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FCC Approval of Latest Megamerger Accelerates ‘Creation of State Media’ Under Trump, Critics Warn
One analyst said the Nexstar-Tegna merger was "yet another threat to our democracy, with fewer media companies controlling what gets reported on and how."
Mar 20, 2026
Free press advocates warned Thursday that the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to greenlight Nexstar’s takeover of Tegna further imperils US democracy by accelerating the consolidation of broadcast media and extending the reach of right-wing propaganda.
According to The New York Times, the $6.2 billion deal will form a conglomerate that will "oversee 265 television stations in 44 states and Washington, reaching about 80% of US households," making it by far the largest owner of local TV news in the country. Nexstar is headed by megamillionaire Perry Sook.
Commissioner Anna Gomez, the lone Democrat currently serving on the FCC, accused her colleagues of rushing approval of the Nexstar-Tegna merger while keeping the general public completely in the dark.
"This merger was approved behind closed doors with no open process, no full commission vote, and no transparency for the consumers and communities who will bear the consequences," said Gomez, who added that the entire process was "meant to avoid public scrutiny."
Several critics echoed Gomez's concerns in denouncing approval of the merger.
Matt Wood, general counsel and vice president of policy at Free Press, accused the FCC of ignoring its own rules limiting broadcast TV station ownership to create a right-wing propaganda machine aimed at pushing the agenda of President Donald Trump and his allies.
"This deal would create a massive broadcast conglomerate willing to put the political agenda of Donald Trump over the needs of the communities local television serves," said Wood. "[FCC Chairman Brendan] Carr and his allies in Nexstar’s executive suites have put up a smokescreen of rhetoric designed to dupe people into believing that these national conglomerates are truly local stations."
John Bergmayer, legal director at Public Knowledge, described the FCC's merger approval as "a betrayal of the agency’s legal obligations and the public it is supposed to serve." He predicted the deal would have a devastating impact on the quality of local TV news.
“In every market where Nexstar already operates multiple stations, it has consolidated news operations, merged newsrooms, and cut staff," Bergmayer said. "Nexstar’s CEO told investors the company analyzed the overlap markets ‘line by line, person by person’ to determine where to make cuts. Fewer owners means fewer reporters, fewer editorial voices, and fewer checks on local power."
Bergmayer added that the merger is "yet another threat to our democracy, with fewer media companies controlling what gets reported on and how."
Jeff Jarvis, professor emeritus at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, warned that the merger is part of "the creation of state media" under the Trump administration, and described it as "even more dangerous than Ellison Inc.," a reference to the proposed megamerger between Paramount Skydance—a company controlled by the son of billionaire Trump donor Larry Ellison—and Warner Bros. Discovery.
Even with FCC approval, Nexstar's acquisition of Tegna is not yet a done deal, as eight state attorneys general this week filed an antitrust lawsuit to block the merger.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, one of the state AGs involved in the lawsuit, described the Nexstar-Tegna deal as "illegal, plain and simple."
"When broadcast media is owned by a handful of companies, we get fewer voices, less competition," said Bonta, "and communities lose the critical check on power that local journalism delivers."
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The Most Obvious Question Liberal Media Refuses to Ask About the Iran War
Though much of the media now expresses doubt about Trump's war, the moral foundation of anti-war opposition has largely disappeared, replaced instead by a narrow strategic debate over costs, risks, and political consequences.
Mar 16, 2026
Doubtless, the war launched by US President Donald Trump is not popular among ordinary Americans.
According to the latest public opinion poll, only a minority of Americans—part of the dwindling core of Trump's supporters—believe that the US-Israeli aggression against Iran has merit.
According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in early March 2026, only 27 percent of Americans approve of the US-Israeli strikes on Iran—while 43 percent disapprove and 29 percent are unsure.
This pro-war constituency is likely to remain supportive of Trump until the end of his term in office, and long after.
However, the war on Iran is not popular, and it is unlikely to become popular, especially as the Trump administration is reportedly fragmented between those who want to stay the course and those desperate for an exit strategy. Such a strategy would allow their president to save face before the midterm elections in November.
Mainstream media—aside, of course, from the pro-war chorus in right-wing news organizations, podcasters, and think tanks—also recognize that their country has entered a quagmire.
If it continues unchecked, it will likely prove worse than the war in Iraq in 2003 or the long war in Afghanistan, which lasted 20 years and ended with a decisive American defeat in August 2021 following the withdrawal of US forces and the collapse of the Afghan government.
Both wars have cost US taxpayers an estimated $8 trillion, including long-term veteran care and interest on borrowing, according to the Brown University Costs of War Project.
While it is important to highlight the unpopularity of America’s latest military adventure, such opposition must rest on moral and legal grounds.
Iran is already promising to be even more costly if the insanity of the war—instigated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war-crazed government—does not end very quickly.
Many Americans may understand the difficult situation in which Trump's unhinged behavior and his unexplained loyalty to Netanyahu have placed their country. What they rarely confront is the moral dimension of that crisis.
Though they speak of the war’s failure—the lack of strategy, the lack of preparation, the absence of an end goal, and the confusion surrounding its objectives—very few in mainstream media have taken what should have been the obvious moral position: that the war itself is criminal, unjustifiable, and illegal under international law.
That position should have been obvious the moment the first bomb was dropped over Tehran. The aggression—particularly while negotiations between Iran and the United States were underway under Omani mediation—was ethically indefensible.
Any remaining doubt should have disappeared when US-Israeli strikes hit civilian areas, including schools and residential districts in the city of Minab in southern Iran, killing hundreds of civilians, mostly children and women.
This moral silence is not new. In fact, it has often been masked by a familiar rhetorical device: the selective invocation of women's rights.
In nearly every US war on Arab and Muslim countries, women's rights have featured heavily in the propaganda used to justify war. The vast majority of mainstream media organizations, think tanks, human rights groups, and activists—even those who rejected military interventionism on principle—agreed at least on that particular premise: the urgency of women's rights.
They used Malala Yousafzai as a symbol of girls’ education and women’s rights, presenting her as a model of American benevolence. At the same time, they ignored the fact that among the countless innocent Muslims killed across the Middle East and Asia in the last few decades—some counts place them in the millions—children and women represented a large share of the victims.
The same scenario was repeated in Gaza during the ongoing genocide, where UN agencies estimate that women and children make up roughly 70 percent of the more than 72,200 Palestinians killed since October 2023. According to data compiled by ‘UN Women’ and Gaza’s health authorities, the total includes an estimated 33,000 women and girls.
Yet mainstream media continues to center Israeli claims about abuses of women's rights by Hamas in Gaza, as if the tens of thousands of women killed and maimed by Israeli bombardment were not even worthy of serious consideration.
The same pattern is now repeating itself in Iran. The administration of Donald Trump—a man known for his degrading views and actions toward women—has been allowed, along with war criminal Netanyahu, to frame the war against Iran as a struggle for women’s rights and liberation.
They cultivated a network of supposed women's rights activists, presenting them as authentic Iranian voices whose mission was to rescue women from massive human rights abuses in their own country. Even on the Left, many fell into that trap—denouncing Trump on the one hand, while still absorbing and reproducing his and Israel’s propaganda.
Now that thousands of women and children have been killed or wounded in the US-Israel unprovoked, unethical, and illegal war on Iran, many of these same voices have fallen silent, quietly placing women's rights on hold until the outcome of the onslaught becomes clear.
Though much of the media now expresses doubt about Trump's war, the moral foundation of anti-war opposition has largely disappeared, replaced instead by a narrow strategic debate over costs, risks, and political consequences.
Complaints about rising energy prices, commentary about Trump's political immaturity, and criticism of his failure to assess the situation properly before ordering bombs to fall have replaced the moral argument altogether.
Equally absent is Netanyahu's role in the war, as well as the stranglehold Israel exerts over successive US administrations—Republican and Democrat alike—including the supposedly ‘America First’ president.
This logic dominates much of the mainstream strategic debate. Commentators such as Fareed Zakaria, Thomas Friedman, and others have repeatedly argued, in one form or another, that the United States must avoid being consumed by Middle Eastern conflicts and instead concentrate on what they describe as the central geopolitical challenge of our time: the rise of China.
While it is important to highlight the unpopularity of America’s latest military adventure, such opposition must rest on moral and legal grounds.
That said, mainstream liberal media should not be confused with genuine anti-war voices. Their objection to war is rarely principled. They tend to oppose military interventions only when those wars fail to serve US strategic interests, threaten corporate profits, or risk undermining Israel’s long-term security.
This is not opposition to war.
It is the logic of war itself.
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‘Hegseth Wants State Media’: Pentagon Chief Says He Can’t Wait for Son of Pro-Trump Billionaire to Control CNN
In a tirade against media coverage of the Trump administration's illegal assault on Iran, Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth said, "The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better."
Mar 13, 2026
Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth used part of his Friday press conference to complain about what he described as negative and "fake" news stories about the administration's illegal war on Iran, openly pining for the day the son of billionaire Trump donor Larry Ellison takes control of CNN.
"The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better," said Hegseth, pointing specifically to CNN's report Thursday that "the Pentagon and National Security Council significantly underestimated Iran’s willingness to close the Strait of Hormuz in response to US military strikes while planning the ongoing operation."
"CNN doesn't think we thought of that," said Hegseth, a former Fox News host who is facing mounting backlash over the US military's bombing of an Iranian elementary school on the first day of the war and poor strategic planning overall.
"It's a fundamentally unserious report," Hegseth added.
Watch:
Hegseth: "Some in the press just can't stop. Allow me to make a few suggestions. People look at the TV and they see banners, headlines -- I used to be in that business, I know everything is written intentionally. For example, a banner -- 'Mideast War Intensifies.' What should the… pic.twitter.com/mbz70e7SsY
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 13, 2026
David Ellison is the CEO of Paramount Skydance, which is poised to acquire CNN owner Warner Bros. Discovery after a lengthy bidding war with Netflix. The deal still must receive regulatory approval from the Trump administration and in Europe, and some state attorneys general have vowed to closely scrutinize the agreement.
"Hysterical Hegseth wants state media," Jim Acosta, a former CNN anchor and White House correspondent, wrote in response to the Pentagon secretary's comments on the looming Ellison takeover.
Hegseth rejected as "patently ridiculous" the notion that the Trump administration—whose deadly incompetence has been on full display since the start of the war—would fail to adequately plan for Iran to retaliate against a military attack by closing the Strait of Hormuz, a route through which roughly 20% of the world's oil supply travels each year.
"Don't need to worry about it," Hegseth said Friday of the strait's closure, as oil prices skyrocket.
Hegseth's latest attack on the US media, which he called insufficiently "patriotic," came days after it was revealed that the Pentagon decided to bar press photographers from briefings about the Iran war after the secretary's staff reportedly deemed some of the photos taken during a March 2 briefing "unflattering."
"I, along with print photographers, have been denied entry to cover today’s Pentagon briefing," reported Nancy Youssef, a journalist with The Atlantic, on Friday morning. "All other media were allowed in."
Mark Schoeff Jr., president of the National Press Club, called the Pentagon's decision to bar photographers from briefings "deeply troubling," saying it "runs counter to the fundamental principles of transparency in a democratic society."
"A government confident in its actions welcomes scrutiny. It does not restrict it," said Schoeff. "When the government decides which images the public is allowed to see, transparency is replaced by control. Accountability doesn't take place behind closed doors."
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