Conservative Media’s Big Advantage: Money, Money, Money

But perhaps the most important feature of the media landscape today comes down to money. Specifically, the endless, flowing river of oligarchic monopoly money.

Well-functioning media systems have generally included some kind of public constraint or oversight that keeps journalism from veering too far from its fundamental mission of informing the public. This public involvement can take the form of regulation (through broadcast licenses, for example), through support for large public broadcasting corporations (the BBC in the U.K., CBC in Canada), or through a variety of other mechanisms (like the old Fairness Doctrine in the United States).

In the U.S., public constraint on media has largely evaporated. But that doesn’t mean that the system has been handed over to “the market.” Today, for example, 40 percent of all local TV news stations are under the control of the three largest broadcast conglomerates: Sinclair Broadcast Group, Gray Television, and Nexstar Media Group. Their stations—each company now owns about 100 affiliated with ABC, CBS, FOX, or NBC—operate in more than 80 percent of U.S. media markets. A conglomerate with a distinct and well-documented right-wing bias, such as Sinclair, has an outsize footprint on our information ecosystem.