World

Thu Mar 26

Trump is remaking the US media in his own image

Written by Rodney Tiffen, Emeritus Professor, Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney

This is the point of absurdity we have reached: on March 15, US President Donald Trump, in a Truth Social post ^[1], asserted that American news organisations were running AI-generated Iranian propaganda, and should be charged with treason for the dissemination of false information. One of the instances he cited was coverage of Iranians at a rally to support new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, which he said was totally AI-generated, and the event never took place, despite abundant evidence to the contrary.

The most powerful man in the world is making large and important claims, one palpably false, the others without offering any evidence, and it seems few if any people take him seriously. Then he blithely threatens to charge unnamed people with treason, which in the United States is potentially a capital offence, and again it is not clear anyone takes him seriously. Despite the all-but-universal dismissal of his statements, he will probably suffer no political consequences. It is just another drop in an ocean of unaccountability.

One reason it will pass with negligible consequences is that these accusations have become so commonplace. Republicans have long railed against the “liberal” news media, but the Trump administration has brought such attacks to a new level of intensity.

In 2017, his first year in office, Trump denounced “fake news” and called the media the enemy of the American people. He said he had a “running war” with the media, and described journalists ^[2] as “among the most dishonest human beings on Earth”.

Trump’s standard response to a question he doesn’t want to answer is to call the reporter (especially female reporters) a nasty person, or to denounce the organisation they work for. Recently his response ^[3] to a US ABC reporter’s question was that her employer “may be the most corrupt news organisation on the planet. I think they’re terrible.”

As the war with Iran threatened to become more politically contentious, the administration has trained its rhetorical sights on the media. Trump endorsed ^[4] Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr’s threat to revoke broadcast licences of “the corrupt and highly unpatriotic media”:

They get billions of Dollars of FREE American airwaves, and use it to perpetuate LIES, both in news and almost all of their shows, including the Late Night Morons, who get gigantic Salaries for horrible Ratings.

Far more than any of his predecessors, Trump concerns himself with individuals and media organisations. For example, he thought Netflix should dismiss one of its board members who had worked for his Democrat predecessors Barack Obama and Joe Biden: “Netflix should fire, racist, Trump deranged Susan Rice IMMEDIATELY.”

A history of legal action

Trump has gone beyond rhetorical denunciations, however. He is the first US president, in recent times at least, to sue a news organisation. His targets so far have included the Pulitzer Prize Board, the Des Moines Register ^[5] and its pollster Ann Selzer, the Wall St Journal ^[6], the New York Times ^[7], Penguin Random House and the BBC ^[8].

Without exception, his writs have no legal merit. (He has already lost suits against the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN). They are a means of harassment or perhaps just a threat: Trump sued CBS in 2024 over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. Initially CBS said the case had no merit. However, in July 2025 it agreed to settle ^[9] for $16 million.

The agreement came amid CBS parent company Paramount’s $8.4 billion merger with Skydance, which received regulatory approval weeks later. Stephen Colbert, host of its top-rating night show, called it ^[10] “a big fat bribe”. Three days later Colbert’s show was cancelled, which the network said was purely a financial decision.

Trump congratulated himself in a post on his Truth Social site under the headline “President Trump is reshaping the media”. He listed 12 media organisations and individuals who are “gone”, such as CNN reporter Jim Acosta and Colbert. Then he listed a dozen “reforms”, such as CNN having new ownership. He finished the post with the word “Winning”.

Apart from the president, the most enthusiastic member of the cabinet in harassing the media is former Fox News presenter, now secretary of war, Pete Hegseth. Last year he announced ^[11] that journalists who solicited unauthorised military information would have their access revoked and be deemed a security risk. Fifty-five out of 56 ^[12] accredited journalists refused to sign the new agreement. In March a judge ruled the policy ^[13] was unconstitutional but the government has said it will appeal.

Recently, Hegseth thought photos of him were “unflattering”, so photographers were banned ^[14] from his next two briefings.

So it is not surprising Hegseth has been a vocal critic of media coverage. He finished one recent tirade by saying: “The sooner David Ellison takes over [CNN], the better.”

Ellison at the wheel

What is new and alarming about this is the reference to Ellison. It follows one of the biggest corporate takeovers in history. Ellison’s company, Paramount Skydance, has just succeeded in taking over Warner Bros Discovery. CNN is part of the package Ellison has acquired.

David is the son of Larry Ellison, the sixth-richest person in the world, who founded Oracle, a wildly successful software company. After Trump became president, the Ellisons moved into media in a big way.

The family first attracted public prominence when it was a central part of Trump choreographing the formation of a US TikTok company. Biden, with the approval of Congress, had sought to ban the popular video-sharing platform because of worries about security with the Chinese company ByteDance. Instead, Trump, on his first day of this second term, started a process ^[15] to make it US-based, to remove the security risk.

In the end, Ellison’s Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX became the three managing investors, each holding a 15% share ^[16] in the new company. The Chinese company ByteDance retained 19.9% of the joint venture. Oracle would also handle all the software aspects. All up, a very Trump-friendly outcome.

The Ellisons next attracted attention in July 2025, when their niche media company Skydance merged with Paramount to form Paramount Plus. This made them the owner not only of one of the biggest film studios but also of TV network CBS. The consequences for CBS news have already been far-reaching.

Ellison began by pledging to end ^[17] the company’s “diversity equity and inclusion” initiatives. He appointed as ombudsman the former head of a conservative think tank and named Bari Weiss, a centre-right advocate, as editor-in-chief of CBS News ^[18].

An early controversy hit with a CBS 60 Minutes episode on a notorious prison in El Salvador, where the US government is sending migrant detainees. Although it was cleared through all the normal internal processes, the story was blocked at the last minute in what the reporter called an act of censorship. It was shown four weeks later.

Six out of 20 evening news producers have left ^[19] CBS, with one, Alicia Hastey, saying ^[20] the kind of work she came to do was increasingly impossible, as stories were now evaluated not just on their journalistic merit but on whether they conform to a shifting set of ideological expectations.

In a missive to the newsroom, Weiss declared ^[21] “we love America” should be the guiding principle for the relaunch of CBS Evening News. Putting this into practice, the new anchor of the evening news, Tony Dokoupil, finished one program ^[22] by saying “[Secretary of State] Marco Rubio, we salute you”.

Ellison’s early acquisitions were dwarfed by the recent battle between Paramount Plus and Netflix to take over Warner Bros Discovery, which Paramount finally won in February 2026. Paramount’s final, winning offer valued the company at US$111 billion (A$159 billion), paying US$31 (A$44) per share. Months earlier, Netflix’s original offer was US$19 (A$27) per share. Assuming the deal goes through, Paramount will carry an estimated US$90 billion (A$128.6 billion) of debt, but it will also have a conglomerate of media-related holdings like no other company in history.

Despite the size of the takeover, which has several implications for reduced competition, commentators are confident it will achieve regulatory approval. This is principally because in the Trump era there is a strong, shall we say, transactional flavour about when regulation is enforced and when not. Trump has described ^[23] the Ellisons as “two great people”. “They’re friends of mine. They’re big supporters of mine. And they’ll do the right thing.”

Media monsters

In the 1950s, looking at the way Australian newspaper companies came to control the new commercial radio and television stations, journalist Colin Bednall referred to “media monsters”. Around 1990, British media commentator Anthony Smith wrote a book titled The Age of Behemoths, looking especially at the way large corporations such as News Corp had gone international.

But both were talking about media pygmies compared with the new mega-corporation owned by the Ellisons. Apart from their software business and extensive real estate holdings, they now have a central player, TikTok, in social media. They own two of the biggest five US movie studios, they have two of the biggest five streaming services, they have large entertainment producing corporations in Discovery, Warner Bros and CBS, and they own two of the most important TV news services – CBS and CNN.

This gives them the usual commercial advantages over smaller newcomers trying to break in. It also means the news services are owned by a conglomerate that has many other interests, including some that demand negotiation with the government.

In trying to understand the moment we are living through, it is often difficult to disentangle what is of momentary significance and what of lasting importance. What are egomaniacal histrionics that will fade into history with Trump? And which signal ongoing threats to the fabric of democratic institutions?

The unprecedented media empire built by the Ellisons will not disappear, no matter who wins the next election.