Economic News

Even More Duopoly Rules Discarded?

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Article in Free Press by Staff, 12/31/25

Headline:  “Labor Unions and Media Justice Groups File Petition Urging the FCC to Reject Nexstar’s Proposed Takeover of Tegna“

“The petition to deny the transfer of broadcast licenses from TEGNA to Nexstar was filed by Free Press, the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians—Communications Workers of America (NABET-CWA), The NewsGuild—Communications Workers of America (TNG-CWA), the United Church of Christ Media Justice Ministry and Public Knowledge. In their filing the petitioners state that the merger would result in an illegal broadcast conglomerate, exceeding the 39-percent audience-reach ‘National Cap’ set by Congress.

“Though Nexstar and TEGNA seek a waiver of this limit, the commission is prohibited by law from waiving, altering, or eliminating this National Cap. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.freepress.net/news/labor-unions-and-media-justice-groups-file-petition-urging-fcc-reject-nexstars-proposed

Unlimited Coverage?

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Article in AP by Bill L Barrow, 12/19/25

Headline:  “Trump gave an unusually partisan White House address. Should networks have given him the TV time?”

“ATLANTA (AP) — When Donald Trump delivered the first White House address of his second presidency Wednesday night, all major U.S. networks beamed his image and voice onto their airwaves, cable feeds and online platforms.

Americans ended up watching the Republican president stand in the Diplomatic Reception Room and deliver 18 minutes of aggressive, politically motivated arguments that misstated facts, blamed the nation’s ills on his predecessor, exaggerated the results of his nearly 11 months in office and amplified his characteristically gargantuan, immeasurable promises about what’s to come. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-address-tv-networks-c9704130f09f607f82f9e0054dfc3c02

Media in Crisis?

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Interview in The New Republic by Perry Bacon, 12/17/25

Headline:  “Transcript: America’s Three Media Crises and How to Fix Them”

Subhead:  “University of Pennsylvania media scholar Victor Pickard says that a robust system of public-funded media is essential for America democracy. “

“Victor Pickard: . . .’So I would identify the three major problems facing the U.S. today in terms of our media system and how it functions within a democratic society would be the collapse of local journalism, the defunding of our public media, and the what we might think of as runaway consolidation of our news media’. . .”

Read the full interview at:

https://newrepublic.com/article/204495/transcript-america-three-media-crises-fix

No Room in the Basket?

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Article in New York Times by John Koblin, 12/25/25

Headline:  “CNN, Unwanted by Netflix, Is Excluded From a Sale, for Now”

Subhead:  “The prospect of Paramount buying Warner Bros. Discovery had led CNN journalists to wonder if the channel might be combined with CBS News. Instead, CNN will remain in a separate corporate entity.”

“Netflix’s mega $83 billion deal for Warner Bros. Discovery has major implications for the entertainment industry, as well as the Warner Bros. film and TV studios and HBO.

“The fallout, at least for now, will be far less significant for CNN.

“The 24-hour news channel is conspicuously absent from the media entities that Netflix said on Friday it planned to acquire in its proposed takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. . . ”

Read the full article at:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/05/business/media/cnn-netflix-warner-bros-discovery-deal.html?unlocked_article_code=1.6U8.DPP4.1A8q34iR9fB9&smid=url-share

Native Community Radio Struggles

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Photo by South Dakota Seachlight

Article in Indian Country Today by John Hult in the South Dakota Searchlight, 12/1/25

Headline:  “Tribal radio funding flows, but future remains uncertain after clawback of public media money”

Subhead: “KILI has raised $80,000 in donations since the summer, and $50,000 came from a single donor after the story ran in the New York Times.”

“PORCUPINE — For the past few weeks, Oitancan “Oi” Zephier has labored among piles of vinyl records nearly 2 feet high.

KILI-FM, the Porcupine, South Dakota-based tribal public broadcasting station Zephier manages, has gone digital and no longer needs the records.

The station is selling the records, because what it needs is cash. . .”

Read the full article at:


https://ictnews.org/news/tribal-radio-funding-flows-but-future-remains-uncertain-after-clawback-of-public-media-money

 

 

Media Promote War?

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Article in Common Dreams by Ricardo Vaz, 11/20/25

Headline:  “Venezuela Gets the Iraq Treatment: US Corporate Media Manufactures Consent for Another Imperialist War”

Subhead:  “Over weeks of military buildup and threats, corporate outlets elected to ignore the evidence disproving Trump’s claims and to platform warmongers.”

“. . .Over the years, Western media have endorsed Washington’s Venezuela regime-change efforts at every turn, from cheerleading coup attempts to whitewashing deadly sanctions (FAIR.org, 6/13/22, 6/4/21, 1/22/20). Now, with a possible military operation that could have disastrous consequences, corporate outlets are making little effort to hold the US government accountable. Rather, they are unsurprisingly ceding the floor to the warmongers. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/venezuela-media-war

Wrong Climate for News?

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Article in The Nation by Amy Westervelt, 11/5/25

Headline:  “The Media Is Complicit in the Climate Confusion”

Subhead: “The vast majority of people want their governments to take climate action—but most wrongly think they’re in the minority. The media is partly to blame.”

” . . .Now new research is highlighting the role the media plays in perpetuating this gap. Yale’s most recent climate opinion poll shows that while more than two-thirds of Americans want stronger climate policy, less than a third of them say they see coverage of the issue in the media at least once a week. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/climate-media-perception-gap/

 

 

Alaska Community Radio Trouble

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Article in Poynter by Liam Scott, 1028/25

Headline:  “An Alaska station connects communities across hundreds of miles. Now it’s fighting to survive.”

Subhead:  “Federal funding cuts have left KOTZ, the only local news source for much of northwest Alaska, on the brink of closure”

“In the remote Arctic town of Kotzebue, Alaska, some residents still talk about the Dairy Queen that closed several years ago. They also talk about what’s at risk of closing next: the region’s lone radio station.

“Since 1973, KOTZ has delivered the news to Kotzebue, population 3,102, and several other small, sparse villages that collectively are home to about the same number of people. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2025/alaska-radio-station-kotz-faces-funding-crisis/

 

Fewer Local News Outlets

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Article in Poynter by Angela Fu, 10/20/25

Headline: “An alarming number of independent publishers and small chains closed papers last year, new Medill study finds”

Subhead:  “The United States has lost nearly 3,500 newspapers and more than 270,000 newspaper jobs since 2005, the report found”

“For years, the U.S. has lost more than two newspapers per week on average, thanks, in part, to growing consolidation. But this past year, the majority of closures were papers belonging to smaller chains and independent owners, according to a new report from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

“Medill’s 2025 State of Local News report tracked 136 newspaper closures over the past year, up from 130 last year. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2025/medill-report-local-news-closures-independent-papers-news-deserts/

The Talking-Rings Took Over

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(From The Time Machine, 1960)

Article in The Washington Post by George Will. 10/17/25

Headline: “What killed print media — and what died with it”

“The waning of newsprint is about cultural changes more momentous than digital publishing’s arrival.”

“. . .Mir [a Canadian media ecologist] says ‘the last newspaper generation’ was born in the early 1980s. It came of age as the internet did. Soon journalism stopped being about informing people to make them citizens, and began to be about making them agitated.

“The new business model depends on polarization, amplifying readers’ irritations and frustrations. ‘A newspaper,’ wrote Vladimir Lenin, ‘is not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organiser.’

“ ‘Americans,’ Mir says, ‘consume media 12 hours per day. . .”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/10/17/trump-internet-news-media-newspapers/