Remember this clip from the 1992 movie Sneakers starring Robert Redford and Ben Kingsley.
The line by Kingsley’s character in this scene, where he said, “There’s a war out there, old friend. A world war, and it’s not about who’s got the most bullets. It’s about who controls the information. What we see and hear. How we work. What we think. It’s all about the information,” has always stayed with me through the years.
In 1983, 90 percent of American Media was controlled by 50 companies.
In 2012, 90 percent of American Media was controlled by six companies. Those were GE, Disney, Fox, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS.
The situation has only become worse as fewer multinational companies now control what news and entertainment we see, read, and hear.
Disney has merged with Fox.
Warner has merged with Discovery.
Amazon acquired MGM.
Netflix and Paramount are both offering competing bids to acquire all or parts of Warner/Discovery.
CNN is part of Warner/Discovery, and Donald Trump would very much like his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who is one of the principals in the Paramount bid to prevail.
Why?
Money and self-enrichment for him and his family? Of course.
An Orwellian desire to tighten more control of the content and release of information to the masses for him and his party’s benefit? Undoubtedly.
Corruption to maintain the MAGA message and solidify control. Absolutely.
Putting his two cents in on the current bidding war for Warner, Trump said at the White House yesterday:
“I think CNN should be sold because I think the people that are running CNN right now are either corrupt or incompetent…I just think that the people have run CNN into the ground, by the way. Nobody watches. Very few people watch. I don’t think they should be entrusted with running CNN any longer…I don’t think the people that are running that company right now…a very dishonest group of people…”
At that same event, he berated a CNN reporter for questioning the status of the release of the second video showing the murder of two boat survivors of a ship the United States had bombed, after claiming it was carrying drugs from Venezuela, ranting that the journalist was working for the Democrats.
These remarks are so rich considering that they are coming from a convicted felon, impeached Chief Executive, failed businessman whose numerous bankruptcies included a casino, and leading advocate for censorship and rewriting American History.
Commenting on the continuing monopolization of American Media and Trump’s unethical, illegal, and unconstitutional role in trying to shape it to suit his ends, Arizona Representative Yassamin Ansari issued the below social media release on December 9, 2025.
In her remarks, Representative Ansari said we need less monopolizing and more actual capitalistic competition in the media industry, conveying:
You may have seen that Netflix is trying to buy Warner Brothers. This may seem like some faraway mega deal between these billion-dollar corporations, but it actually touches all of us. If they’re (Netflix) to be successful with this. That means that they are going to have control…over close to half of the streaming market. That means that your subscription prices could go up. That means that it’ll be harder to make independent films, and local movie theaters could shut down. It also means that they will have vast amounts of control over the media that we consume. It also means that Donald Trump, who is notorious for liking a quid pro quo, will have an enormous amount of control over the type of media that everyday people consume. We saw that this summer, during the monopolistic merger that was occurring when Disney and its partners were in the middle of one, and they took Jimmy Kimmel off the air because of pressure from the Trump Administration. We know that if Donald Trump was serious about lowering costs for people, he would actually want to encourage competition, but that’s the opposite of what his administration has tried to do. That’s not fair, and in fact, it’s illegal, and it’s happening in Industries across this country…If we want to really drive down prices for work in people in this country, we need more and more competition, and we need the federal government to step in when monopolies start to form. We know that Donald Trump cannot be counted on to stop his ultra-rich friends and allies from making more money. In fact, we know that Jared Kushner, right now, his son-in-law and somebody who is employed by the federal government, is actually part of a counter-suit where Paramount is trying to now purchase Warner Brothers, and he is putting billions of his own dollars behind this. We’re also seeing his allies from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE, also putting billions of dollars behind this deal. And it’s Jared Kushner who is responsible for negotiating deals with these governments as part of his role with the federal government. It does not get more corrupt than this. This is a national security crisis. It’s a corruption crisis, and we have to do something about it.”
Representative Ansari is right.
Donald Trump wants to become Big Brother.
He and his disgrace, Pete Hegseth, at the Defense Department have already taken steps to isolate the press from access to Executive Branch Departments, press pools, and events.
He or his allies can not be allowed to either dismantle or infiltrate a major mainstream cable news network and absorb it into its far-right media echo chamber.
Otherwise, we could have a further perpetuation of the misinformation avalanche on the American People, enhancing the deterioration of the American Ideal and the Democratic Republic.
And most of the people would not even know it was happening to them.
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Don’t forget the right-wing already controls over-the-air radio channels.
It started with Reagan and the FCC getting rid of the Fairness Doctrine, then eliminating the rule that limited the number of TV/radio stations that can be controlled by a single corporation in in major cities.
With Trump and his billionaire allies they now want to control the major television and cable news networks. It’s a farce when Trump say how poorly he’s being treated by the media. If anything, he tightly controls who has access to him and abuses those who challenges his answers to questions (when a good question is asked by mainstream media).
More than half this country is asleep and doesn’t read newspapers or only watches the far-right news. This is how democracy can be easily lost. An informed citizenry wouldn’t let their legislators get away with not challenging Trump on his autocratic moves.