What liberal media? Mainstream news is now either controlled by the right — or scared of it
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Fox News' Rupert Murdoch receiving the Global Leadership Award 2015 on November 30, 2015 (Hudson Institute/Wikimedia Commons)
Buzz Machine founder and media critic Jeff Jarvis said the right no longer has the justification to call media “liberal media” anymore now that Trump has exercised complete control of the industry.
“We can, once and for all, end the trope of ‘liberal media,” Jarvis told CNN. “There are liberals in media, but the corporations are now either controlled by the right wing or frightened of it.”
Jarvis, who is also an associate professor at City University of New York's Graduate School of Journalism, described “a frightening usurpation of media by Trump and his allies” with the takeover of Viacom, CBS and Paramount by Trump allies Larry and David Ellison.
“We see what they’ve already done with CBS. … The producer of “60 Minutes” quit. The word is they’re going to hire so-called ‘heterodox’ writer Bari Weiss for a major role at CBS. They hired a conservative as ombudsman. So, the path of what they’re doing is already clear,” said Jarvis.
Jarvis said dissenting voices would normally find other places to broadcast, but that’s not so easy either now thanks to massive billionaire purchases of whole online communities.
“We still have blogs, but they aren’t what they used to be, right? We had TikTok, but that could be taken over. We have YouTube, but that’s also owned by a big corporation that will come under pressure shortly. So, it’s really troubling to see where any dissent can be heard in this country anymore.”
CNN reports the TikTok deal Trump announced Friday involves investments from several US-based firms, including the Ellisons and Andreesen Horowitz, a prominent pro-Trump VC firm.
“That troubles me greatly … because TikTok was a potential alternative to old mass media. So, it’s a tremendous consolidation, but it’s not just a business consolidation — it’s a political consolidation of media now at the higher level,” said Jarvis. “… the Trumpist MAGA is taking over a dying institution.
Jarvis added that the internet doomed mass media with its failed revenue mechanics.
“[The] myth, as I always teach my students, is that all readers see all ads, so we charge all advertisers for all readers, that we control their attention. That was never really true, but advertisers had nowhere else to go,” said Jarvis. “Now advertising has fallen off as a support. Instead, we have much of media going to paywalls and subscriptions, but there’s only so many things people are going to subscribe to, and what that does is put reliable, credible, authoritative information behind paywalls for the few who choose to pay for it.”
“Big old media has sacrificed its own influence,” he said.
Read the CNN report at this link.