Trump 1.0 took a hatchet to media ownership limits. Those limits, built on the back of decades of bipartisan collaboration, prohibited local broadcasters and media from growing too large, trampling smaller (and more diversely-owned) competitors underfoot. The result of their destruction has been a rise in local news deserts, a surge in right wing propaganda outlets pretending to be “local news,” less diverse media ownership, and (if you hadn’t noticed) a painfully disinformed electorate.

Trump 2.0 has been significantly worse.

Trump’s FCC has finished demolishing whatever was left of already saggy media ownership limits, and are eyeing eliminating rules that would prevent the big four (Fox, ABC, CBS, NBC) from merging (a major reason why these networks have been such feckless authoritarian appeasers).

They’re also working hard to let all of our local right wing broadcast companies merge into one, even larger, shittier company, something Donald Trump is very excited about!

. . . Trump’s rise to power couldn’t have been made possible without the Republican domination of media. For the better part of a generation Republicans have dominated AM radio, local broadcast TV, and cable news, and have since done a remarkable job hoovering up what’s left of both major media companies (CBS, FOX) and modern social media empires (TikTok, Twitter). The impact is everywhere you look.

. . . They very openly (and so far semi-successfully) are trying to build a state media apparatus akin to what they have in Orban’s Hungary and Putin’s Russia. Our corporate press is already so broken and captured it’s incapable of communicating that to anybody. It simply wouldn’t be in their best financial interests for existing media conglomerates to be honest about this sort of thing.

Ah one o’ them genoside supporters eh?

(/s of course, I’m in complete agreement.)

Jokes on them. Our super-lefties weren’t gonna vote anyway.

Yer freakin me out!

/s

That or fight an eleventy-hundred billion dollar lawsuit from the demented rapist.

Was it? 🤔

Link shortening, as a different example. Thankfully it finally sort of died. Pre-loading is another. Tiktok is uploading before the file is saved, is another.

No! Welfare queens! Allayaz! Lookin fer handouts!

(/s)

Yeah no shit billionaires locking the clamps on news.

That’s bad. Mmmkay.

Yarr

Heheh. Well, that’s what omnipresent global propaganda is for! Just keep them in the fox news buckets and they’ll never flinch.

Her: Ummmmm . . America! *waves flag, takes bribes*

ding! ding! ding!

I dunno. The Crusades were super fucked up.

It felt like four though

If only

Tbh they just didn’t stop the evangelicals from that shit. Way way back in they day they were cooler about that. But then. Jeezus.

Then they saw its use as a weapon.

URL previews - another thing we warned about for, oh yeah, this reason

🥁