You Are Not Confused. You Are Being Managed.
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You Are Not Confused. You Are Being Managed.<br>Why the news coverage you get sounds nothing like what voters tell pollsters they want, and what you can do about it before November 3.
Mitch Jackson<br>Aug 06, 2026
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Quick Summary
Minutes ago the Federal Communications Commission voted to scrap the rule that stops any single broadcaster from reaching more than 39% of American homes. It’s a big deal.<br>The Trump administration holds the approval switch on every merger, license, and lawsuit these media companies need to survive, and it has not been shy about reaching for it. ABC paid $15 million, Paramount paid $16 million and got its merger cleared three weeks later, and the FCC waived a congressional ownership cap so one company could take 265 local stations, with a vote today to erase that cap for good. What gets said in the private calls and the closed-door meetings is not on the public record, and nobody involved is going to volunteer it. What is on the record is the pattern, and the pattern is consistent: pressure applied, coverage adjusted, deal approved.<br>A CEO with a merger pending and a presidential lawsuit on the calendar knows exactly what is expected. So the country hears about socialism and communism while the actual numbers go unreported: two-thirds of Republican voters back federal child care funding, health care costs now outrank every other economic worry, and families are absorbing tariffs the Supreme Court already ruled unlawful. Republicans hold the House, the Senate, and the White House, so that record belongs to them, and it reaches you only if you go find it yourself before November 3.
The Rules Just Changed
Today, August 6, the Federal Communications Commission voted to scrap the rule that stops any single broadcaster from reaching more than 39% of American homes and replace it with case-by-case review by the chairman. Congress wrote that number into federal law in 2004, on purpose, after the FCC tried to raise it to 45% and got overruled.<br>This is despite the fact that right now, more than 1,200 television stations, 855 radio stations, thousands of syndicated affiliates, the highest rated cable news network in America, and the largest conservative podcasting machine in the country are concentrated in the hands of a tight circle of corporate right wing Republican players.1<br>Anna Gomez, the lone Democratic commissioner, called it an “unlawful effort to hand control of the public airwaves to billionaire buddies of this administration.” Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy, who is no liberal, said the plan violates federal law and objected that Carr will now decide which groups get to exceed the limit.<br>I’m sharing today’s post with you because the new rule just passed a few minutes ago.<br>You need to know that when you remove that cap, you give these TV companies the green light to play a bigger game and stop leaving money on the table. By snapping up more local stations across the country, they instantly gain massive leverage to demand higher fees from cable and satellite companies, stand toe-to-toe with national networks to keep more of their profits, and pitch huge, multi-market ad packages that compete with giants like Google and Meta. Add in the fact that scaling up lets them eliminate duplicate overhead and share content across hundreds of markets, and suddenly they aren’t just expanding their reach, they are fundamentally boosting their bottom line.<br>Lifting the ownership cap also enables large, conservative-leaning media groups favored by this administration (and its regulatory oversight) to acquire stations in major new markets, allowing them to replace traditional local reporting with centralized, nationally right-wing slanted political commentary. Furthermore, shifting to a subjective, case-by-case review process gives right-wing MAGA political appointees regulatory leverage to favor ideologically aligned media conglomerates over independent voices.<br>The Leverage Machine
Right now, the federal government through the Trump administration controls the approval switch on the deals these companies need, and it has made the price of approval visible to every executive watching.<br>Since December 2024, two networks have paid a combined $31 million to settle the president’s personal lawsuits, one of them three weeks before the FCC cleared its merger, and a late-night host was pulled off the air within hours of the FCC chairman telling broadcasters they could do it the easy way or the hard way. The agency then waived a congressional ownership cap so one company could take 265 local stations, cleared a $111 billion deal that carries CNN with it, and opened a license review of every ABC station after Disney stopped cooperating. Federal judges have since frozen both mergers at the request of attorneys general, while the president continues to sue the Times, the Journal, and the BBC for $35 billion combined...