The Rich Control the Media, But Whining Isn’t a Strategy

If anyone doubted that the rich would use their control of the media to push their agenda and silence dissent, CBS removed it with its decision to censor the scheduled 60 Minutes broadcast on CECOT prison. CECOT is the notorious maximum security prison in El Salvador where Trump has sent a number of the people that he has deported. There have been numerous accounts of torture and abusive treatment in the prison, which presumably would have been highlighted in the segment.

CBS, under its new ownership, decided that we shouldn’t see the 60 Minutes segment, or at least not the one its team had prepared for broadcast last night. Apparently, they were worried it would offend the Trump administration.

According to a leaked account, Bari Weiss, the right-wing zealot that the new ownership put in charge of CBS News, decided that the program could not air without an interview with Stephen Miller, Trump’s deporter-in-chief. The producers of the show had apparently already reached out to the White House, as is their standard practice, but they refused to comment, presumably choosing to instead attack the broadcast as unfair and unbalanced after it ran.

Weiss is insisting that the program include an interview with Miller, giving him an effective veto over when and if the program airs. If we ever do see the segment, it will likely include other edits to make it more Trump-friendly.

There can be a tendency to exaggerate the courage and independence of the pre-Trump media, but news shows like 60 Minutes have done much great reporting over the years, breaking stories that the rich and powerful would prefer to see buried. This will no longer be the case.

Whining is not an Effective Media Strategy, Nor Is Taxing the Rich

I have been getting regular fundraising notices from Robert Reich, who I greatly respect, complaining about the takeover of the media by rich Trumpers. Reich is right, but the moral of his story is that we have to increase taxes on the rich.

While taxing the rich more is something we should do, along with taking away the patent and copyright monopolies that make many of them rich, and corrupt bankruptcy laws that give us private equity billionaires, along with a few other changes, we have to go much further to get back impartial media.

The huge gaps in wealth and income create an enormous power imbalance and plausible changes in tax policy will do little to rectify the situation. If Elon Musk’s fortune was cut in half to $200 billion, he would still have a ridiculous amount of political power. The same applies to the rest of the crew of billionaires.

If we want to get responsible media that does its job in reporting on the deeds and misdeeds of the rich and powerful, plausible reductions in inequality (and how do we get those?) will not be sufficient. We need to look to fundamentally restructure the media.

This is not as far-fetched a goal as it may sound. We will not get the current Congress, or even one with a Democratic majority in 2026 to take the lead in pushing for responsible media. But we can have initiatives at the state and local level to build up independent media that is not owned and controlled by the rich and very rich.

My preferred route is a system of individual tax credits, say $100 per person, to support the person’s favorite news outlet(s). This would be a credit, not a deduction, and fully refundable, so even the poorest person gets the same amount as Elon Musk. There could be different conditions attached to receiving the credit. In my view, the material supported should be freely available outside a paywall; but that’s something that could be decided by the state or local governments implementing the system.

The best model for those envisioning this system would be the charitable contribution tax deduction. The difference is that this would be a credit, with every person getting the same amount regardless of how much their income is.

We may already have a foot in the door on this. Katie Wilson, the newly elected progressive mayor of Seattle, is a big supporter of this system. She will have a full agenda as mayor, and faces a budget shortfall, but if stars align right, perhaps this system will be put in place.

Other states, like California and New York, have sought to support local media with a tax on Google and Meta, which have gobbled up much of the advertising revenue that had formerly supported news outlets. This money would then be used to subsidize subscriptions, an inferior approach in my view, but still a way to support independent media.

This system of individual tax credits may seem far away from the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars that support major news outlets like CBS or CNN. While it may be difficult to pay the multi-million-dollar salaries that top news anchors get through this system, it could support a huge amount of important journalism.

Many people will choose not to use their credits or use them to support slop or perhaps more right-wing MAGA screeds. But suppose 10 percent of the population, 25 million people, used their credits to support serious investigative reporting like what is done by outlets like ProPublica, The American Prospect, The New Republic, and on good days The New York Times.

That would provide $2.5 billion a year in revenue, roughly one hundred times the budget of ProPublica. It could help to support hundreds of smaller outlets.

And even if most of this money goes to support local news outlets, they can band together to support national and international reporting. This has been the story of the Associated Press for 180 years.

The idea that a progressive stronghold, like Seattle, may adopt a modest proposal to support local news, may seem like chump change in a world where the mega rich tech oligarchs are throwing around billions to buy news outlets like cheap candy, but it is a hell of a lot more promising than whining. And it is not the only thing we can and should do to counter the corruption of the media by the Trump brigade.

It would be great to reform Section 230 so we don’t give Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg special protections that news and print outlets don’t enjoy. Obviously, this will not happen with a Republican Congress and Donald Trump in the White House, but we should at least highlight this utterly absurd subsidy that we give to these right-wing mega billionaires.

It would also be good if progressives stopped viewing it as gauche to file defamation lawsuits. That doesn’t mean absurd multibillion Trumpian lawsuits directed against every news outlet that criticizes someone, but it does mean suing to counter the damage of outright lies, such as the ones now being promotedagainst Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

I know the standard line is that we counter lies with more speech; but save that for the kindergarten class. When the right owns all the major news outlets and social media platforms, the idea that the truth will magically overcome their lies is not the sort of argument that can be taken seriously.

Anyhow, that is a longer story. But we do need to come up with ways to support independent media and not just complain about right-wing Trump sycophants taking over the media we have. My scheme is on the table. Let’s hear others.

This first appeared on Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog.

The post The Rich Control the Media, But Whining Isn’t a Strategy appeared first on CounterPunch.org.