Last Updated on September 18, 2025 by ThePublic
Something chilling is happening before our eyes: speech is not merely being fought with counterspeech, it’s being bought, squeezed, and shut down. This is not hyperbole. It is a slow-motion consolidation of our information ecosystem, coordinated by a White House that has learned how to weaponize regulators, and by billionaires eager to buy influence, not just companies. The result is a hollowing out of dissent, and a direct threat to the idea that we live in a country where the people can speak freely about power.
Start with late night. This week, Nexstar, the country’s largest owner of local broadcast stations, announced it would preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! after the host made controversial comments following the killing of Charlie Kirk. That preemption didn’t happen in a vacuum: it came after the FCC chair publicly signaled pressure on broadcasters. The point is not whether you like Kimmel’s jokes. The point is that a regulator’s posture and corporate owners’ actions combined to remove a voice from a mass medium almost overnight. Reuters
Now look at who’s buying the megaphone. Earlier this summer the FCC approved a takeover that hands Paramount, including CBS, to a Skydance/Ellison-controlled company after a protracted review. That approval followed political choreography: settlements, promises, and concessions made under pressure that left watchdogs and lawmakers alarmed. What used to be a public square now looks like a private shopping mall where wealthy patrons pick the tenants. Federal Communications Commission
If you imagine this as isolated transactions, you’re not seeing the pattern. These moves are part of a systemic push: regulatory nudges + corporate buyouts + friendly oligarchs = a media landscape easier to manage politically. The playbook is familiar, not an American innovation but an authoritarian one seen elsewhere: crush independent outlets, buy or bully the rest, and create an environment where dissenting voices are marginalized or silenced by fear. The signals are loud: speak up and you risk being taken off the air or losing funding. Los Angeles Times
And then there’s social media, the town square of our era. After months of legal and political theater, a deal framework is emerging that would shift TikTok’s U.S. operations into the hands of U.S. buyers, including some of the very oligarch-adjacent players who have already consolidated power in legacy media. That would put an app with 170 million U.S. users into hands that could, in practice, be aligned with the administration’s interests. The administration’s argument is national security; the effect risks being political control. When the same network of allies controls multiple distribution channels, broadcast, cable, and now mass-market social apps, the danger is that information choice will tilt heavily toward one political constellation. Reuters
The consequence is clearest in the day-to-day behavior of outlets and hosts. Once a few high-profile figures are punished, canceled, suspended, or bought out, the rest of the industry learns the lesson. Editorial teams rehearse self-censorship. Producers greenlight fewer hard-hitting investigations. Comedians, columnists, and anchors begin to weigh job security against doing their jobs. That chilling effect is exactly how you make the First Amendment a paper promise rather than a living reality.
This is not only about left vs. right. It is about power vs. the public. It is about a concentrated nexus of political authority and private capital learning how to coordinate the limits of acceptable speech. The fact that regulatory muscle is being flexed at the same time that friendly deep pockets buy major outlets is not coincidence: it is coordination by design, not accident.
So what can we do, beyond righteous anger? First, name it clearly: this is media consolidation + regulatory capture. Second, support independent journalism: subscribe, donate, amplify. Third, demand transparency: full public disclosures about the conditions under which broadcasters and platforms were allowed to change hands, and why. Fourth, press your representatives: ask them to investigate, not in partisan shrieks, but with crisp questions about process, conflicts of interest, and safeguards for independent journalism.
Finally, remember a deeper truth: speech is not just the right to say anything; it’s the right to be heard in an open arena where power can be examined. A democracy’s oxygen is not applause from those in power, it’s scrutiny of power. When that oxygen is hoarded by a few, democracy suffocates.
We are not powerless. We can push back with civic pressure, subscriptions, and by amplifying independent voices. We can demand the legal and cultural guardrails that make media pluralism the rule again. But first we must see the danger clearly, name it, and refuse to accept the quieting of our public square.
If you care about the First Amendment, now is a time for more than watching. It’s time for organizing, for small acts of commitment: donate to your local paper, write to your house rep, share investigative work, vote with your attention and your wallet. Because if the megaphones are for sale, the only defense left might be the people themselves.