If you only just started paying attention to the inner workings of the media industry, you might think America’s information environment transformed overnight.
In the past few months, a president extracted settlements from media giants as his apparatchiks vowed state retribution against his opponents – all as they defunded public media at a time when the president’s biggest boosters own the algorithms that decide what information is amplified and suppressed.
Meanwhile, media companies are merging into ever-larger behemoths, some have muzzled White House critics as their companies seek presidential favors, and the White House is reportedly brokering a deal to hand yet another social media platform over to his billionaire allies.
And now, a media industry billionaire has placed CBS News under the control of the conservative provocateur Bari Weiss, who is empowered to shroud her culture war and oligarch-friendly economics in what she calls “journalism that is fair, fearless, and factual”.
But as abrupt as this Orwellian turn may seem, it is no sudden pivot – it is instead the culmination of a scheme launched a half-century ago by some of America’s most influential power brokers, as our new book Master Plan exposes. Sketched out in never-before-reported documents, this plot aimed to destroy accountability journalism and make news outlets into champions rather than adversaries of power.