Victor Pickard

Here's a link to the video of @rodneybenson.bsky.social's excellent talk with us a couple weeks ago at the @miccenter.bsky.social @asc.upenn.edu. I can't stress enough how important and timely his research is, and I encourage everyone to engage with his new book! youtu.be/WdN3LCcw4Xc

As the Ellison empire expands and corporate media consolidation accelerates, what’s going to be the next Minot?

Journalists are meant to cover the government, not take marching orders from it.

There's a very real chance Trump and the DOJ will step out of the way and just let Paramount take over Warner Bros. Discovery.

Free Press' @mattfieldwood.bsky.social gives the latest updates on the merger madness:

When a train crashed in Minot, N.D., and a noxious cloud of ammonia gas spread across town, there was no one at the radio stations to sound the alarm and inform residents. "This is just a glaring example of a media system that has no allegiance to local communities,” said @victorpickard.bsky.social.

In first, CIA acknowledges 1953 coup it backed to overthrow leader of Iran was undemocratic While other American officials have made similar remarks in the past, the acknowledgment by the CIA in a podcast about the agency’s history comes as much of its official history of the coup still rema...

I wonder what percentage of Americans knows that the CIA helped overthrow a democracy in Iran in 1953, installing a brutal dictator who tortured and murdered people. Republicans keep citing the 1979 Islamic Revolution as if that was the start of U.S.-Iran hostilities. Go back 26 years earlier.

This is no different from Putin saying MH17 was shot down by Ukraine or Assad saying rebels gassed themselves.

Here's the essence of "America's Battle for Media Democracy" I transmitted to my newsletter subscribers on Jan 1: tracingvrl.substack.com/p/the-year-2... ... The mass media kind of raised me. This stuff matters

I have been digging into @ajbauer.bsky.social ‘s excellent and timely new book – I highly recommend it!

Yeah, that was unfortunately too often the case…

I have been digging into @ajbauer.bsky.social ‘s excellent and timely new book – I highly recommend it!

Monopoly With A Heaping Side Of Extra Racism The Trump administration isn't just rubber stamping all sorts of terrible mergers. They're demanding that the merged companies be extra racist and sexist if they want to grow pointlessly gigantic.

over at the newsletter I wrote about how the Trump administration has somehow managed to fuse the worst aspects of monopoly coddling with white supremacy

And 165 non-artificial schoolchildren were blown up by all this advanced and precise targeting. Congrats to everyone involved on achieving this brave new world.

Corporate Media Buries Story of US and Israel Killing 168 in Girls School Attack No front-page stories in NYT, WSJ, WaPo. No mention on NBC and CBS Sunday Shows. No segments on Evening News broadcasts. A death count on par with the OKC bombing is relegated to the back page.

"A death count on par with the Oklahoma City bombing is relegated to the back page."

The Century-Long Capture of U.S. Media | On the Media | WNYC Studios As media empires, from The Washington Post to CBS News, continue to be dealt significant blows, uncertainties abound about the remaining strength of a once robust American press lands...

Worth a listen: The indefatigable @victorpickard.bsky.social @onthemedia.bsky.social putting the current state of U.S. media in historical perspective. Re-regulated away from public interest.

The capture is extreme: capitalistic, oligarchical, and authoritarian.
www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm...

Indeed!

TOMORROW: Join @randersenjones.bsky.social, @sonjawest.bsky.social, @ckoningisor.bsky.social, Helen Norton and @victorpickard.bsky.social on Zoom from 12-1:30 p.m. to discuss "The Future of Press Freedom."

Register: events.zoom.us/ev/AmsN0eMJS...

@jayrosen.bsky.social on the creeping Orbanization of US media.

When the media covers war, every other topic fades Trump will do anything to distract from the political damage of the Epstein files

@sulliview.bsky.social's analysis brings into focus the media politics of covering war:

I genuinely think these networks should be scrapped for parts

they're bad now, and they're only getting worse from here as the autocrats and oligarchs follow Hungary and Russia's media playbook

The Fine Print is definitely worth subscribing, and really happy he gets this sort of endorsement.

Victor's analysis is spot on.

The real question here is: Why are journalists who work for CNN pushing back so hard against the "media capture" narrative?

Wishful thinking? Or preemptively justifying their own continued employment under Ellison?

Will be interesting to revisit @brianstelter.bsky.social's analysis in the coming months. There are varying degrees of media capture--even if we haven't hit full-blown Orban levels yet, plenty of evidence suggests legitimate cause for concern. I do hope my critique proves to be entirely unfounded.

@karlbode.com's new newsletter is a must-read for any one who wants to keep up on the politics and democratic implications of media and tech policy. He is one of the very best journalists on the beat and he deserves our support!

Will be interesting to revisit @brianstelter.bsky.social's analysis in the coming months. There are varying degrees of media capture--even if we haven't hit full-blown Orban levels yet, plenty of evidence suggests legitimate cause for concern. I do hope my critique proves to be entirely unfounded.

The Trouble Covering Tehran As U.S. and Israeli forces launch deadly strikes on Iran, the inherent challenges of covering the country are exacerbated by recent newsroom cuts, social media distortion, and a White House prone to t...

“In January, WashPost reporter Yeganeh Torbati, who had been covering Iran, appealed to Jeff Bezos on social media, noting she had spent months covering developments inside the country and wanted to continue the work.

“The appeals to Bezos went unheeded.”

elink.mail.status.news/ss/c/u001.zg...

A big part of the authoritarian playbook is war. War takes over the news. War blots out criticism. War divides a nation’s people, subjecting those against it to being called unpatriotic. War grants leaders all sorts of emergency powers. War consumes everything else.

We mustn’t let this war do so.

+1 to @victorpickard.bsky.social ‘s assessment. On air, Stelter noted South Park deal & Jon Stewart examples that undermine Ellisons properties are MAGA. SP is insanely valuable franchise & still Ellisons reportedly got changes made to the deal. Stewart’s extension was only for 1 year up end of 26.

Also some new analysis here: reportearth.substack.com/p/2025-was-a...

On the Media The Peabody Award-winning On the Media podcast is your guide to examining how the media sausage is made. Hosts Brooke Gladstone and Micah Loewinger examine threats to free speech and government transparency, cast a skeptical eye on media coverage of the week’s big stories and unravel hidden political narratives in everything we read, watch and hear.

“Media capture,” is a phrase scholars have been using to describe the phenomena of public interests losing possession of the press to political and corporate players. @victorpickard.bsky.social on why the American system was set up to be snatched away from the start lnk.to/onthemedia/b...

I wrote a book in 2020 on how the collapse of local journalism was seriously harming democratic society and how the need for structural media reform was most urgent: academic.oup.com/book/35132. The problem has only worsened considerably since then.
See @ronanfarrow.bsky.social's thread below.