Screenshot of Bill Clinton on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

As corporate media accelerate their censorship of comedians and journalists, we must realize that we got to this dire situation because of old-fashioned, bipartisan corruption in Washington. The problem didn’t begin with Donald Trump. It began long ago, especially in the 1980s and ‘90s when presidents of both parties and Congress decided to put the nation’s media system in the hands of a small number of ever-larger corporations.

And, of course, those corporations were big political donors to both parties. Enormous mergers were approved. Anti-trust laws were ignored. Federal Communications Commission rules were changed, and caps on mega-ownership relaxed or eliminated.

Today, a handful of amoral conglomerates control our information and media system – conglomerates that care a lot about profit-maximization and very little about free expression and the right to dissent, especially when expression and dissent interfere with their profits. There was nothing natural or inevitable about the process of conglomeration. It was sheer corruption – and Trumpian censorship is the result.

This week’s “indefinite” suspension of comedian and Trump critic Jimmy Kimmel by ABC/Disney over remarks about right-wing exploitation of Charlie Kirk’s murder might seem abrupt. It wasn’t. It came after an unprecedented threat from Trump FCC Chair Brendan Carr to go after ABC stations and, perhaps more........

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