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We Need Honest Journalism About the US-Israel War on Iran
We reject war. But for wars to end, truth must be spoken openly and without hesitation. Journalists must be allowed to work without fear or intimidation. Media ownership must not become a mechanism of control and censorship.
Mar 22, 2026
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appears to have little patience for questions that do not conform to his preferred style of declaring unsubstantiated victories, whether against South Americans or in the Middle East.
In a charged press conference on March 13, Hegseth did more than attack journalists for questioning his unverified claims about the course of the war in the Middle East. He singled out CNN, introducing a troubling dimension to the conversation. “The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better,” he said.
Ellison, a close ally of President Donald Trump and a strong supporter of Israel, is widely considered the front-runner to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company that owns CNN. If there was any lingering doubt that such acquisitions are driven by political and ideological considerations, Hegseth’s remarks dispelled it.
Such statements reflect a broader shift in how the media is viewed by segments of the US ruling class, particularly under the Trump administration. During both of his presidential terms, Trump has invested much of his public discourse not in unifying the nation but in deploying deeply hostile language against journalists who question his policies, rhetoric, or political conduct.
At this moment, journalists, intellectuals, and people of conscience must speak the truth in all its manifestations, using every available platform and opportunity.
“The fake news media is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American people,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on February 18, repeating a phrase that has become central to his political lexicon.
Yet American media entered this confrontation with little public trust to begin with, though for reasons that have little to do with Trump’s own political agenda. A 2025 Gallup poll found that only 28% of Americans trust the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly, one of the lowest levels recorded in recent decades.
Historically, this mistrust has co-existed with Americans’ skepticism toward their government—any government, regardless of political orientation. But what is unfolding today appears qualitatively different. The long-standing alignment between political power, corporate interests, and media narratives now seems to be fracturing under the weight of widespread public distrust.
In Israel, however, the situation takes a different form. Mainstream media often mirrors the militant posture of the government itself, translating political belligerence into broad public support for war—whether in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, or wherever Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chooses to expand the battlefield.
Public opinion data illustrates this dynamic clearly. A survey released on March 4 by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 82% of the Israeli public supported the ongoing military campaign against Iran, including 93% of Israeli Jews.
Such figures reflect a media and political environment in which dissenting voices remain marginal and frequently isolated.
“With this kind of media, there’s no point in fighting for a free press, because the media itself is not on the side of freedom,” Israeli journalist Gideon Levy wrote in Haaretz on March 12.
While there is little that can realistically be done to shift the dominant Israeli narrative from within Israel itself, journalists elsewhere carry an immense responsibility. They must adhere to the most basic standards of journalistic integrity now more than ever.
This responsibility does not apply only to journalists in the United States or across the Western world. It applies equally to journalists throughout the Middle East. After all, it is our region that is being drawn into wars not of its own making, and it is our societies that have the most to gain from a just and lasting peace.
Over the past two years—particularly during Israel’s genocide on Gaza—we have seen just how difficult it has become to convey reality from the ground. Journalists have confronted censorship, propaganda campaigns, algorithmic suppression, intimidation, and outright violence.
Yet the consequences of this information crisis are far from abstract. When truth disappears, civilians suffer in silence. Political decisions are justified through distorted narratives. Wars themselves become easier to prolong when the public is denied the facts necessary to challenge them.
For years, many of us warned that if the promoters of war and chaos were not restrained, the entire region could descend into a cycle of deliberate destabilization. If this trajectory continues, our shared aspirations will suffer for generations. Our collective prosperity—already fragile—could be permanently undermined.
This struggle is not merely about journalistic integrity, nor even about truth telling as an ethical imperative. It is about the fate of entire societies whose futures are deeply interconnected. In our region, we either rise together or fall together.
Governments across the Arab and Muslim world warned against the military adventurism now engulfing the Middle East long before the current escalation. Their warnings went largely unheeded, and the consequences are now unfolding.
At this moment, journalists, intellectuals, and people of conscience must speak the truth in all its manifestations, using every available platform and opportunity.
We reject war. But for wars to end, truth must be spoken openly and without hesitation. Journalists must be allowed to work without fear or intimidation. Media ownership must not become a mechanism of control and censorship.
Politicians and generals risk reputational damage, the loss of office, or perhaps the disappearance of a generous holiday bonus if their wars fail. For the people of the Middle East—and for all victims of war—the stakes are far greater. We risk losing our families, our economies, our homes, and the very possibility of a stable future.
For that reason, gratitude is owed to the courageous individuals who continue to speak truth to power; to those who insist on unity during moments deliberately engineered to produce division; and to those who understand that honest journalism is not merely a profession.
It is a moral obligation.
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Mega Media, MAGA Lies
Corporate media consolidation amplifies Trump regime propaganda.
Mar 17, 2026
“The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better!”
So said war-addicted Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at a Pentagon press briefing last week as he complained about news outlets—specifically CNN—not covering the death and destruction of the war on Iran with the elated positivity Hegseth feels it so clearly deserves.
It was the latest example of the Trump regime demanding not merely a pliant news media, but an entirely servile industry that functions as its propaganda arm. While this fascist worldview has been most dramatically displayed in President Donald Trump’s brazen attempts to censor and cancel late-night comedians like Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert for their anti-Trump commentaries, ruling elites in Trump’s orbit have long pursued a dangerous realignment and consolidation of media power to serve their right-wing agenda.
Hegseth’s outburst directed at CNN reflects the Trump regime’s ploy to concentrate more corporate news networks under the command of David Ellison, the CEO of Paramount Skydance and son of right-wing billionaire Larry Ellison.
The growth of the Ellison father-son empire is based on refashioning the American press—or what’s left of it—into the palm of Trump’s hand.
Last year, Trump cleared the way for Paramount’s merger with Ellison’s Skydance Media after Paramount paid a $16 million lawsuit filed by Trump against Paramount’s CBS News. Now Paramount Skydance is on the verge of acquiring an even larger legacy media giant, Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN.
“One family, the right-wing Trump-aligned Ellisons, will soon control: TikTok, CBS, CNN, HBO, Discovery Channel, BET, Cartoon Network, Comedy Central, DC Studios, Fandango, Miramax, MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount, PlutoTV, Showtime, TBS, The CW, TNT, Warner Bros., and more,” US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) warned. “This is oligarchy.”
David’s father, Larry, is a staunch Zionist and the sixth richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of more than $198 billion. He is also one of Trump’s closest allies. The growth of the Ellison father-son empire is based on refashioning the American press—or what’s left of it—into the palm of Trump’s hand.
But it isn’t merely one family’s broadcast news juggernaut that rules this age of media monopoly power.
Censorship and MAGA’s Mouthpiece
Over the weekend, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr issued new Orwellian threats against unnamed networks running “fake news” (i.e., reporting that lacks the government’s deliriously upbeat spin) on the Iran war. Carr suggested he would revoke or refuse to renew the broadcasting licenses of networks that don’t “correct course.” While the reactions against Carr’s threats were swift, Trump wholly endorsed the FCC edict on Sunday while deriding media organizations as “Corrupt and Highly Unpatriotic.”
But outside of media mergers and acquisitions, a wider net of news outlets has been pulled closer into the Trump regime’s hold. This includes the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post, with its newly stated commitment to “personal liberties and free markets” along with editorials that reveal its increasing fealty to Trump.
The New York Times, while seemingly less beholden to the Trump regime, continues to churn out a steady stream of poorly disguised Zionist propaganda and breathless coverage of Trump’s imperialist military interventions. The so-called newspaper of record is so steeped in the machinery of empire that screaming prejudice drips from its discriminate use of language, as demonstrated by its passive headlines on Israeli atrocities against Palestinians that obscure Israel’s role versus its matter-of-fact reporting on recent Iranian strikes targeting Israel.
CBS News, however, proves that the Ellison media empire buys more consistent right-wing editorial leadership and allegiance to Trump.
Bari Weiss, spawned from the journalistic cesspool of the Times to later found the hilariously named website The Free Press, has been catapulted to unearned heights of the Ellison empire. While she possesses no experience as a reporter, her hard-line Zionism and anti-woke politics made her a perfect editor in chief to lead CBS News aggressively to the right.
“The mega rich have always been willing to hire, promote, and fund people willing to unquestioningly run interference for their interests while making them feel like their near-pathological selfishness, hoarding of money and power, and total disregard for the public interest is somehow morally justifiable. CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss is simply another in a long line of feckless water carriers for the one percent,” Elizabeth Spiers wrote in The Nation last December.
“[Weiss] has shown she’s not merely stupendously unqualified—she’s ideologically opposed to the practice of good journalism,” Spiers added.
Since Trump led the US empire into its unprovoked war on Iran last month, Weiss’ CBS has featured an infinite lineup of pro-war commentators, leading CBS’s own staffers to describe the network’s war coverage as a “propaganda-palooza.” Of course, such propagandizing isn’t exclusive to Trump’s newfound love of foreign wars. This was made clear in December when Weiss—who doesn’t hide her cringeworthy fawning over Trump—abruptly pulled a "60 Minutes" story on the notorious El Salvadoran prison camp where the Trump regime has sent many deportees in its ruthless war on immigrants. Since Weiss’ takeover, there’s also been a decline in CBS coverage on climate change.
Breaking the Fascist Echo Chamber
Against this grim backdrop of the decaying “Fourth Estate” of American “democracy,” there remains the ever-exploding and unwieldy landscape of independent media and social platforms. Oligarchs and authoritarians like Trump have struggled to exert control over the endlessly diverse and expanding universe of information and narratives exponentially building itself on these platforms.
Not that they haven’t tried.
Right-wing elites have successfully pushed the Meta platforms of Facebook and Instagram as well as Google’s YouTube to censor pro-Palestinian content. Trump launched his own social platform, Truth Social, in reaction to perceived anti-conservative biases in Twitter’s algorithm—which is now run by Trump’s favorite Big Tech billionaire sociopath, Elon Musk, who renamed it “X” and has proudly moved the platform’s algorithmic biases decidedly to the right. And, of course, we cannot forget TikTok, whose new US owned operation is now controlled by an investor group led by none other than Larry Ellison.
Now, as Trump oversees the final stages of a decades-long merger of corporate power and the state, his regime expects media organizations to serve not just Wall Street but the White House as well.
As is true of most pernicious policies from the Trump regime, right-wing designs on big media did not begin with Trump. Corporate media has long been an industry rife with monopolization and abuse of anti-trust laws to amass market dominance, from the Disney-ABC merger in the mid-90s to the right-wing Sinclair Broadcast Group’s ongoing vast control over local news outlets reaching more than 40% of US households.
But alongside the Trump regime’s growing media machine, which is designed to shield it from public scrutiny, is also the inverse agenda of strengthening the regime’s ability to scrutinize the public through domestic surveillance technology. Led by Hegseth and Trump’s resident villainous creep Stephen Miller, the regime is pushing AI companies to hand over unrestricted use of their technology to spy on Americans and urging Congress to expand government surveillance powers.
If it seems that warnings about Trump’s right-wing media takeover are sensationalist or overstated, Trump himself is quite clear about it. The despot shared an infographic over the weekend illustrating how “President Trump Is Reshaping the Media,” celebrating the defunding of NPR, the departure of prominent news anchors from major networks, and mass layoffs at the Washington Post.
Corporate media consolidation has always been about serving the interests of the elite and their capitalist system of endless personal profit. Now, as Trump oversees the final stages of a decades-long merger of corporate power and the state, his regime expects media organizations to serve not just Wall Street but the White House as well.
The good news is that the public is not powerless against this slide toward state-controlled media. If viewers can pressure a corporation as powerful as Disney with the threat of canceling their subscriptions until it spurns government bullying, as in the case of Kimmel’s show, such collective action can be replicated and broadened to other forms of economic pressure by the masses. In the same way, news worker unions like The NewsGuild CWA, WGAE, and others can work to mobilize newsrooms against the fascist media coup.
The Trump regime’s right-wing media echo chamber can and must be broken through collective people power, both in the form of boycotts and by supporting independent media that answer to no politicians, no government masters, and no corporate overlords.
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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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