The Walls Are Closing In On Corporate Media
Legacy outlets stuck between a president who wants them dead and consumers who are increasingly tuning out
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The Walls Are Closing In On Corporate Media
Remember when Disney bent the knee shortly after Trump’s election and settled an absolutely ridiculous lawsuit with him for $15 million? The details of Trump’s massive payday are so ridiculous that they bear repeating.
In March, 2024, ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos interviewed Rep. Nancy Mace and asked her how she, a sexual assault survivor, could support Trump, who had been found liable by a civil jury of “raping” E. Jean Carroll. In a huff, Trump sued ABC News because, under the narrow definition of New York State law, “rape” is technically not what Trump did to Carroll. Carroll testified that Trump “pushed her against a dressing room wall, stamped his mouth onto hers, yanked down her tights and shoved his hand and then his penis inside her while she struggled against him.”
But as PBS reported at the time, “Forcible penetration without consent of the vagina or other bodily orifices by fingers or anything else is labeled ‘sexual abuse’ by New York State law. The judge who presided over both the original trial and Carroll’s defamation case concluded that the jury’s verdict had not “failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’ Indeed … the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”
You don’t need to be a lawyer to know that Trump’s case against ABC was entirely without merit. But a month after he won the presidential election, Disney, the network’s parent company, settled the lawsuit by contributing $15 million to the Trump Presidential Library and paying him an additional $1 million for his legal fees. It also issued a “statement of regret.”
The following month, Meta also bent the knee to Trump, settling another frivolous lawsuit — this time for $25 million for suspending his Facebook account after he ginned up the January 6th insurrection. Mark Zuckerberg hightailed it to Mar-A-Lago to dine with Trump, started appearing on MAGA-aligned podcasts and donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural. Zuckerberg even purchased a $23 million mansion in DC earlier this year to be closer to this White House.
Disney and Meta probably thought that sucking up to Trump would placate him. During a business roundtable in Abu Dhabi on May 17, Trump mentioned that Disney Chairman Bob Iger had recently visited the White House to present plans for Disney's upcoming theme park in Abu Dhabi. Trump praised the project, stating, “I see the new theme park is going to be incredible. Bob Iger was in my office the other day and he was showing it to me.”
Not so fast.
The very next day, Trump changed his mind about both Iger and the company he runs.
“I give these SleazeBags fair warning!” Trump posted to Truth Social. “Why doesn’t Chairman Bob Iger do something about ABC Fake News, especially since I just won $16,000,000 based on the Fake and Defamatory reporting of Liddle’ George Slopadopolus.”
Apparently, ABC News had done too accurate a job reporting the news about Qatar’s “palace in the sky” gift to Trump, which will serve as his private plane when (or, should I say if) he leaves the White House.
“Everyone, including their lawyers, has been told that ABC must not say that Qatar is giving ME a FREE Boeing 747 Airplane, because they are not,” Trump fumed on his social media platform. “This highly respected country is donating the plane to the United States Air Force/ Defense Department, AND NOT TO ME.”
All of this comes on the heels of Trump’s politicized Federal Communications Commission opening an investigation in March into Disney and ABC for “promoting invidious forms of DEI discrimination.” FCC Chairman Brendan Carr launched a DEI-related probe into Comcast, the owner of NBC, in February and has also gone after PBS and NPR. Not surprisingly, he has failed to look into similar issues at Fox News, though Fox Corporation has publicly promoted its DEI work.
Even if the FCC does not have the legal right to punish media companies for their DEI practices, Carr does have a massive cudgel at his disposal. He can vote to block any mergers and acquisitions these companies undertake, which would severely impact their bottom line.
It’s not just legacy media that Trump has decided to target. After Trump’s 2020 loss, his Federal Trade Commission filed an antitrust lawsuit against Meta, which was dismissed before being refiled during the Biden administration. Maybe Zuckerberg thought that sucking up to Trump, paying him tens of millions of dollars, suspending fact-checking and showing up to his inauguration would have caused Trump to order the FTC to drop the whole thing.
No such luck. The trial kicked off a month ago, even after all of Zuckerberg’s sycophancy. If Meta loses, it may have to divest itself of WhatsApp and Instagram, which accounts for over 50% of its revenue. What’s more, it would allow an administration that is famous for its anti-regulatory rhetoric to regulate Big Tech quite stringently — but only when it feels like it and only when companies refuse to become wholly owned subsidiaries of and mouthpieces for MAGA, Inc.
What all these corporations miss is that there is no making peace with this president. If you give him an inch, he will take a mile. Once he senses weakness, he will continue pouncing. And weakness, to him, is companies that settle lawsuits but do not turn their programming into North Korean-level obeisance. It is companies that bribe him with what he knows are inconsequential amounts to their bottom lines. It is companies augmenting corporate policies to placate him but not enough to praise him.
Trump only comes around when someone who previously wronged him so utterly abases himself that there is not a shadow of a doubt about what a wholly owned subsidiary that person is. Think JD Vance or Marco Rubio.
Neither Disney nor Meta is prepared to do that, yet. And so annihilate them he must.
By smashing Meta, Trump knows that he will elevate Truth Social and other social media companies that are wholly devoted to the MAGA cult. By destroying Disney, Comcast and other corporate media behemoths, he knows that he will send a signal to others, including Fox, that they better not deviate from the business of praising Dear Leader, ever.
All of this is of a piece. Trump is currently running the dollar into the ground, which helps his own cryptocurrency business thrive. He is saving TikTok while harming Meta, because, as Puck writes, TikTok was a “hotbed of pro-Trump activity” in 2024 and its algorithm exhibited pro-Republican bias — likely as punishment for Biden signing the law to ban the platform in the United States. (Lo and behold, Trump has simply ignored the ban on TikTok, allowing the platform to keep operating in the United States, presumably in exchange for pro-Trump content continuing to dominate. If that were ever to change, you can bet that Trump would enforce the ban overnight. And TikTok knows that.)
If these media companies all reported on the extortion in which Trump engages every day, rather than sucking up to him in what are clearly doomed efforts to save themselves, they would be serving both the public interest and likely protecting their business models a little while longer. Independent media is growing precisely because viewers and readers no longer trust corporate outlets to look out for them, for good reason. When they pull their punches about what Trump is doing every day while fixating on his predecessor’s health, it is obvious that they are currying favor with a White House that is in the revenge business. No more, no less.
Right now, corporate media is stuck between a rock and a hard place, between an administration that wants it dead and consumers who are increasingly tuning out. At least if these conglomerates picked a side, they could use their considerable firepower to stand up for the First Amendment with everything they have — and hope that they survive the next four years to rise again.
But bending the knee to a man who wants their annihilation, not just their capitulation, will ensure their demise. It’s just a question of whether it happens at his hands or at the hands of the consumers they insult with their behavior.
Further Reading:
PBS: ABC agrees to pay $15 million to Trump’s presidential library to settle defamation lawsuit
The Wall Street Journal: Meta to Pay $25 Million to Settle 2021 Trump Lawsuit
CNBC: Corporate America shelled out millions for Trump’s inauguration. Now he’s upending many of their businesses
Insider: Trump says Bob Iger visited his office to discuss Disney's new theme park: 'It's going to be incredible'
The Daily Beast: Trump Threatens ABC ‘SleazeBags’ Over Qatari Plane Coverage
NPR: FCC chair opens investigation into Disney and ABC over DEI practices
Fox Corporation: Culture & Belonging
The Guardian: Meta faces antitrust claims at trial over Instagram and WhatsApp ownership
Puck: The Trump-TikTok Flirtation
Psy Post: TikTok’s algorithm exhibited pro-Republican bias during 2024 presidential race, study finds
So much of this is of their own doing. On the surface, normalizing Trump and being overly critical of Hillary and Biden because the former don't generate the clicks and easy stories Trump churns out by the bushelful daily. But looking deeper, they all played a role in dumbing down America with highly profitable reality TV and film franchises that glorify male rage, the rugged individualist, and the white savior (every Marvel movie ever with one exception). Even kiddie fare -- like Disney Channel shows where the leads are either celebrities or spies and the adults are complete dolts if existent at all. They set Mike Judge's Idiocracy into motion a good 500 years before the film predicted it. Most adults today are too stupid and ignorant to filter content for truth or accuracy, instead, just giving into their most basic urges for retribution and dominance with blind faith MAGA support (see how most snacks, beers, WWE events, monster truck rallies, male performance pills, etc. are marketed to these people).
Well stated, Ms. Roginsky. Corporations that bent the knee, which ironically spells maga (meta, apple, google, and amazon), plus disney, comcast, and many others are in 47’s cross hairs. These bastions of running to constant favorable winds instead of making a principled stand shows the corporate media and corporate social media model is a money loser.
The corporate media was not afraid of Harris, didn’t report the truth, gaslit the American public and they actively supported 47, and boohoo if 47 is going after the same supplicants. May corporate media bleed a slow, painful financial death. 47 has instructed his pals not to cover today’s Throne speech by Charles.