The Public Interest Is No Longer in the Public Interest

That era is over. And we are living with the consequences.

Last month, Paramount Global paid $16 million to the Trump-aligned American First Policy Institute -- funds reportedly earmarked for the construction of the future Trump Presidential Library. Disney, facing a potential First Amendment showdown, quietly settled with the Trump organization for more than $15 million. These settlements, while carefully spun by corporate PR teams as business decisions, are symptomatic of a deeper rot. Sinclair Broadcast Group, Nexstar, and other media companies continue to reap profits while sidestepping the regulatory scrutiny once seen as a cornerstone of our democratic media infrastructure.

Wall Street likes this version of the story. Lower regulatory risk and diminished public accountability equate to higher returns. But for citizens -- and for the very notion of a functioning Fourth Estate -- it’s a Faustian bargain.

As a media ecologist, I view these shifts through the lenses of Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman, Aldous Huxley, and H.G. Wells -- visionaries who warned not just of dystopias imposed by force, but of those we embrace willingly, seduced by distraction, comfort, and spectacle. Huxley feared a culture drowning in irrelevance. Postman warned we’d amuse ourselves to death. McLuhan saw the medium becoming the message, replacing truth with noise. And Wells asked us to imagine futures where truth could be engineered, broadcast, and bought.

We are living in all of their futures simultaneously.

Today’s broadcasters are no longer stewards of civic trust. They are content purveyors, algorithm chasers, and, increasingly, political actors -- complicit in shaping the very narratives they once existed to interrogate. Where is the public outrage from journalists within these institutions? Where are the principled resignations, the impassioned editorials, the resistance from within?

With rare exceptions -- courageous reporters like Scott Pelley -- the silence is deafening.

The dismantling of the NAB Code in 1983 under pressure from free-market absolutists was a turning point. So was the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which cleared the way for unprecedented consolidation and commercial dominance. But what we’re seeing now is something more ominous: the normalization of media as partisan patronage. Not in subtle ways, but with seven- and eight-figure checks written in broad daylight to political operatives and institutions that promise regulatory favor in return.

What does this portend in a potential second Trump administration?

We can expect the erosion to accelerate. The Fairness Doctrine, already defunct, won’t be revived. Ownership caps will further dissolve. The FCC will be reengineered not as a public watchdog but as a commercial facilitator. Expect more sweetheart settlements, more targeted harassment of dissenting voices, and more pressure on corporate media to conform to ideological orthodoxy -- not through censorship, but through the blunt force of economic threat.

The idea of an independent, adversarial press is now a nostalgic artifact. And this is not because the journalists themselves have failed; it’s because the system around them -- the ownership structure, the incentive model, the regulatory framework -- has been hollowed out.

We will continue to see newsrooms shrink, local coverage disappears, and national broadcasts morph further into infotainment. AI-driven news anchors, already tested in local markets, will proliferate. The line between reality and simulation will blur. When all truth is framed as opinion, and all opinion packaged as entertainment, the public loses its grip on consensus reality.

Democracy depends on shared facts. Autocracy depends on their collapse.

To be clear: this is not a partisan plea. The rot runs deeper than any one administration. But the precedent being set -- that media companies can buy political peace with donations to their regulators’ allies -- undermines every principle of the free press enshrined in American tradition.

We have a choice to make.

Media leaders, particularly those still operating under the guise of journalistic integrity, must rediscover their moral compass. Professional associations, long silent, must speak. Investors must recognize that civic trust is a more durable asset than quarterly earnings. And journalists -- especially the rising generation -- must reclaim their identity not just as storytellers, but as defenders of truth.

The public interest still matters. But if we don’t demand its return to the center of our media systems, we risk becoming spectators in a theater of illusion -- comforted, entertained, and ultimately deceived.

As McLuhan once said, “Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity.”

We must believe what is right in front of us. And then we must act.

Jack Myers is a media ecologist, author of “The Tao of Leadership: Harmonizing Technological Innovation and Human Creativity in the AI Era,” and founder of The Myers Report. Responses are welcome atinfo@mediavillage.com