The news industry is struggling in Donald Trump’s imperial America

Orson Welles saw him as a threat, in the role of Charles Forster Kane – the Citizen Kane modelled on Randolph Hearst, the man who said ‘if there’s no news, make some’, but also the ‘America First’ advocate, the legendary press magnate who clashed with Joseph Pulitzer, the man who pioneered popular journalism with the *New York World*. Walter Lippmann conceived of it as a sentinel to prevent abuses, oppression and imbalances in the delicate equilibrium between the state and the market, between public opinion and government. The fourth estate, with its limitations and ambiguities, has nonetheless been a pillar of democracy in America. Today it is under threat from many quarters. First and foremost from an imperial presidency that seeks to emasculate Congress and bring the Supreme Court to heel. We shall see what happens after tomorrow’s mid-term elections, but we would be mistaken to believe that the fourth estate is under attack solely from Trump. The new digital world on the one hand, and the collapse of the pillars of the liberal-democratic system alongside the cult of the leader on the other, are leading us into a Borges-esque labyrinth where the true becomes false, the hero a traitor, and vice versa. And all this will continue to simmer in the postmodern cauldron of politics.

Press, TV, social media: a veritable storm has broken out in the world of news. The United States was the first to go through the crisis and is undergoing such a protracted transition that it shows no sign of ending; indeed, artificial intelligence is forcing an acceleration and a shift in direction not only for newspapers but also for television, whether cable, satellite or internet-based. It is the content that is changing, not just the form; the profession of journalism is changing, and so too is the ‘fourth estate’. Even in the America of Hearst, Pulitzer and Lippmann, the powers were entangled in an unhealthy web. Press barons were involved in politics, supported political parties, were elected to Congress, financed presidents and sought to end up in the White House themselves. However, Hearst himself—who for a time had deluded himself into believing that Nazism did some good things too—when Hitler asked him why the Americans were against him, replied: ‘Because they love democracy and hate dictators.’

That tangled web of conflicts of interest has become even more stifling today under a president who wields power like a club; at times he seems like the most eccentric of the Marx Brothers, at others a South American caudillo. The news is his bane; he has set up his own social media platform and called it ‘Truth’ to propagate Truth with a capital T, even if it is only his own. Journalists are both hated enemies (he punishes those who do not revere him) and envied at the same time; he does not read books, even though he has written them or had them written ("The Art of Business", "Never Give Up", "Why We Want You to Be Rich", that sort of thing), and they have become popular, if not exactly bestsellers. He is clearly at odds with the liberal press and, above all, with leading TV channels such as CNN and CBS’s ‘60 Minutes’, the cult programme of investigative journalism – the real thing.

Let us begin with newspapers, out of affection and because of the importance that print media still holds in the United States today, despite all its digital offshoots and various trappings.

The battle for supremacy is an all-New York affair between the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, which Rupert Murdoch has sought to transform into the second (for now) national newspaper, as well as the voice of the dissenting faction amongst those Republicans who do not like Trump. However, the trajectory of Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post, with its frequent ups and downs, is an even more telling illustration of the difficult path faced by the fourth estate. Just this month, a woman, Alex Wallace, took over the role previously held by the legendary Ben Bradley, the man behind the Watergate scoop that forced Richard Nixon to resign. A journalist with a background in television (CBS News and NBC) and the internet (Yahoo), Wallace will serve as chief operating officer, whilst Jeffrey D’Onofrio has been appointed chief executive – a manager with more expertise in finance and digital media than in publishing. It is the spirit of the times; it is a necessity everywhere, even in Europe. The pair seem well-matched, though some have turned up their noses at the choice of D’Onofrio because not only is he not a journalist, but he has more of a profile as a manager than as a media strategist. He began his career with the famous restaurant guide, the historic New York-based Zagat, which was acquired by Google partly thanks to his negotiating skills; he then entered the digital world at Tumblr, the platform founded by David Karp, which he led from 2013 to 2022. After a spell at CafeMedia, an offer came from Jeff Bezos. It took almost a year before he took the helm, which had been held for just two years by William Lewis, a British newspaperman whose career spanned from the Daily Telegraph to the Murdoch empire and right to the top of Dow Jones, where he distinguished himself by modernising the Wall Street Journal – a publication with which he won the Pulitzer Prize thanks to an investigation into Donald Trump’s scandalous links with thelawyer Daniel Cohen, who found himself caught in the legal trap of fraud, tax evasion and collusion with Vladimir Putin – yes, him again; in so many ways, both direct and indirect, Tsar Vlad crosses paths with the White House.

Bezos and Trump could not be more different. One came from nothing, the son of two underage students and adopted by a Cuban immigrant; the other was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, the scion of a wealthy New York property developer. The former made his breakthrough with a brilliant business idea (selling books online); the latter schemed his way to building skyscrapers and casinos, only to end up in administration. Physically, too, they are polar opposites: Jeff, nearly twenty years younger, small in stature, full of beans, an engineer who graduated with top marks; and Donald, blond and portly, a graduate of a bogus academy paid for by his dad, who dodged the Vietnam draft by telling lies whilst the call-up papers were still arriving. Things changed after Trump’s second victory, and even Bezos had to eat humble pie. Not only that, he put pressure on the newspaper’s top brass to tone down editorials and commentaries. But that slogan, ‘Democracy dies in darkness’, remained beneath the masthead. The phrase had appeared on 17 February 2017, shortly after The Donald had taken office in the White House. Now that the sun has set and it is unclear when it will rise again on the banks of the Potomac, it is even more relevant. 2027 will mark the newspaper’s 150th anniversary: D’Onofrio has written that it is up to all staff members to “position it for the next 150 years”. His first objective is to break even (he may well manage it by the end of the year, according to Bloomberg), but that is not enough; new revenue streams and new readers are needed, as the shift in editorial direction has led to the loss of many subscribers. News and opinion, said the new chief executive, remain the centre of gravity, but which new planets will orbit around them? And what will his strategy be over the next two years as Trump’s decline plays out – though not yet that of ‘Trumpism’?

These are questions that should also be put to the industry leader, the New York Times, which since 2015 has found itself navigating a curious duality at the top of the skyscraper designed by Renzo Piano in the heart of Manhattan: between the dynasty that has owned it for over a century and a new, influential Mexican shareholder. Founded in 1851 by the journalist and politician Henry Jarvis Raymond, it was purchased in 1896 by Adolph Ochs and has always remained in the hands of the same family, which, unlike others, decided to focus on a single vocation: publishing the Times. A leading voice of the liberal world, it has also supported Republicans throughout its history, such as Wendell Willkie in 1940, who lost to F.D. Roosevelt. Since 1960, however, it has consistently backed the Democrats. Adolph Simon Ochs, the son of German Jewish immigrants, bought the New York Times for 75,000 dollars borrowed from a bank – a substantial sum for him at the time – following a career as a journalist at the Chattanooga Times in Tennessee; in reality, however, the newspaper was sold at a bargain price. Within a few years, he turned it around and launched it with a clear mission: to practise ‘objective journalism’, in contrast to Pulitzer and Hearst himself. By 1904 it was already up and running; twenty years later, it took off as an ‘independent Democratic publication’ – a label it would never lose, nor would its connection to Judaism. Adolph had married Effie Wise, daughter of Cincinnati rabbi Isaac Mayer, a leader of the liberal or progressive movement. This was another indelible mark on the Times. Wary of Zionism, Ochs opposed the idea of a state in Palestine. His daughter, Iphigenia Berta, married Arthur Sulzberger, a New Yorker and the son of merchants – his father was Ashkenazi and his mother Sephardic – whose great-grandfather had founded the New York Stock Exchange. The cultural and religious elite joined forces with the business elite. Sulzberger joined the Times in 1918 and, in 1935, took over the reins from his father-in-law. Thus began the lineage that still leads the newspaper today.

The Gray Lady began to have to change her ways at the start of this century, driven by the rise of the internet and in the wake of a shock from which America has never fully recovered: the Al-Qaeda attack on 11 September 2001 that destroyed the Twin Towers, that modern World Trade Centre, a symbol of the American century. New York was reeling; politics took a turn towards security with the law passed by George W. Bush. Sacred and inviolable personal freedoms were curtailed; for the first time, Americans had to carry identification in their pockets – a measure that, whilst necessary, carried great symbolic weight. Daily life changed, perhaps forever, and today further crackdowns are being imposed on ‘Democracy in America’.

In 2008, the year after the New York Times moved into its new 52-storey headquarters (not far from the old one, in the Times Square area), Rupert Murdoch took over Dow Jones, which controls the Wall Street Journal, and decided to transform it into a major national newspaper to challenge the Times’s dominance – indeed, to dethrone it and become the number one. The challenge is editorial in nature, both in the print editions and, indeed above all, in the online editions. Whilst the New York Times’ newsstand sales exceed 1.27 million, its online subscriptions reach 31 million unique users per month, compared with the Wall Street Journal’s 12 million. But it is also a political and cultural contest. Conservative journalists such as David Brooks and Sam Tanenhaus, and neoconservatives such as Bill Kristol – sharp minds and incisive writers – are joining the Times.

The financial pressure is mounting; the front page breaks a taboo by carrying an advert; 21 floors of the skyscraper are leased to the finance company WP Carey; and a woman, Jill Abramson, takes over as editor-in-chief.

Meanwhile, for the first time, an outsider—indeed, a foreigner, a Mexican of Lebanese origin—has made his way into the shareholder structure; he owns, amongst other things, the largest telecommunications company and is considered one of the richest men in the world (long ranked first or second before the arrival of the Big Tech tycoons). Carlos Slim makes his debut with a small shareholding (around 6 per cent) and states that this is purely a financial investment, made almost out of affection for the newspaper and esteem for the Ochs-Sulzberger family; Then, in 2015, he announced that he had become the largest shareholder, though not the sole one (he holds only 17.4 per cent), having spent 250 million dollars – a mere pittance given a fortune approaching 100 billion. In any case, he decided to leave editorial control in the hands of Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Junior and his relatives. So far, he has kept his word. The Times is the flagship of a gigantic conglomerate whose interests range from telecommunications to mining, from drinks to tobacco, from hotels to rubber – in short, almost a Korean chaebol.

Carlos Slim does not own a computer, but he does possess a vast collection of prestigious works of art; he keeps his accounts handwritten in notebooks; he is a Maronite Christian and a conservative, and one of the leading supporters of the Legionaries of Christ; he boasts a newspaper that is not only a major daily but also the think tank of North American liberal Judaism. Now aged 86, he has brought three of his sons into the business, who manage the empire under their father’s watchful eye. He and Trump have never seen eye to eye; he attacked him as early as 2016 and has continued to hold him in low esteem, although for a time he tempered his criticism and the two met at Mar-a-Lago. The tariffs and the wall on the Mexican border infuriated him; he then said that Trump is a destroyer, but also a skilful negotiator, and perhaps it is precisely this second aspect of his character that should be leveraged. The Times, however, is going its own way, and Slim has shown himself to be fair by respecting the newspaper’s autonomy. If only there were more like him in the media.

Even the Wall Street Journal, under the ‘Shark’ – the nickname given to Murdoch – has demonstrated a very clear political line whilst maintaining a high standard of journalistic professionalism. It has not become number one, although coming second in terms of sales and digital subscriptions is a significant achievement; yet it is undoubtedly a cultural benchmark for those who wish to hear the voice of a double-breasted right-wing perspective, without being rigid. The newspaper was founded in 1889 by Dow Jones as a stock market bulletin, but its front page – whose elegant austerity appealed to Il Foglio – featured a boxing match between two champions of the era as its inaugural story. Curiously, when Ted Turner launched his cable TV channel in 1980, he kicked things off with a boxing match and declared he would never cover news or politics; shortly afterwards, he founded CNN. Under the leadership of Clarence Barron, the Journal blazed a new trail for economic and financial journalism: publishing interesting stories without pulling any punches; if independence is difficult in politics, imagine how much more so when business is involved. Following the marriage of Barron’s stepdaughter to Hugh Bancroft, who had acquired Dow Jones, the newspaper returned to the parent company.

With a distinctly WASP heritage and allure, the Journal distinguishes itself with stories tailored to the refined tastes of sophisticated readers while remaining accessible to newcomers, thanks to its long-standing editor Bernard Kilgore, who managed to push sales past the one-million mark. 1960 marked a double turning point: Warren Phillips, a Jew, took the helm for the first time, and the paper began covering the civil rights movement. The new century dawned with the launch of digital editions, until in 2007 Murdoch, uninvited, took over Dow Jones, ousting the Bancroft heirs who had retained control. The staid Wall Street style came to an end, and a new phase began in management too. ‘The Shark’ shrewdly wielded his media weapons. Through Fox News, he helped to whitewash and relaunch Trump (who, naturally, showed him no gratitude), turning it into a stronghold of the hard right – albeit not entirely pure – and opening the doors to the ‘MAGA’ movement. Through the Journal, he gave a voice to traditional conservatives and Republicans of yesteryear. A Gallup poll in 2018 showed that the newspaper was regarded by the public as the third most accurate and the fourth best for objective analysis, particularly amongst Republicans, but also amongst Democrats. During this second term, Murdoch and Trump have been at loggerheads over the Epstein files: the publication of birthday wishes to Jeffrey signed by Donald, containing clearly suggestive phrases, sent King Don into a rage, prompting him to seek $10 billion in damages. A Florida judge subsequently dismissed the lawsuit. Murdoch continues to fund the Republican Party, but the Wall Street Journal continues to publish stories and commentaries that both praise and criticize the antics of Trump and his family, along with the motley crew that throngs the White House.

We have dwelled on the daily newspapers because they have remained somewhat out of the spotlight, whilst the full glare of attention has fallen on Larry Ellison’s bid for Paramount via his son David – an $8 billion deal openly backed by his close friend Donald, who, not entirely by chance, is the President of the United States. The real target is not the Hollywood major, but what it contains: CBS, the leading of the three national television networks (ABC and NBC being the others), which, together with its affiliate CNN, is regarded as a liberal stronghold under the umbrella of the Democratic Party.

Trump received $45 million from Ellison, the Wall Street Journal has revealed, and in return involved the Oracle founder in a $500 billion project to build data centres designed to support artificial intelligence. Moreover, he effectively entrusted TikTok to him, as we shall see, and involved him in a number of joint ventures, the most significant of which is the acquisition of Paramount. In this regard, the White House played a key role in securing approval from the Department of Justice and the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission. “What began as a merger with a Hollywood studio has become a test of the extent to which corporate America bows to Trump’s power over the media,” wrote the Financial Times.

Unlike newspapers – both major and, even more so, local ones – the American television landscape is dominated by entertainment magnates. Paramount, owned by Ellison’s Skydance, owns CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Showtime, and the key assets previously linked to Warner Bros and Discovery (namely CNN, TBS and TNT). Walt Disney owns ABC and the sports giant ESPN, as well as the Disney Channel and FX. Comcast owns NBC, Sky – for which it paid Murdoch 30 billion pounds – and Universal Studios. The young Nexstar group, founded in Texas in 1996, is the largest owner of television stations, neck and neck with Sinclair Broadcasting – founded in 1971 by an electronics engineer – which runs 170 local TV stations with an iron fist, making them a widespread mouthpiece for the right. Then there is ‘The Shark’ with Fox.

Newspapers, television. But weren’t they dead or dying, hit by the internet and sunk by social media? Aren’t the new, not entirely hidden ‘persuaders’ Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (now X) and their ilk? So they say; so it has been written. It may well be true. And yet, if someone like Trump goes to such lengths, if he mobilises economic and political powers, if he attacks, insults, threatens legal action, calls for purges and heads to roll, is he really doing it solely out of a personal delusion of omnipotence? Do major business tycoons battle it out over billions for a newspaper or a TV channel, simply for sport? Or is the truth that those archaic newspapers, founded as far back as the 19th century, and those dusty television channels that Generation Z no longer watches, continue to dictate the political agenda, to influence those who matter and those who call the shots? What can one say? Posterity will be the judge.

They had been described as the voices from below, the most immediate expressions of the people, the vehicles of direct democracy. They were regarded as the new media that would supplant their predecessors. Formidable levers to dismantle the ruling elites and established powers with a wave of media-political anarchy. Instead, they have become the new, not-entirely-covert persuaders. Technological populism presented itself through the Twitter bird logo, through chats between friends on Facebook, and later through photos and short videos on Instagram. A grassroots form of information emerged: journalism centred on the immediate event, on a single act captured and presented unfiltered. Before long, every powerful figure—old and new—ended up creating their own social media platform to reflect themselves and spread their own version of the truth: a Narcissus contemplating his own power, a 21st-century Uncle Scrooge swimming in his own gold. The naïve pluralism of the early days turned first into cacophony and then into open conflict. The battle for control of TikTok is proof of this.

The standoff with Beijing has come to an end thanks to an agreement that leaves the Chinese firm ByteDance with 17 per cent of the US arm and brings in a consortium of American entrepreneurs, the foremost of whom is his friend Ellison. In this way, TikTok avoids being banned from the US; Trump does Xi a favour and extends his reach into social media, the most important of which are now under the control of the court of high-tech tycoons. Elon Musk with X (formerly Twitter); Mark Zuckerberg with Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger; Google with YouTube; Microsoft with LinkedIn; whilst the Chinese giant Tencent owns WeChat. Last but not least, there is Donald Trump’s ‘Truth’. So much for direct democracy, so much for information wrested from the caste of journalists, intellectuals and those hideous capitalists – the manipulation of the masses now has no veils or filters left.

“Every form of power is, or becomes, right-wing. Only the control exercised over it makes it left-wing. And without freedom, there is no control,” wrote Jean-François Revel, author of How Democracies Die, a socialist who later became a liberal with somewhat anarchist leanings. It was 1970, a year marked by rebellions in the capitalist West and repression under communist dictatorships. But this applies to any power that seeks to impose itself as a monad without doors or windows. Even to the fourth estate. What has changed since Walter Lippmann wrote "Public Opinion" in 1922, warning against a simplified and distorted representation of reality based not on facts but on ‘images in our minds’ – stereotypes, as he was the first to call them – categories and prejudices that shape our perception of things? The form is more sophisticated, the technology more effective and pervasive, but the substance remains the same. Today, ‘the manufacture of consent’ – as the philosopher John Dewey called it – is in full swing; he, too, was an optimist, sixty years before Noam Chomsky, who was, by contrast, a pessimist. Once again, it is America that is sounding the alarm; its history serves as a warning to us, but its wisdom offers us the tools to respond.