As US President Donald Trump late on Sunday lashed out against the American media and threatened to pull broadcasting licenses from networks for their alleged "biased" coverage of him, media experts said the danger to the news media lies partially in corporate outlets' potential capitulation to the Trump administration.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, the president railed against NBC and ABC, which he called "two of the absolute worst and most biased networks anywhere in the world."
He then said the networks should "lose their licenses for their unfair coverage of Republicans and/or conservatives, but at a minimum, they should pay up BIG for having the privilege of using the most valuable airwaves anywhere at anytime!!!"
The president concluded his angry rant by declaring that "crooked 'journalism' should not be rewarded, it should be terminated!!!"
Trump did not point to any specifics regarding his claim that the networks' coverage of him is unfair, but asserted that they "give [him] 97% bad stories."
This is not the first time that Trump has called on the Federal Communications Commission to strip broadcasters' licenses for producing news he doesn't like, although so far no network has had its license revoked by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Even so, some experts were alarmed at Trump's latest attacks, which they feared could lead to more capitulation from major media corporations similar to the $16 million settlement that CBS parent company Paramount agreed to earlier this summer, which stemmed from what experts called a meritless lawsuits over a "60 Minutes" interview with 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
Victor Pickard, professor of media policy and political economy at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication, described the president's angry rants as "yet more worrying signs that Trump knows no limits in exerting dictatorial power over our news media."
"The commercial news media, which helped elevate Trump to power, have proven repeatedly that they are ill-equipped to withstand such pressures since they typically privilege their profit motives over democratic needs," he said. "Some individual journalists have shown much courage despite Trump's attacks, but the corporate media institutions themselves too often capitulate."
Tim Karr, senior director of strategy and communications at Free Press, echoed Pickard's point about the media being responsible for the president's political rise, and he singled out NBC's decision to air Trump's reality TV show, "The Apprentice," which he said gave Americans the false impression that he was a "successful and decisive businessman."
He also expressed concerns that broadcasters would offer the president more concessions in an attempt to avoid retaliation.
"What should be more worrying to anyone who appreciates a free press is the degrees to which these massive media conglomerates are capitulating before the president," he said. "If we've learned anything about the media from the past eight months, it's that massive media companies are far too beholden to the political elite to speak truth to power."
He then accused the major networks of cowering before Trump despite having the First Amendment clearly on their side.
"NBC and ABC are protected under the First Amendment from the sort of government meddling proposed here by Trump—and enacted by his obsequious FCC chairman, Brendan Carr," he said. "The problem is that big media conglomerates like these two would rather cave to the president than stand up for their constitutional rights."
