CBS’ current cancellation of the favored The Late Present with Stephen Colbert is yet one more case of heavy‑handed political and company meddling within the function of media within the US. It occurred simply three days after the comic and discuss present host criticised CBS’s guardian firm Paramount for settling a multimillion‑greenback lawsuit with Trump, with Colbert calling that settlement “a bribe”.
In its announcement, CBS said it’ll finish The Late Present after Might 2026 attributable to a declining viewers, marking the top of a 33‑12 months run for the dwell‑viewers sequence.
However, decrease Nielsen rankings or not, the timing of Paramount’s transfer to cancel one in every of its signature sequence could itself show that the choice was about greater than revenue. It can’t be ignored that inside just a few days of each strikes, the Federal Communications Fee (FCC) lastly accredited the Skydance‑Paramount merger after months of stalling, an $8bn deal that can add to the mountain of monopolistic strikes in US media.
“That is pure cowardice,” David Letterman, The Late Present’s earlier host from 1993 to 2015, stated of Paramount’s current choices to cancel the present and settle the Trump lawsuit.
The US information media’s by no means‑ending protection of every little thing Trump over the previous decade and the fixed again‑and‑forth over his politics, insurance policies and practices have performed a major function in its decline. Because the US lurches ever nearer in direction of autocracy, the Fourth Property has more and more taken on the function of stenographer, with its normalisation of lies, gossip, craven insurance policies and corruption as “disinformation” and “misinformation”.
However the age of Trump is simply the tip of the iceberg. The mix of fixed realignment to ingratiate media firms with the political class, together with their monopolisation of media within the US over the previous 45 years, has merely devastated the sector. This retrenchment has severely skewed information protection and destroyed the concept of a free press.
The panorama of US media started evolving with the gradual deregulation of each media possession and the scope of editorial freedom within the Nineteen Eighties. After 40 years of what was as soon as the Equity Doctrine in US media legislation (requiring multimedia broadcasters to air opposing views on subjects of nationwide significance, not only one perspective), the FCC voted to abolish the requirement in 1987. This got here after Congress had did not override President Ronald Reagan’s veto of their try and codify the doctrine in a invoice. Makes an attempt to re‑set up the Equity Doctrine have failed through the years, together with the Restore the Equity Doctrine Act that the now Director of Nationwide Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard sponsored in 2019. That invoice by no means made it to the Home ground for a vote.
In a really bipartisan effort in the course of the Nineties, most of the remaining laws that protected US media from monopolisation and the affect of billionaires and mega‑firms had been dismantled. The lobbyist‑influenced Telecommunications Act of 1996 made its manner by Congress with overwhelming assist, with solely 16 “No” votes out of 430 within the Home of Representatives, and 5 voting “No” out of 96 within the Senate.
The deregulations, supposed to foster extra competitors between media firms and their multimedia platforms, really did the other by extending media monopolisation. Between 1983 and 2015, the variety of firms that collectively owned 90 % of all the US media market fell from “greater than 50 to simply six corporations”, together with books, newspapers, magazines, cell and cable tv, web and music, movies {and professional} athletic groups. Within the years since, between Viacom’s possession of CBS and Paramount and Amazon’s big foray into streaming providers and multimedia productions, 5 megacorporations now management 90 % of all US media.
The Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch turned a key determine within the monopolisation of US media in all its kinds, shopping for stakes within the New York Submit and founding the tabloid paper Star. In 1985, the FCC accredited the deal that allowed Murdoch to purchase twentieth Century Fox and purchase Fox broadcast stations. This occurred after Murdoch had change into a naturalised US citizen, as federal laws at the moment restricted overseas possession of and funding in broadcasting. Eleven years later, and simply months after the Telecommunications Act of 1996’s passage, Murdoch and media govt Roger Ailes based Fox Information underneath the paradoxically misleading slogan “Truthful and Balanced”. With the Equity Doctrine gone and the necessity to present balanced media protection eliminated, Fox Information’ decidedly biased far‑proper slant was deliberate, constructed solely for revenue. “Individuals don’t wish to learn, they wish to really feel knowledgeable,” the late Ailes apparently stated greater than as soon as in justifying Fox Information’ strategy to information protection.
Lately, with billionaires shopping for main information retailers like The Washington Submit, The Los Angeles Occasions, and The Wall Road Journal and dictating editorial choices, Individuals have lengthy misplaced belief within the Fourth Property. Monopolisation and the enterprise pressures which have include it have led to “fewer journalists, thinner reporting, and more and more determined promoting content material” over the previous three a long time. Mixed with the rise of social media over tv and web media websites because the primary manner Individuals get their information (54 % vs 50 % and 48 %, respectively), this development is telling. There aren’t any indicators that monopolisation and biased, truth‑lowered and truth‑free media protection will cease any time quickly.
Murdoch’s strategy of utilizing deregulation to construct a monopoly and usher within the age of truth‑free journalism helped set off this shopping for frenzy, with revenue prioritised over equity each step of the way in which. By the top of the Nineteen Eighties, the reign of conservative and much‑proper radio discuss exhibits had begun, with the late Rush Limbaugh main the pack along with his nationally syndicated The Rush Limbaugh Present. His fixed barrage of racism, sexism, queerphobia and different hyper‑masculine speaking factors turned an echo chamber for about 15 million listeners for the following 30 years.
Though centre‑left radio programming like Air America made minor inroads within the 2000s, progressive ventures have usually fizzled out. They’ve steadily lacked ample monetary assist and political safety in an more and more monopolised and ideologically skewed media world. On the peak of MSNBC’s “Lean Ahead” days, when critics noticed its merely centrist political information protection between 2010 and 2016 as “liberal”, its executives denied MSNBC was the leftist equal of Fox Information. Phil Griffin, who ran MSNBC from 2008 by early 2021, as soon as stated, “No. We don’t put out speaking factors all day” like Fox Information. “Companies are … like sharks. They only transfer towards the cash. That’s all they do,” one former govt for the information organisation stated. In 2016, eugenicist tech billionaire Peter Thiel basically destroyed the progressive tabloid Gawker. Livid that Gawker had outed him as queer in 2007, Thiel helped the late wrestler Hulk Hogan win a $140m lawsuit towards Gawker for its publication of his intercourse tape.
It’s usually stated that good journalism displays the happenings of the world like a mirror, with out bias and with each effort to show the reality behind information occasions. If that is actually the definition of what makes good journalism, then US journalism has been staring right into a mirror with a mess of fractures for many years. In 2025, it’s not simply that many Individuals don’t imagine within the media they devour or solely imagine the information when it suits their private narrative. Many within the US know that the nation’s media recurrently peddles lies, half‑truths and gossip in a by no means‑ending seek for straightforward revenue, all whereas dumbing down their customers.
Reporting on the unfold of autocratic rule, calling out complicity in genocide, or interrogating the ethics of billionaires and mega‑firms in a monopolised media world? Any efforts in direction of equity and fact can simply price anybody within the media their job, or worse, even somebody as influential as Stephen Colbert.
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
