The Trump MAGA media monopoly is here — but you can still stop it

Last Sunday, CBS’s erstwhile flagship newsmagazine, 60 Minutes, opened with an extended adulatory interview of Reza Pahlavi, son of the late exiled Shah of Iran, whom Trump presumably is auditioning to be Iran’s post-invasion leader.

Although Pahlavi is in Paris and hasn’t lived in Iran for nearly a half-century, CBS’s Scott Pelley fed the exiled prince softball questions and allowed him to avoid talking about his father’s record of brutal repression. Pelley even added, in a wishful voiceover, that “Pahlavi told us that there are units within the military and the police that would turn on the hardline government. He says that many but not all troops could be given amnesty in a process of national reconciliation.”

This isn’t news. It’s pablum from the White House. 60 Minutes was once a reliable source of tough reporting. Now it’s becoming a shill for the Trump regime.

It soon could get far worse. CBS News is on the verge of becoming part of the largest pro-Trump media monopoly in America.Two of the nation’s biggest news organizations — CBS and CNN — along with CBS entertainment (home to Stephen Colbert) and Comedy Central (home to Jon Stewart) and HBO (John Oliver) and TikTok (where 1 out of 5 Americans now get their news) — are all about to become one giant mega-media monopoly under the control of Trump allies and suck-ups: multibillionaire Larry Ellison and his son, David.

It’s not too late to stop this, and I’ll tell you how in a moment, but I’d like you to pause and imagine how readily this new pro-Trump media giant can mislead America about what Trump is doing and silence criticism of Trump.

It could make Rupert Murdoch’s media empire of Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post look scrupulous by comparison.

Trump cares more about TV news than he does about his presidency. In fact, TV news is his presidency. He chose his cabinet members on the basis of their total loyalty to him and how they look and sound on TV. He spends all day watching coverage of himself on TV. And now he’s on the verge of having effective control over a gigantic media monopoly.

I don’t believe Stewart or Oliver will be silenced, but their contracts may not be renewed. After all, look at what CBS did to Colbert, whose show will end in May.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the algorithm on TikTok is adjusted to reduce Trump criticism.

And a small army of producers and correspondents at CNN are likely to be more careful about what they report. Stories critical of Trump may be axed, as is now occurring at the late, great CBS News.

How did this happen? Think greed, money, power, and Trump.

Trump and the Ellisons take over Warner Bros. Discovery

When the dark history of this sordid era is written, among the most shameful culprits — who put making humongous amounts of money for themselves above the common good — will be Larry and David Ellison; Shari Redstone, former owner of Paramount; and David Zaslav, the current CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery.

Zaslav is now being lauded by the business community as a genius for selling Warner Bros. Discovery (in turn the owner of CNN, CNN International, and HBO) to the Ellisons’ for $111 billion, more than double its valuation in September. But he’s couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the common good. (Zaslav filed to sell just over $114 million worth of Warner Bros. stock less than a week after Warner Bros. clinched the deal.)

Why would the Ellisons spend billions (and go deep into debt) to buy Warner Bros. Discovery? Wealth and power — along with additional wealth and power that Trump can deliver.

Larry Ellison is the second-richest person in America. He owns Oracle, which runs much of the digital backbone of the nation’s commerce and government.

But the Ellisons, per et fils, couldn’t have created their new right-wing media empire without Trump. They needed Trump just as Trump has needed Larry Ellison (who’s been one of Trump’s strongest backers, dating back to the early days of Trump’s presidency).

Even before the Ellisons sweetened their offer for Warner Bros. Discovery and pushed Netflix out of the running, they proclaimed their “confidence in the speed and certainty of regulatory approval” for the deal. Translated: Don’t worry that we’re creating a gigantic media monopoly. Antitrust laws won’t touch us. We’ve got Trump’s Justice Department in the bag.

Trump and the Ellisons got several Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds to join in the deal (making me wonder whether such funding will complicate, or compromise, CBS News’s and CNN’s coverage of Trump’s war in Iran and of the Middle East in general).

Trump takes over CNN

For years Trump has blasted CNN as “fake news” and publicly demanded it be bought by new owners. “It’s imperative that CNN be sold,” Trump said in December, signaling he favored the Ellisons’ takeover proposal.

In December, according to the Wall Street Journal, “David Ellison offered assurances to Trump administration officials that if he bought Warner Bros. Discovery, he’d make sweeping changes to CNN.”

To be sure, CNN was moving rightward even before the Ellisons got their hands on it.

In 2022 Zaslav put Chris Licht in charge, who told CNN’s staff he wanted less criticism of Trump and the Republican right — instructing them to stop referring to Trump’s “Big Lie” because he thought the phrase sounded like a Democratic talking point, telling producers to downplay coverage of the first hearing of the congressional committee investigating January 6, and arranging Trump’s infamous CNN town hall, which gave the twice-impeached felonious ex-president a platform to make his comeback.

CNN’s rightward lurch caused CNN’s primetime show ratings to fall 25 percent and contributed to Licht’s firing after just 13 months.

Since then, CNN has undergone rounds of cuts under a series of owners seeking to reduce debt. Paramount and the Ellisons (and Trump) will be its fourth corporate parent in under a decade.

Trump takes over CBS

Last summer, as Redstone and other of Paramount’s previous owners sought federal approval to sell Paramount (owner of CBS) to the Ellisons, they sucked up to Trump by settling Trump’s baseless lawsuit against CBS News for $16 million. (He had sued over how 60 Minutes had edited an interview with former vice president Kamala Harris.)

Late night host Stephen Colbert called the settlement a “big fat bribe,” which it was.

To win further support from Trump for the sale, they announced the end of Colbert’s show (which, as I said, will finish its run in May). They cited economics, but Colbert’s has been the top-rated late night show on network television. The real reason for the cancellation was obvious: Colbert’s biting satirical criticism of Trump.

To cinch the deal, David Ellison promised to end diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at CBS. He hired a right-wing “ombudsman,” Kenneth Weinstein, the former head of a conservative think tank. And he named as the new editor-in-chief of CBS News Bari Weiss, founder of the center-right opinion and news site The Free Press.

Trump was delighted. “They’re friends of mine. They’re big supporters of mine. And they’ll do the right thing,” he said, praising the acquisition and adding that CBS News had “great potential” with Weiss in charge and that he expected it to be “fairer.”Fairer? Since Weiss took over, almost half of CBS News producers have walked, including legendary veteran Mary Walsh, who began her career under Walter Cronkite. As Walsh explained, “We’ve been told to aim our reporting at a particular part of the political spectrum. Honestly, I don’t know how to do that."

Weiss named a bunch of new contributors — many of them retired military or ex-intelligence officials or conservative pundits, including the anti-aging influencer Peter Attia (who has subsequently resigned over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein).

Weiss declared “We love America” a guiding principle and changed the CBS style guide to replace “assigned sex at birth” with “biological sex at birth” when referring to trans people.

She’s also defanged 60 Minutes. In December, Weiss axed a report about Venezuelans being deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison hours before it was set to air — a move that Sharyn Alfonsi, the long-standing correspondent who reported the segment, claimed was for “political” reasons. (The segment later aired on Jan. 18, drawing more than 5 million viewers.)

Weiss replaced Evening News anchors John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois with Tony Dokoupil — best known for hassling the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates for his “extremist” belief that apartheid is morally wrong.

As Trump told Dokoupil recently in a rambling nearly 13-minute interview, had Kamala Harris won the presidential election in 2024, “you probably wouldn’t have a job right now.” Exactly. (Moments after that rambling interview, not incidentally, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt conveyed Trump’s threat that “if it’s not out in full, we’ll sue your ass off.”)

How you can help stop this

All this has happened so suddenly that most Americans still haven’t noticed the emergence of this new pro-Trump media empire — CBS, CNN, HBO, Comedy Central, and TikTok — all under the control of Trump cronies Larry and David Ellison.

Billionaires are flipping media companies like playing cards. They don’t give a fig for the common good, or about the producers, correspondents, journalists, and investigative reporters whose lives are being turned upside-down. To them, it’s all about accumulating more wealth and power.

But it’s bad for the economy, bad for our democracy, and bad for America.

The Ellisons’s new mega-media monopoly would never pass muster if America still had antitrust enforcers. Media mergers and acquisitions deserve even stricter scrutiny than normal deals. But Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice is as likely to stop this deal as she is to enforce criminal laws against ICE agents.

So who can stop this?

State attorneys general. They can go to federal court to enforce federal antitrust laws. They have legal standing and necessary resources to challenge this monstrosity.

California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, has already made clear he will take it on.

“The California Department of Justice has an open investigation, and we intend to be vigorous in our review,” he says.

Good luck to him.

I hope other state attorneys general join in. You can help by contacting your state AGs and suggest they join this lawsuit. Contact information for your state’s AG is here.

Please do. The last thing America needs is a giant pro-Trump media monopoly.

• Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org