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‘One family is about to control CBS, CNN, HBO, and TikTok’: Alarm grows over Paramount-Warner Bros. merger
(www.commondreams.org)
this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2026
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Know the history.
Back when radio/TV were just getting started, the FCC created a set of rules to make sure that the public would be well informed. One company could only own two radio stations [AM and FM] and one TV station in a town. Even the Big Three netowrks were limited to six stations across the country.
Another rule was that if a station broadcast any editorial they had to offer equal time for opposing views.
After Watergate, the Right think tanks realized that the reason Nixon went down was that there was a robust news gathering media that was beyond their control. As soon as Reagan took office he started 'deregulating' the media. By 1996, the Fairness Doctrine was dead.
For those who are about to start crying about cable TV not being the same as broadcast; the FCC covers cable. The GOP made sure that Fox News could be as terrible as it is.
not exactly, while Fairness did provide equal time for political views, it also kept anchors from just outright lying, or obfuscating the truth for a story. once that was killed under Reagan, conservative talk radio blew up. and then that brings us to today.
This is revisionist.
The FCC created a set of rules to manage a broadcasting cartel. Changes in technology shifted the domain of ownership from the production companies to the telecommunication companies and eventually the data center companies.
But we started as a cartel. We're still a cartel. The FCC has done nothing to change that (and made many moves to entrench it - the forced sale of TikTok being only the latest).
The Fairness Doctrine was an enrichment of the two party system. Reagan simply took the next logical step and made it a one party system.
FCC did not force the sale of TikTok, Congress did
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr labeled TikTok a "clear and present danger" to US national security, urging its removal from app stores due to concerns over data access by China. Citing reports of ByteDance personnel in Beijing accessing sensitive American user data, Carr argued the app acts as a surveillance tool
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521/text