Photograph Source: Ajay Suresh – CC BY 2.0

When media critic A.J. Liebling wrote in The New Yorker 65 years ago that “freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one,” he might have glimpsed a media system dangerously dominated by a small number of companies.

But it’s unlikely he could have foreseen a president as authoritarian as Donald Trump, and media conglomerates eager to capitulate to him.

Thanks to the Paramount conglomerate and its greed-fueled boss, Shari Redstone, the “Late Show with Stephen Colbert” will vanish next year. After the Trump administration responds by approving the Paramount merger with Skydance, Redstone will be roughly $2 billion richer than she is today, and Paramount/CBS may become even more Trump-friendly.

Months ago, when I predicted the demise of Colbert or “The Daily Show,” another Paramount property, it sounded paranoid. But now it’s reality. (“The Daily Show” may be next on the chopping block.)

In recent months, we’ve seen one media conglomerate after another offer what amounted to multimillion-dollar bribes to Trump by settling frivolous Trump lawsuits that these companies could not possibly have lost in court.

Last December, the Disney Company paid Trump a thinly-disguised bribe — $15 million to Trump’s future presidential library – to settle a harassment........

© CounterPunch