The Latest Corporate Media and Telecom Trend? Caving to Trump

In the Trump 2.0 era, media conglomerates aren’t just reporting news but making it as well—and for all of the wrong reasons.

Companies including Paramount (which owns CBS) and Disney (which owns ABC) have earned headlines for capitulating to the political thuggery of the White House and its improperly subservient federal agencies.

In December 2024, ABC News caved in advance of U.S. President Donald Trump’s inauguration, paying $15 million (plus $1 million in legal fees) to resolve Trump’s defamation lawsuit against the network and its anchor George Stephanopoulos, who had imprecisely said that the president had been found “liable for rape” in a civil trial in New York. (In fact, Trump had been found liable under New York State’s definition of “sexual abuse.”)

And in July, Paramount Chairwoman Shari Redstone paid Trump $16 million to settle a frivolous lawsuit the president brought against CBS News. Trump wrongly claimed that “60 Minutes” deceptively edited an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, allegedly causing him “mental anguish.” Redstone’s decision to settle the case (driven by her desire to gain official approval of a multibillion-dollar merger with Skydance) has sparked righteous discontent among CBS reporters and producers who see the ostensible bribe as a betrayal of the news organization’s journalistic principles and free-speech rights.

The Capitulation Trend

These disturbing examples of media capitulation are not isolated events but part of a worrisome trend across all sectors of the U.S. media and telecommunications industry. The nation’s largest telecommunications companies are busy pandering to the Trump regime as well. In recent months, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon have abandoned prior commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion in hopes of winning approval of various mergers, acquisitions, and other regulatory requests before federal agencies.

A series of Trump executive orders seeking to erase DEI programs in the public and private sectors prompted the capitulations in the telecommunications sector. In a stunning reversal of their previous commitments, companies have fallen into line.

In a July 8 letter to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr, T-Mobile announced that it has scrapped all DEI initiatives, as it looks to the agency to green-light its proposed acquisitions of UScellular’s wireless operations and of internet service provider Metronet. Previously, the wireless giant had “dissolved” its partnership with several civil-rights organizations that had helped the company develop inclusive corporate-governance practices.

While many U.S. media institutions curried favor with political figures during previous administrations, these companies’ surrender to the tyranny of Trumpism poses an existential crisis of an entirely different scale—one that cuts to the core of our democracy.

Earlier, in May, the FCC blessed Verizon’s proposed merger with Frontier Communications. Buried in the FCC’s approval order—but proudly touted in the agency’s press release—is the claim that Verizon got the deal done only after promising to end its own DEI programs in a letter filed with the FCC just a day before it received agency approval.

In March, AT&T ended its DEI-focused employee training and cut off funding for the Trevor Project, a suicide-prevention group for LGBTQIA+ youth, and Turn Up the Love, a series of Pride events that partners with musical artists.

“In this political climate, there’s no such thing right now as corporate reckoning with systems of oppression,” said Free Press vice president of policy and general counsel Matt Wood. “There’s no T-Mobile as a magenta maverick. The only colors today are green and white: chasing dollars, and appeasing baseless white grievances over so-called reverse racism.”

Cozying Up to Political Power

And it’s not just phone giants that are following the craven path Disney and Paramount have forged. Caving to Trump has become a pattern across the entire establishment media sector, from broadcasting and entertainment companies to online platforms and newspaper owners.

While many U.S. media institutions curried favor with political figures during previous administrations, these companies’ surrender to the tyranny of Trumpism poses an existential crisis of an entirely different scale—one that cuts to the core of our democracy.

The wealthiest media companies have become so deeply embedded within the power structures of society—and so entangled with and dependent on government contracts and other official favors—that it’s not surprising to see them bend to the whims of an authoritarian leader. But that doesn’t make it any less dangerous.

We expect our media to act as a check on abuses of power. Instead, these companies are enabling the Trump regime even as it’s actively and openly attacking journalism and undermining free speech. That large telecommunications companies have joined the cowardly capitulations exposes the deep structural rot at the root of our entire media, journalism, and communications system.

These failures raise important questions about a captured media-policy infrastructure—fueled by hundreds of millions of dollars in fees to corporate lobbyists, lawyers, and trade groups—that has allowed a relatively small group of media and telecommunications companies to become this enormous.

As the Trump administration—with the help of a compliant FCC—attempts to roll back limits to media consolidation, it’s worth recognizing that bigger media isn’t better for the American people and our democracy.