How Trump’s War on Journalism Can End America

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Welcome to Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams from Crooked Media.

I'm your host, Stacey Abrams.

I launched this podcast because I wanted to help us break down the complex and make the remote policies we hear about seem real and accessible.

Since the election, though, I've been focused on how to help us understand what's happening to our country.

We've heard different political terminology thrown around to describe describe it.

Authoritarianism, fascism, autocracy.

They're all of the same piece, but they mean slightly different things.

And they are big concepts that are painfully simple in their execution.

That led me to a framework to put these disparate acts of destruction into some order, what I like to call the 10 steps to autocracy.

But first credit where credit is due.

Professor Kim Shepel, who works at Princeton University, introduced me to this list.

I've taken the liberty to remix it and editorialize it a bit according to what we've seen in this country since Trump took office and Republicans took up the banner.

I use the term autocracy because that describes a system of government where one position holds absolute power.

Among the many other vile things that Donald Trump has been called, including tyrant, liar, scam artist, he is also an aspiring dictator, supported and guided like a puppet by a cabal of tech billionaires, billionaires, Christian nationalists, and xenophobes who all have his ear and understand government a lot better than he does.

Under their tutelage, Americans are losing rights by the day, and the rest of the world is also paying a heavy price.

From gutting civil service to defunding public broadcasting, the erosion of democracy is well underway.

Republicans have already hit every step on the Autocrats' ladder to power.

Step one, hold a free and fair election, but make sure it's the last one.

Step two, expand power with unprecedented executive orders and refuse to follow the law.

Step three, weaken competing powers, make Congress complicit, intimidate your opponents, and ignore judicial authority unless they just give you what you want.

Step four, break the government so it doesn't work for those who need it.

Step five, install loyalists who won't dare say no.

And then there's step six, the one we've seen unfold most blatantly in the recent weeks.

Go after the media so no one knows the truth.

Just this year, Trump has filed lawsuits against CBS, ABC, and even a pollster who published data he didn't like.

He banned the Associated Press from the White House press pool for months.

And two weeks ago, he filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal, News Corps, and Rupert Murdoch for publishing a story linking him to Jeffrey Epstein.

What Republicans call fake news is often any fact-based journalism that makes them look bad.

And the response is to undermine, sue, and intimidate anyone who reports the truth.

This isn't just a violation of the First Amendment.

It's a giant leap towards building an autocratic regime.

Trump may be the initial beneficiary, but if they succeed, this legacy will endure.

And in the last couple of months, we've seen what can happen when the drive to suppress the media meets the realities of media consolidation and the collapse of traditional media business models.

Paramount, the parent company of CBS, has been pursuing a merger with another media behemoth, Skydance.

That merger had to be approved by the Federal Communications Commission, or the FCC, led by Republican Senate-confirmed Trump nominee Brendan Carr.

Since the election, CBS has made a number of concessions to the Trump administration, right when they were seeking FCC approval for their $8 billion merger.

Yet instead of fighting, CBS settled a frivolous lawsuit that falsely claimed that 60 Minutes had deceptively edited an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris.

Just a few weeks after the $16 million settlement, the FCC approved the merger.

Senators Ed Markey and Ben Ray Luhan said that the timing, quote, reeks of the worst form of corruption.

On the late show, Stephen Colbert called CBS's settlement a big fat bribe.

Three days later, Paramount canceled the late show with Stephen Colbert.

Alternative explanations abound for every example, but ultimately, this is what autocrats look for.

Capitulation that can be spun as choice.

Telling the difference requires an independent news media more afraid of lying to the public than compromising its integrity for the leader of the free world.

We'll be talking more about the 10 steps to autocracy in the coming weeks and months because it's very important that we understand them.

But today, we're going to dig into step six.

And to help us make sense of the state of media independence amid Trump's escalating attacks, I'm joined by journalist and founder of Status, a new media venture focused on informing us about what's happening in the corridors of media power, led by our guest, Oliver Darcy.

Oliver Darcy, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Thank you, Stacey, for having me.

I'm excited to be here.

So I want to start off with one of those really basic questions, the role of the free press.

So we know that this is a very popular trope in America's story of itself, that we have a free press and that that free press guarantees us everything else.

the sense that it gives us the ability to know what's happening.

Can you open this conversation by talking about what the free press means to you and if you believe that it's still a truism in America?

Yeah, I mean, I think a free press means that the press is able to report and do accountability, journalism in particular, on

people

in power, people who have powerful positions, whether that's

in the business environment, the business community, or whether that's in government positions or elsewhere.

And I think, you know, if you look on paper, yes, we have a free press, right?

And there are laws that protect the press and there's a lot of, there are a lot of protections built in in this country.

Meaning, the First Amendment, for instance, I mean, gives the press the ability to function.

I'd say, though, that right now we're in an era where A lot of those protections are being challenged by very powerful people in a way that certainly jeopardizes the free press or causes us to question whether we can operate in the same way that we'd like to think about like the press operating in the United States.

And that comes in a couple ways.

One being the power of people like Elon Musk to

wage, you know, to use the word from the right, lawfare against the press, to sue them and to create such a headache and a cost burden that it's not really even about winning a lawsuit.

It's about almost bankrupting these companies because they can't even defend themselves against a a force like Elon Musk, who can, you know, he probably has a skyscraper full of attorneys who can really be difficult, if not impossible, to wage battle with unless you're a huge corporation and you have the tolerance for that.

And so look what he's doing, for instance, to the media watchdog Media Matters, which has defamation insurance, which has lawyers, and they had to lay off staffers.

And the New York Times reported a couple of weeks ago that they even have contemplated shutting down entirely because of the legal battle that Elon Musk is waging against them for them simply reporting on what's happening on his platform X.

And so that's number one.

So business leaders, people like Elon Musk, who have amassed so much wealth, they can pose a real danger, I think, to the free press right now.

And then obviously Donald Trump in the evil office is the second one.

And he has,

in an unprecedented fashion, weaponized government and used the power of that office to effectively force companies into submission.

And while they legally can battle him, there's a few reasons that they choose not to.

Because, you know, one, they might need business.

They have business before the government.

They might need approval.

Or two, just because it's a costly, lengthy endeavor to go to court against the president of the United States, and he can make it very painful in the process.

And so you've seen companies like most recently Paramount settle these ridiculous lawsuits that he's filed against them just to clear, you know, to clear the slate so they can get their business deals through or just move on as a company.

And so, you know, like, is 60 Minutes allowed to report on whatever they want, basically without the reporters being arrested and thrown in jail?

Yes.

At the same time,

you know, there are real questions about how these companies can operate and whether they're, you know, I don't know, whether the current protections safeguard them enough, I'd say.

Well, I want to dig into the Paramount merger with Skydance, but before we get there, you raised the lawfare challenge facing Media Matters.

And for people who aren't familiar with Media Matters, this is an organization that was initially founded by or co-founded by David Brock, who was actually a conservative who was concerned about right-wing media.

Can you talk a little bit more about Media Matters and the work that they've been doing?

We know that they've been under attack from Elon Musk, but they've been at this work for almost 20 years.

Can you talk a little bit about why they are such an important

lever for a free press?

I think that, I mean, the interesting thing about Media Matters is they're not like a traditional newsroom, right?

They're a nonprofit

and they're really like a watchdog.

And what they do every day is they monitor what people in right-wing media are doing,

what they're saying, what they're telling their audiences of millions of people.

And they really effectively, basically, if you go to the website right now, you'll see they get a clip of Sean Hannity saying something and they attach to that clip a transcript.

And that's like 90% of the work they do.

But because

right-wing media is so vast now and so fragmented, it's a very valuable piece of work that they're doing because no one has time.

And even if you, Stacey, if you decided you wanted to listen to everyone in right-wing media, there's too much of it.

You cannot, as a single person, physically listen to that much out there.

And so to understand what's going on, you really need need people actually listening to these shows and reporting back.

Like, this is what Laura Loomer is telling the president on her show.

This is what Sean Hannity is saying.

This is what Jesse Waters is saying.

This is what Steve Bannon is saying.

And they do that.

They highlight a lot of the conspiracy theories these people push, a lot of the rhetoric they're pushing.

And then because of that, we can understand, I think, what millions of people are hearing in their information universe.

And so I think that's very valuable work.

And then they do some research too.

So last week, for instance, they put out a study that said that Fox News had mentioned Sidney Sweeney like 200 sometimes versus Jeffrey Epstein, you know, like a handful of times.

And so, that's valuable as well.

But that's what they're doing.

They're really observing and reporting back what they observe, which is journalism.

And as you might imagine, though, this gets under the skin of a lot of powerful people because they rather operate invisibly.

And so, with X, they've run into problems because they were reported, for instance, that a lot of brands like Pepsi or NFL were having their

ads shown adjacent to extremist material on X.

And that's a problem for X because they don't want their advertisers hearing this.

And so effectively, it seems like Elon Musk has retaliated against

this nonprofit watchdog group and just sued them.

And now

even Donald Trump's

government is investigating them.

And so there's all this happening.

And

they're not considered, I guess, by traditional means to be a news organization like CNN.

I think if the FTC were investigating CNN, you'd see a lot more outcry about what that means for the press.

But they are effectively doing journalism.

And it's really alarming what's happening to them,

the pressure that they're under as a result of that.

I appreciate you laying that out because I think part of today's conversation has to demonstrate that it's not just about what's being said, it's who's deciding who can say it.

And so, as you pointed out, media matters really came into being as a result of a number of things that changed in our media landscape.

That I would peg back to Ronald Reagan erasing the fairness doctrine, which really gave rise to right-wing media and to Fox News no longer having to comply with what had been a long-standing tradition in this country, that even if you didn't like the news, we all basically got the same information.

And when the fairness doctrine was eviscerated, that shifted dramatically.

Because I know someone out there is saying, Well, what's the media matters on the right to look at the left?

And the reality is, the proliferation of right-wing media, to your point, is just so much more vast and it is so much less regulated than in any time in our history.

And that leads to the conversation about Skydance's $8 billion merger with Paramount.

And I really am going to make this point come together, which is that the FCC or the Federal Communications Commission basically approved this mega merger.

And I want to start by understanding why the FCC is important.

Much as you described the nonprofit role that Media Matters is playing, the FCC has a similar responsibility that was born in the 1930s because of radio.

Can you talk a little bit about the FCC and just generically what it's supposed to do?

Sure.

The public airwaves at the time, you know, now we use non-public airwaves to get a lot of information out there.

There's cable and so.

But back in the day, to have, to be a broadcaster, you were using the public airwaves.

And so the FCC's role is to ensure that what's on the public airwaves is in the public interest.

It's in the public good.

You're not abusing the platform that you've been given by by the public.

And so they regulate not only what happens on radio, that's how I think it was born, but also what goes on television and

on the public airwaves.

So ABC, CBS, NBC, these are corporations that are broadcasting

via the public airwaves and are therefore

regulated by the FCC.

And so, there's a reason you can't, for instance, curse on ABC, but that might be allowed on HBO because HBO is over cable and NBC is over the public airwaves.

And the FCC does not allow profanity and things of that nature on those airwaves.

Okay, so now we have an FCC.

We have this commission, and it's supposed to be regulating the use of public airwaves.

Skydance is a company that wants to merge with Paramount, and Paramount controls a great deal of the information that we get.

This was one of the most scrutinized media deals in the last decade.

Why is the merger of Skydance and Paramount so important for the purposes of a conversation about the press?

Well,

to make it easy, in the simplest terms, so Paramount owns CBS.

So to get this merger done, to transfer the CBS broadcast license to Skydance,

they need the FCC to approve it.

Again, because the FCC governs what goes on in the public airwaves and they manage these licenses and they want to ensure that, you know, the new owner is going to be acting in the public interest.

So they have approval rights over this deal, the entire deal, because of the CBS license.

That brings us to Donald Trump.

CBS also airs 60 Minutes.

That's a CBS news program.

And as we all know, I think by now, unless you've been living under a rock, they've been very aggressive in going after this administration and holding them accountable.

And Donald Trump knows that a lot of people watch 60 Minutes.

It's the most watched news program in the country.

And so he, he, it's under his skin.

And he filed a lawsuit last year,

which most legal experts, I mean, almost universally decried as an absurd lawsuit.

But he filed a lawsuit over an edit edit they did over on their Kamala Harris interview.

The details don't matter.

It was considered an absurd lawsuit.

And he wanted something like $20 billion, ridiculous amount of money.

And

typically, like a news organization like CBS, CBS News, they would fight this.

They would go to court, and they did, and they called it meritless in court.

They went through the motions.

But at the end of the day,

These two companies, Skydance and CB and Paramount, they want to merge.

And they sort of have to merge for Paramount's existence to continue because of the economics of the media business these days.

And

the FCC, which is now chaired by Brennan Carr, who is a Trump lackey,

can basically choose not to approve the deal.

And that's a problem if you want this deal to merge.

So basically what it came down to was Donald Trump using the power of government to force Sherry Redstone, who's the controlling shareholder of Paramount, to come to the table and to negotiate a settlement on his baseless 60-minutes lawsuit.

And that's what happened.

So

Sherry Redstone decided to pay Donald Trump $16 million on a lawsuit that

her own company called Meritless.

And the only reason that would happen is because that's a tiny amount of money to stand in the way of a much larger merger.

And,

you know, if you're worried about the free press,

that, I mean, the idea that they would settle and cave to the president on such a ridiculous lawsuit, I mean, I think that's alarming.

That's a really disturbing precedent.

And I think you're seeing Donald Trump, you know, he did the same thing with ABC News, and there was a George Stephanopoulos lawsuit he filed against them.

He's done the same thing against other companies like Meta when they banned him from the platforms after the January 6th insurrection.

And he's forced all of these major companies to pay him money for lawsuits that most legal experts said were ridiculous.

So you didn't use this word, but I'm going to.

I mean, essentially, these companies are being extorted by the president in order to get access to the perquisites of being in a democracy.

And

part of what I'm seeing is that this merger's approval didn't just extort money.

It also came with additional requirements.

Skydance had to agree to address alleged bias at CBS, and they had to end DEI initiatives.

And if you've listened to the show, DEI essentially applies to any programming, anything that is supportive of women, people of color, the disabled.

It has religious connotation.

So basically, you can't do anything that creates fairness and prevents discrimination

if you want.

Donald Trump to work with you.

But I haven't read the deal.

I doubt anybody really has.

But how do we think about these additional requirements being added by the FCC as a condition precedent to a major merger?

It's unprecedented, unprecedented.

And if you, it's not just me saying that.

It's former commissioners on the FCC.

I've talked to Republicans and Democrats who have condemned Brendan Carr, the FCC, the current FCC chairman, his behavior, and said that he is not acting in accordance with any precedent.

This is totally new territory.

The FCC was never intended on being a weaponized agency.

It was supposed to, again, monitor the public airwaves, make sure everyone's acting in the best interest.

They usually stayed far out of politics.

There is, for instance, this situation with Fox where it was challenged, like, should they get a license given they have pushed so much misinformation and propaganda that led to the January 6th insurrection.

And even in that case, you know, the FCC basically didn't want to deal with it.

They just, they typically want to stay out of politics.

And so for Brennan Carr to insert himself in such a overt fashion has really taken a lot of people back.

And the Democratic commissioner, the only Democratic commissioner on the FCC right now, Anna Gomez, she told me that it's basically now being used as a tool of censorship by the government, which is, you know, I don't think they use these terms lightly.

These people don't typically like to, again, insert themselves into the fold, but they're very concerned and alarmed about what this represents moving moving forward and like how much the FCC is going to basically act as like the ministry of truth in this country, where they can force supposedly independent media companies into

all sorts of different things.

And Stacey, you didn't mention this, but I will, but there's a lot more that's happened to get this deal done.

I mean, the head of 60 Minutes resigned.

He was basically ousted from the company, not officially part of the settlement, but, you know, certainly connected.

The head of CBS News entirely, she was effectively forced out of the company.

So she's gone.

And then there's been some interesting things like, oh, the sudden cancellation of Stephen Colbert's show, who, you know, Donald Trump had obviously called for him to be fired.

He's on CBS.

You know, they say it's not connected, but there's a lot of things that seem certainly coincidental that have happened in the lead up to this deal.

And

I don't know.

I mean, you look at this and it's very alarming to say the least.

Well, I mean, mean, part of what you're describing is this shift in the force.

I mean, we're seeing this very different reality where we get our information and how we get our news.

We've seen consolidation, the fractures in who gets to talk and who doesn't, the ability to actually curate a reality that corresponds to your chosen belief system.

And now we have the ability of the president to extort the media in plain sight.

And you mentioned Stephen Colbert.

I would have to say that it it is a shocking thing to me that the most effective news reporting I'm seeing right now on this issue came from South Park.

So can you talk a little bit about the South Park premiere?

And how are newsrooms, how are journalists responding to the fact that

South Park was the most explicit in its, I think, dissection of what's happening and why it matters?

I mean,

there's, so I think a few things.

One, South Park,

it's very difficult to control creatives.

And so the South Park founders had just signed this big deal with Paramount.

So they're not going anywhere.

They have job security.

They're not going anywhere.

And you cannot control.

It's almost like the, you know, it's always worse when you try controlling creatives because they usually come back 10 times as hard in the direction you don't want them to go.

And I think that's what you saw with South Park, which was they openly mock their parent company.

They openly refer to Stephen Colbert's cancellation.

They mocked the president of the United States in ways I don't think we've ever seen before, especially on a big show like that.

And, you know, I think there were even questions, Stacey.

You know, this happened before Brendan Carr approved the deal between Paramount and Skydance.

And I think there were even some fear or some questions over whether this might actually stand in the way of that because they so forcefully went after the president and their own parent company.

Ultimately, it did not happen.

I think Brendan Carr and Donald Trump really, outside quelling the South Park situation, they got everything they wanted, right?

Like I was trying to think, you know, what more could Donald Trump have wanted?

He got the bias monitor at CBS News.

He got the no DEI at Paramount.

He got $16 million from Sherry.

Stephen Colbert is going away.

Like you go down the list.

Like, I mean, he

must have been racking his head thinking, what more can I ask for?

Like, they've already done everything.

Like, they've given away the entire store here.

And so, you know, they approved the deal.

But

I think

even the fact that we're even talking about whether there are questions about whether that might have gone through because of the South Park episode speaks to where we are.

And I should also mention too, Stacey, you know what's the most interesting thing to me is

the people who are

really

choking the First Amendment and acting in a way that is contrary to the First Amendment

is the crowd that was shouting free speech,

free speech, free speech for the last like five years and saying, you're being a censorship person because you basically don't want Nazi stuff on X or whatever.

And that was considered censorship.

But what Brennan Carr is doing, what Donald Trump is doing, what a lot of others on the right, like Elon Musk are doing with the lawsuits, apparently

doesn't count.

And these people, what's frustrating for me as a media reporter, it's so frustrating reading that Elon Musk is like a free speech absolutist or whatever by people in the mainstream press.

And I'm like, no, he's not.

These people don't believe in free speech.

They want to control what others say and they want to silence their critics much more than anyone on the left wanted to do in, you know, in reverse.

But they, for some reason, do it under the banner of free speech and that's absurd.

Well, I think you hit the nail on the head.

I mean, it's an absurdist approach.

You know, rules for thee, but not for me.

And because they can control how the press reports on it based on the extortion and the consolidation models, they can create a new reality that they don't think we either notice or can respond to.

And I want to stick with the Brendan Carr conversation for a second more because, you know, like Russell Vogt, who heads the Office of Management and Budget, Brendan Carr also authored a section in Project 2025.

Russell Vogt wrote the section about what OMB should be doing, and Brendan Carr wrote the section on what he would do with the FCC if he were in charge of it.

So he told the U.S.

Senate what he was going to do.

He told America, this is what I would do.

And yet the Republican Senate confirmed Carr despite knowing his disposition towards authoritarianism, fascism, and censorship.

But, you know, we know that true to form, like his colleagues, he has weaponized the FCC and he has uniquely leveraged its power in this fractured media age.

Can you talk a bit more about the Freedom of the Press Foundation complaint that is seeking to investigate and potentially disbar Carr over his moves?

Yeah, this is really interesting.

The Freedom of the Press Foundation has sort of been a thorn in the side of Paramount.

And they said that they would sue if they settle the deal because they view it as a bribe.

And now they are sort of, they're turning the tables on Brennan Carr.

So Brennan Carr has launched all these investigations into basically every media company not called Fox News or Fox.

And

what the Freedom of the Press Foundation is doing is telling the DC judiciary body, because Brendan Carr is a practicing lawyer.

And when you're a practicing lawyer, you have to abide by certain standards.

And they're saying, wait a second,

he's not actually upholding the standards that he's supposed to uphold.

You guys should investigate him.

And there should be disciplinary action, including basically disbarment.

He should not be allowed to be a practicing lawyer because look at the way he is acting.

And they list, it's a very long letter that they sent this disciplinary body, but they list a lot of examples.

I'm not a lawyer, but a lot of legal language in there saying he has explicitly violated all these standards and he should be investigated.

Whether that happens, you know, remains to be seen.

I doubt it's actually going to happen in a real way.

It's hard to see him being disbarred, but they're applying some pressure and turning the tables on and using his tactics really against against him, which is launching or trying to have this probe launch.

I mean, even the letter, I think, in itself is a nuisance to Carr.

You know, I often text message him for comments on stories, and he almost always responds, Stacy, usually late at night, usually with some sort of trolling response, like a GIF, you know, dunking on liberals, lashing out at them.

Notably, when I asked him for comment on this, there was no response.

And it's only happened a couple times.

And I think that's telling.

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Well, Oliver, as a media reporter, you know that media consolidation is nothing new.

You know, you've got Viacom and CBS that merged in 2019 to create Paramount Global, which has this huge portfolio you've laid out.

We know Warner Brothers and Discovery merged, which brought together a whole portfolio that includes CNN.

ABC, and thus ABC News, is owned by Disney.

And then Comcast owns NBC News.

Can you talk a little bit about how this compression and media consolidation, but also the money associated with these mergers have impacted editorial independence.

And I think what's even more interesting, the public trust in the news.

Sure.

I think the issue is that

these news organizations in the age of Donald Trump are almost a nuisance to the larger company in that often they're not making, they're not the big money maker.

So at Comcast, the big money makers, broadband internet, right?

That's where they make most of their money.

It's not off of NBC News, but NBC News plays an outsized role in Donald Trump's head.

And so when they report something, Donald Trump starts posting on True Social about Brian Roberts, the head of Comcast, right?

Or when Morning Joe does something that

Donald Trump doesn't like.

Brian Roberts at Comcast.

Like Donald Trump knows exactly who to go to, which buttons to push.

And so these news organizations, which don't make the most money in these big portfolios, they, you know, they're nice to have in a you know back in the day i think they were nice to have they often had to have them because of the fcc they mandated that these um to operate a channel you had to have a news division because that was in the public good um you know they don't really i guess i don't think the big bosses really want these channels in a lot of ways they rather not deal with them because In the polarized era in which we're living in, in the era where Donald Trump weaponizes everything, they're a liability and they're not like big money makers,

you know, in the bigger context.

And so I think the reason that's worrisome is

that makes these people less than desirable stewards, but it also makes them more likely to comply with Donald Trump just to, you know, get their other business interests through.

And typically this wouldn't matter, right?

This wouldn't matter under Joe Biden because Joe Biden wouldn't weaponize the government and force, you know,

you know, he wouldn't be tweeting at Brian Roberts and applying pressure over the news division stuff.

This is all unprecedented territory.

But now that we're here, I think now it's actually worrisome.

You know, when I worked at CNN, I worked there for seven and a half years.

And

I never, you know, initially when I started working there, people would say, oh, you work for corporate media.

That means you're, you know, part of the corporate media and we can't trust them.

And I'd say, look, like, honestly, like, it has no effect on me.

I can't imagine it would ever have an effect on the company.

We operate editorially independent.

I think a lot of these lines have started to blur over the years as Donald Trump has repeatedly

rammed at the wall that's divided the big corporation from the news organization.

And I think now, unfortunately,

there is a lot of influence from the corporate companies over the news organizations.

And,

you know, that's not, again, that's not good.

That's not good if you care about a free press.

And the, you know, what's good for these companies too, I'd say, last thing I'd say on this is like, it's very good for the business of the Washington Post to be very, you know, to be printing accountability journalism, to be holding this administration's feet to the fire.

And that would be good for the business of the Washington Post if you only cared about the Washington Post.

But when they're in these larger portfolios, then again, the Washington Post is a small business when you compare it to Jeff Bezos' Amazon or when you compare it to Blue Origin.

And then all of a sudden, maybe you don't care as much about the Washington Post exceeding because if that's going to jeopardize a $10 billion contract with the government, you know, one outweighs the other from a financial standpoint.

Oliver, you recently interviewed Catherine Mayer, who serves as NPR's chief executive.

And this was in the wake of the rescission package that defunded public media.

We saw this week that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is essentially folding.

And when you talked to Catherine, you asked her if she thought the bill was about the budget or about politics.

And she said politics.

What do you you think about how and i'm going to say republicans because the rescission package was passed by a republican congress

why do you believe this attack on public media is as damning or not as what we're seeing happen on the corporate consolidation side i mean i think it's all damaging i think what you know if you talk to people i i just also talked to ann applebaum who studies authoritarianism and when you talk to people who study authoritarianism they always say that these autocrats want to control the flow of information.

They want to sow chaos.

So no one knows what's true, what's false anymore.

And I think that's what Donald Trump has done since the beginning, since 2015.

He has assaulted the truth, the information flow.

And that comes in news organizations, but also comes in public broadcasting.

You know, he doesn't want there to be a PBS.

putting out what most people I would say consider to be non-partisan objective journalism and programming.

They rather there be a vacuum that they can fill.

And so

that I mean again, it's only so many times you can say it's alarming, but it's alarming.

And for a lot of people in this country, there are a lot of news deserts right now because

local news is really struggling in today's environment, in today's landscape.

And so the only local news they often have is from public broadcasting and from outlets like NPR.

And now they're going to lose that.

And so

it gives, again, it allows these people who want to seize power the ability to fill that information void, often with junk, with poison.

But I think that's what they want because they want to control the narrative.

And that's why they're disassembling Voice of America and getting rid of that arm of the government or that arm of public broadcasting.

They're getting rid of PBS and PR.

They don't want those to be funded by the government.

And they don't certainly want CNN and MSNBC and those organizations to thrive.

They want to destroy these organizations and then replace it with propaganda.

That's at the end of the day what they want to do.

And that's what they're moving to do.

And I appreciate you saying that because at the top of this episode, I talk about the steps that lead to autocracy.

And Applebaum has laid them out.

Kim Schuppel, the professor at Princeton, has been one of the people I've worked with most closely on this conversation.

But across the board, one of the most important ways to understand this, and I think you're getting to that, is that it's not one thing or it's not this one thing or this other thing.

It's all of the things.

And so what I want to spend the next couple of minutes talking about are the other ways that we are seeing this alarm being raised, but also this constriction of truth.

One is how the Trump administration has tightened its grip on the White House press corps, you know, when he decided to change how the press pool is constructed, that has changed how information about the White House comes to the people, but it also changes the questions that get asked.

I'd love for you to talk a little bit about why it matters that this role that used to be handled by the White House Correspondents Association has now been consolidated under the president and that it has changed how we get information about what a wannabe autocrat might be doing.

Yeah.

I mean, for the first time, the president of the White House gets to decide who follows the president around and reports back to the rest of the press pool.

So for people who don't know, obviously, if you're going on a four-run trip, hundreds of reporters, thousands of reporters can't accompany the president.

That's just.

not physically possible.

So what the press does is they have what's called a press pool.

So there would be one representative for television broadcasts that goes on the plane, one representative for the print broadcast that goes on the plane, and so on and so forth.

And typically, the White House Correspondents Association manages who gets to go on these trips, who gets to follow the president around as part of the pool that reports back to everyone else what's happening in real time.

And for the first time, the White House says, no, that's not going to be the way it works anymore.

We're going to decide who gets to follow the president around.

And so we don't like the Huffington Post.

No, no, no, no, no.

They're not going to be allowed to go on the trips.

We're banning them.

We'll pick another outlet that's friendlier to us, right?

The Wall Street Journal, you guys reported that Epstein story.

No, no, no, no, no.

You're not going on the trip anymore.

And it's problematic for the outlets that get banned because, you know, they are news organizations.

They want to be in the mix.

They want to be following the president.

They want to be able to ask him questions.

And so it's, and it's also problematic because, like, you know,

generally speaking, outside those examples that I've listed, generally speaking, the White House press pool has continued pretty much like it did before.

The White House is continuing the same schedule.

But, you know, like if war were to break out, if the president, for instance, were to get sick like he did in the last administration, where he had COVID and was flown out to Walter Reed, would the White House then surround themselves only with Breitbart?

Possibly.

We don't know.

I mean, they have the control now.

And so I think...

That's what's also worrisome.

And in times of crisis, what does the White House do when they feel pressure?

Will they ban more outlets?

And that's certainly a possibility now that they control who's around them.

Oliver, you have made a study of not just media, but how media has responded to what's happening.

And so I want to take a few minutes and talk about the Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch and the Trump defamation suit.

And this is about a story that the Wall Street Journal ran about the birthday message that Trump allegedly sent to Jeffrey Epstein several years ago.

And he claims that he told Murdoch it was fake, but that the journal published it anyway.

Can you talk a bit about this lawsuit?

But more importantly, what are the implications for Trump suing Rupert Murdoch versus anyone else that he's gone after?

There are a few things here.

One, we are living in the upside down, Stacey, where

I mean, I don't want to, Murdoch runs Fox News.

It's a propaganda organization.

You know, we're not going to let him off the hook there.

But it's very interesting to me me that we're living in a world too where his Wall Street Journal, which he also owns, is publishing some of the most hard-hitting critical stories and op-eds,

holding the Trump administration to account

in a way that other news organizations simply are not.

And so it's like the Twilight Zone that that's happening with Rupert Murdoch.

It's also important to note that no matter what Rupert Murdoch does for Donald Trump in terms of Fox News, that even he

is apparently not not sufficiently loyal enough to the president where the Donald Trump is going to sue him, not only his news organization, but also him personally.

Donald Trump is suing Rupert Murdoch as part of this lawsuit personally.

And so that's also remarkable.

And,

but, you know, it's so weird studying Rupert Murdoch because, again, on one hand, he has Fox News, which he's allowed to engage in just dishonest conduct for years and years.

But at the same time, he's allowing the Wall Street Journal Journal to do some frankly good journalism and stand up to the president.

And I would suspect that unlike a lot of those other corporations that bow to Donald Trump at the end of the day, I don't think, I mean, I have a hard time thinking that Rupert Murdoch's that kind of guy.

I don't see him wanting to bend the knee in that way to Donald Trump.

And so I would suspect, and he also doesn't have any impending business before the government either.

So he doesn't really need Donald Trump in the same way as these other companies.

I would suspect we're going to see him end up standing up to Donald Trump.

And ironically, because Donald Trump probably does not want to go into the discovery process of this lawsuit, the best thing that can happen for him is a judge to throw it out and spare him it going any further.

Because I'm not really sure what you're going to see in discovery for Murdoch.

I don't really, I can't imagine that's too bad on his end.

He's probably like, okay, I'll sit with the lawyers and do a deposition.

With Donald Trump, you know, they're going to get him under oath then and ask him about this birthday card and what other communications he had with Epstein.

I don't think he wants to go there.

So in a weird, and again, irony, a weird world we live in, the best thing that can happen is like some Democratic judge tosses this and Donald Trump can just say some Obama judge was wrong and then move on because he doesn't want this lawsuit probably to proceed.

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We spend a lot of this conversation focused on traditional mainstream media because it is mainstream and it covers the waterfront.

But there's a whole new wave of media that's changing how people, especially younger audience, how they get their news.

And we're talking about TikTok, social media, blogs, and newsletters.

And in fact, you yourself left a legacy outlet like CNN to go independent with your newsletter status.

Is this

what does this pretend about where media is headed?

And how do you calibrate the importance of having both the traditional and the non-traditional means, especially in this moment?

Yeah, I'd say let's start with

the bad part.

And then we'll get to the good part.

The bad part is that a lot of what we're seeing right now in terms of

corporations or media organizations bending the knee to Donald Trump, is because they're in a place of weakness, because their business models are crumbling beneath their feet, whether it's on the newspaper business, whether it's in the television business, or even in many cases, on the digital media space, which was once booming when Facebook was providing a lot of internet traffic and now is declining, especially in the age of artificial intelligence.

And so

at the time, you want these news organizations to be stronger than ever, to stand up to the powerful people who, you know,

are shaping society, they're actually weaker than ever.

And that's leading to them often doing the thing that

we refer to as kissing the ring, bending the knee.

They just don't have the appetite or the ability or the strength to fight these people.

And so that's alarming.

At the same time, we're seeing as a result of these older companies declining, people leaving those companies and starting their own independent media ventures and finding an audience that is really hungry for that kind of information and i think they're building smaller businesses but still influential businesses that reach millions of people and that's really exciting to see right at the same time you know you know the old dinosaurs are struggling but there are all these new areas where people can get news information i mean your podcast for instance would this have existed 15 years ago?

Probably not, right?

Like, that wasn't the way people communicated.

People didn't really listen to podcasts as much as they do today.

On YouTube, people are watching YouTube for information and getting different, you know,

different

types of programs from all these different channels.

And while some of it's concerning, because this has also allowed dishonest people to make a lot of money and to grow, it's also allowed journalists to exit companies, you know, like I left CNN and to start something and to be accountable to really no one but our readers.

And I think that's also very powerful.

I don't have any business before the federal government other than my taxes.

You know,

there's no big corporate merger happening for status.

So we're able to call people propagandists or to call Donald Trump an autocrat wannabe or whatever it is.

We're able to be clear-eyed about what's happening in this country because we're only accountable to our readers.

And I think

that's also a good thing and an exciting thing.

And I'm really interested to see in 10 years how this nascent media, how these nascent media companies, where are they?

You know, and it's not just me.

You know, there's the bulwark, which is exciting.

There's crooked media, which is exciting.

There's a whole bunch of different outlets that are forming.

And, you know, we'll see where they are in 10 years.

But that's the exciting thing about, you know, know, as one door closes, another door is sort of opening.

I appreciate that.

And I love the way you wrap this all together, but I am a lawyer, so I'm going to have to push a little bit on what you've just said.

Because part of these new forms of media is one of the facets is a vulnerability that doesn't exist for legacy media.

If you work for a

traditional outlet, the company takes the legal hit.

But if you're independent and you have an administration that is eager to weaponize defamation lawsuits, the target is you.

How do you think about your responsibility to both be a truth teller, but also stay under the radar enough to avoid being singled out by those who are willing to use lawfare to destroy truth?

Well, if our goal is to stay under the radar, Stacey, I think we're doing a very bad job because

it's not in my DNA to appease power.

It's actually to be a thorn in the side of that power.

And so that's what we do, you know, at status.

You know, we're calling out Elon Musk or Brendan Carr or Donald Trump or Rupert Murdoch on a daily basis, getting under their skin.

You know, there was a report that Rupert Murdoch was very upset about the Wall Street Journal for profiling status earlier this year and yelled at the editor-in-chief to get it off the homepage.

And they did.

So they are, you know, we're not under their radar.

I would say, though, to your point about defamation, that is a real scary thing and something something that smaller news organizations, smaller media organizations are going to need to figure out.

And so, you know, we've spent a lot of money at status

investing or paying for defamation insurance just to make sure that if something did happen, we can protect ourselves.

And we'd hope, you know, we spent a lot of money on legal fees and lawyers.

And we'd hope that,

you know, if something did happen, that we'd have

some lawyers who would maybe help us out.

And, you know, and we'd hope that we'd have some reader support.

And so I think, you know, like a lot of people say, where does all the money go to?

You know, you guys are charging this much money.

Well, I'm, and I'm like, well, it's not cheap to recreate that infrastructure that a CNN provides you, whether it's legal insurance or

consulting lawyers for just to make sure that you get pre-publication review.

And there's a bunch of other stuff that I want more people with, but it's not, it's pretty expensive.

And so I do hope that most people or that people, as they grow these businesses are also cognizant of that and also paying for some of these services that are good to have as a shield in case someone does come at them.

I will say too that

I publish status on Beehive, which is a company similar to Substack.

And they've been doing a great job.

They've actually invested millions of dollars in helping journalists like me do this sort of work.

And so they provide some defamation insurance.

We pay for extra because I think given the people we cover and how we cover them, we want to be on the safe side.

But they do pay for some defamation insurance for their journalists, which is very nice.

And so that gives them some confidence.

And hopefully more companies step up.

And, you know, this has to be, you know, I don't want to be cheesy or corny, but this is sort of a collective thing.

Collectively, everyone's stronger than these powerful people.

And if collectively, if we support and hold up the right

media organizations and journalists doing the work, they are strong enough, I think, to go toe-to-toe with these folks.

But

individually,

it would be very difficult to

face off against Elon Musk.

That would be a problematic thing.

Well, since the show is called Assembly Required, we are all for collective action.

We believe that it is neither cheesy nor corny.

It is actually the exact right response because we can't do this by ourselves.

And in fact, with that in mind, I want to give our audience actionable tools that can help make a difference.

Given the work that you're doing, how do we support trustworthy, independent media organizations?

What else do we need to be doing?

You've got the floor.

You're not cheesy or corny.

You're giving people a call to action.

Well, I mean, I would say

if you care about media reporting,

we love your listeners to sign up for status.

You can do that at status.news.

We also have a podcast, which is totally free.

It's called Power Lines.

We just started it.

We talk about all these issues on our podcast every single week.

So you could support us.

We'd be grateful for any support there.

But also, I think, you know, Stacey,

we've gotten used to in this country not paying for news.

And, you know, it's been on the internet made it seem like it's just free and we expect it to be free.

And I would tell your listeners, you know, regardless of who you're spending money with,

really do try to purchase a new subscription somewhere.

If you think someone's doing a good job, doing good reporting, support them financially.

Don't just expect it to be for free.

Because right now we're in a time, we've talked about this, where news organizations are really struggling and they count on reader support.

And so if you,

you know, if you read a sub stack and, you know, they give away half of it for free, consider maybe

saying, you know what, I really like the work they're doing.

I want this person to continue to be thriving and succeeding and maybe expanding.

I'm going to support them with my wallet.

I'm going to put like some money behind this because that, you know, as someone running an independent media business, that matters so much.

Like, we want to expand, we want to grow, we want to hold people accountable, but we can't do it without reader support.

And I think there are so many others out there who are doing fantastic journalism, but often people are like, you know what?

I just don't want to pay for it because I'd rather pay for my Netflix or my Paramount or HBO or whatever.

And I get it.

I totally understand.

Life is expensive.

There's a lot of subscriptions, but news is so vital to this country.

And so if you can make, you know, think about like, I tell people, like,

forego one Starbucks a week, right?

Forego one cocktail or one beer at the restaurant.

That will be, you know, a game changer if you can support a news organization.

So I think that would be my call to action.

Find a news organization you like, subscribe to them and support them.

Oliver Darcy, truth teller and fight leader.

Thank you so much for being with us on Assembly Required.

Thank you, Stacey, so much.

This was really fun.

In the context of everything we've just talked about, it's imperative that we have reliable news outlets to keep ourselves informed.

And we must support the organizations doing good work wherever we can.

So here's how.

First, be curious.

Subscribe to Oliver's newsletter, Status, and check out his new new podcast, Power Lines, to learn more about how media shapes society.

Number two, solve problems.

If you grew up watching PBS like I did, you've probably heard of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the entity that brings federal funds to PBS and NPR for programming and emergency alerts.

For the first time in nearly 60 years, Congress has refused to fund the CPB and it will shut down.

Consider donating to your local public radio station and to PBS to keep important programming and vital emergency alerts alive.

Number three, do some more good.

Consider supporting trusted news outlets financially by purchasing a subscription.

These outlets count on reader support, especially when they're facing challenging financial headwinds.

As always, if you like what you hear, be sure to share this episode and subscribe on all of your favorite platforms.

And so we can meet the demands of the algorithms, please rate the show and leave a comment.

You can find us on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you go to listen and learn.

Over the next few weeks, we're going to be talking more and more about the 10 steps to autocracy and how to fight back.

So I'd love to hear more about what you're seeing on the ground.

groups providing mutual aid, innovative neighbors doing extraordinary things, and the issues you aren't hearing enough about.

If you have a report, a question, or a comment, send it in.

You can start with an email to assemblyrequired at crooked.com or leave us a voicemail, and you and your questions and comments might be featured on the pod.

Our number is 213-293-9509.

That wraps up this episode of Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams.

Be careful out there, and I'll meet you here next week.

Assembly Required is a crooked media production.

Our lead show producer is Lacey Roberts and our associate producer is Farah Safari.

Kirill Polavieve is our video producer.

This episode was recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis.

Our theme song is by Vasilis Photopoulos.

Thank you to Matt DeGroote, Kyle Seglin, Tyler Boozer, Ben Hethcote, and Priyanka Muntha for production support.

Our executive producers are Katie Long and me, Stacey Abrams.

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