is going to have a huge impact across the country on our ability to access information, is that in the wake of these major media mergers and further conglomeration that pushes the interests of billionaires above everything else, Congress just voted to completely gut public media.

Last week, Congress passed a rescissions package, which withdraws funding that had already been allocated. The package included rescission of a total of $9 billion in funding, mostly to foreign aid programs, and $1.1 billion of that was money allocated for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, an independent group that provides some funding to NPR (comprising about 2% of the NPR budget) but will mostly impact PBS (which relies on the CPB for 15% of its budget) and local NPR affiliate stations (which rely on CPB funding for on average 8-10% of their budget, though some stations rely much more heavily on federal funds. With the passage of this rescission package, ALL federal funding for public broadcasting for two years is completely gone. The cuts go in effect at the start of the fiscal year in October. That 1.1 billion dollars represents a miniscule part of the total federal budget, but it will have catastrophic effects on freedom of the press and access to information, and will save you, by some reports, about $1.60 per year in taxes.

Funding for public media was created in 1967 by the Public Broadcasting Act, signed by LBJ but passed with bipartisan support to, in the words of LBJ, enrich man’s spirit. From that the CPB, an independent group, was created, as well as PBS and NPR. The Act set aside funds for media that was specifically created with the intention of protecting the media from political pressure. The money that Congress dedicates to CPB has, since 1967, created essential programming like PBS NewsHour, Sesame Street, Tiny Desk concerts, NOVA, Antiques Roadshow, All Things Considered, and so so much more that millions and millions of Americans grew up with and depend on for ongoing education and information.

And despite many stations bracing for a loss of funding, this will have devastating and immediate impacts on many small and rural affiliate stations. According to NPR CEO Katherine Maher, nearly 3 in 4 Americans say they rely on their public radio stations for alerts and news for their public safety. One in five NPR member stations could close without federal funding. Small and rural stations will lay off journalists or close, and those are the stations that tend to create jobs for new journalists who then feed larger publications–that pipeline for new journalists will be shuttered. And many of those stations will be located in rural areas where the private sector sees no value in providing a local media service. According to The New York Times “The cut will also hasten the decline of America’s once robust media ecosystem. The number of local journalists has declined by 75 percent since 2002, and a third of American counties don’t have a single full-time local journalist, a study this month found. The United States spends less per person on public media than other wealthy countries, but even that limited funding has helped make public radio a resilient part of local news. To abandon it is to accelerate a dangerous trend straining civic health.”

According to Politico 34 public radio and TV stations in the country receive at least 50% of their funding from federal grants. 12 of those stations are located in just one state: Alaska. According to the director of public radio stations in Alaska, the public broadcasting audience in Alaska is mostly Republicans. This is a good example not only of how Trump voters vote against their own self interests, but also of how punishing public media won’t impact NPR which Republicans accuse of having a left-leaning bias. It will instead impact local stations’ ability to report on or broadcast local government meetings, stories important to the local population. And many of the impacted stations do not fit on a left or right leaning spectrum, and many of Trump’s voters will be hurt.

On top of that, people who rely on news commentators, like me, which is an increasingly large portion of the US population, will also be impacted. We are not journalists. I don’t have a “beat” I am not feet on the ground out there discovering news and reporting on it. As much as others like me like to tout themselves as independent journalists, a lot of us are taking the news, as discovered and reported on by actual journalists, and adding our own insight and expertise as commentary. Some people don’t even do that much, some people just take headlines other people wrote and read them out on TikTok without adding anything of value. If I do not have access to reputable journalism, my work suffers as well. As does the work of all your favorite news commentators.

But ultimately the most concerning thing about all of this is the death of important sources of truth in a country where the truth is already hard to find, where our leaders are comfortable with openly lying or hiding the truth, and where the death of independent truth tellers (figuratively, for now) allows us all to slide further down the road of fascism. Tad Stoermer is a scholar of resistance whose TikTok’s have been on heavy rotation in my feed lately. He had a great video on the importance of publicly funded media in resisting fascism. [insert clip].

Of course this isn’t to say that all independent media is without bias or above critique. Criticizing our media is good, open debate is good for a robust democracy, so long as the debaters are bound by truth and engage in the debate in good faith. The problem is that the extreme right in this country have co-opted “bias” allegations to claim that the “mainstream media” and publicly-funded media is irrevocably infected with left-wing bias because they aren’t willing to engage with far right fringe ideologies. Engaging in “debate” with conspiracy theorists or fascists just platforms talking points that don’t exist in logic or truth. That is not what truthful journalism looks like, but that is what our overton window has become distorted to include, so now if a publication isn’t willing to platform fringe theorists and fascists, they are exhibiting left-wing bias. And then viral Jubilee clips go around, platforming actual self-proclaimed fascists and nazi sympathizers, and forcing a highly regarded journalist to actually interact with these clowns instead of never giving their repugnant ideas the platforms needed to flourish. All in the name of remaining “unbiased.”

The reality is that our media conglomeration, the billionaires controlling what bit of major media still exists, has pushed the overton window so far to the right in this country that we have collectively moved away from truth. Our most popular news channel is Fox News. When so many people, half the voting public, are convinced that the only real “truth” is the one that hawks right wing talking points devoid of logic or facts, we create an environment that is hostile to independent journalism.

Vivian Schiller, a former NPR CEO, told NPR that “Journalism and government funding in the United States–those two things are incompatible.”

And Maria O’Mara, executive director of PBS and NPR affiliates in Utah, told NPR that all the political infighting involved with accepting funds from the government has drained their time and energy, and now that the funding has been threatened they have actually been working closer than ever with national networks. She hopes stations form stronger relationships to become more viable and vibrant in the wake of the rescission of government funds.

And so, like resistance scholar Tad Stoermer said, it is up to us, the public, to fund the media we want to see. It is a sad day but it is an opportunity to own public media and journalism removed from corporate or political interests. How do we ensure that resistance reporting continues? How do we come up with unique and creative ways to support independent, reputable journalists and the networks and studios and stations and publications that support their work? I’m asking you, this is a group effort, y’all always want me to give you the answers about what to do at the end of these videos but there needs to be some collective creative brainstorming here.

This could and should include supporting your local public radio station, or one in your state that is most at risk of losing funding. This could include subscribing to substacks of independent journalists. This could include paying to access the news publications you rely on most. This could include providing support and mentorship to up and coming journalists if you are a journalist yourself. But please let’s get creative, throw your ideas in the comments.

If you want to support my work, all my videos are completely ad free and uncensored over on Patreon, Patreon dot com slash leeja miller.

Thank you to my multi-platinum patrons Marc, Sarah Shelby, Art, David, R_H, L’etranger (Lukus), Thomas Johnson, and Tay. Your generosity makes this channel what it is, so thank you!

And if you liked this episode, you’ll like the one from Monday all about Trump’s latest judicial nominee and certified creep Emil Bove.

Leeja Miller
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