Reflections on governance
Tuesday, 14 October 2025 | Issue 0013
This week we pay special attention to the role of knowledge in our world. The erosion of our media landscape tells us where we are on the clock of the world. It also might offer opportunities for new ways to investigate the truth and make meaning, together.
THE PRICE OF THE TICKET: Billionaires buying editors
FREEFALL: Few trust the media anymore
2 + 2 = 5: Orwellian advice for our “after times”
The continued conglomeration of modern media
If you haven’t heard, Bari Weiss has been hired by CBS News. Prior to her new post, Weiss led The Free Press, an independent publication of questionable journalistic integrity. She founded The Free Press after leaving her position as a columnist at The New York Times, claiming her departure was on moral grounds given what she cited as the NYT’s increasing hostility to “non-wokes.”
Weiss was appointed by David Ellison to be CBS News editor in chief. She’ll report directly to Ellison instead of CBS News president, Tom Cibrowski.
David Ellison leads Paramount Skydance, CBS’s new parent company. His father, Larry Ellison, of Oracle fame, is a friend to US president, Donald Trump, and one of the richest people in the world.
Paramount Skydance seeks to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, which would broaden the media company’s holdings even further. After some initial struggles, the Ellison family has had a string of success in the movie-making world. With Warner Bros. Discovery under their belt, they could continue their vision at scale.
The Ellisons follow a line of old and new money with investments in media institutions. The Sulzbergers own The New York Times. The Newhouses, Condé Nast. And the Hearsts have long been big names in magazines. Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post in addition to Amazon MGM. And Patrick Soon-Shiong owns the Los Angeles Times. This is to say nothing of the myriad local and regional news outlets that have been consumed by media conglomerates like Nexstar and Sinclair.
Given how hard it is to keep a news company afloat, it may be that billionaires are best suited to cover the boom and bust realities of media and entertainment. Still, it’s concerning to see yet another example of the independence and integrity of institutions caving to political expediency.
Mass media is untrustworthy to most US adults
According to Gallup’s annual poll, only 28 percent of US adults have “a great deal or fair amount of trust that the mass media will report the news fully, accurately, and fairly.” This is the first time its polling results have fallen below 30 percent. And it continues a downward trend that has developed over the past several years.
Despite previous bumps before, cable news viewership is down, as are newspaper subscriptions. This doesn’t mean people aren’t engaged in the news anymore. Instead of legacy outlets and institutions, they’re reaching for alternatives and upstarts, often in the form of email newsletters, YouTube channels, and podcasts.
While exciting, especially given some of our own plans for publications and productions (more to come soon), it feels like news readership, viewing, and engagement is going the way of the switch from cable to streaming. Who can afford the countless subscriptions? And who can produce reliable journalism off the subscription revenue alone?
These are important, yet somewhat unanswered questions to consider as we seek to investigate the truth and make meaning of the world, for ourselves and each other.
Beware Big Brother and the degradation of language
It seems that by all accounts Raoul Peck has directed another brilliant, timely, and captivating film. We can’t say too much about the documentary, as we have yet to see it. Yet Peck’s words speak directly to the heart of our “after times,” as James Baldwin might have described them.
“The degradation of language is the condition for the degradation of democracy.”
“Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past and in the long run probably demands disbelief in the very existence of objective truth.”
Watch this clip of Raoul Peck on PBS Newshour and this one of Peck and producer, Alex Gibney, on Democracy Now! Pare them with PBS’s American Masters documentary on Hannah Arendt.
That’s it for this week. We hope you find these stories insightful.
See you next week!