In every country that’s slid from democracy into strongman rule over the past half-century, the first step was capture of the media by friends of the regime.

A CNN insider told Variety magazine last week that the mood inside CNN right now was “like a funeral.”

Nepo-baby David Ellison, bankrolled by his father who’s one of the richest men in the world and a major Trump suck-up and donor (and is in the Epstein Files), is on the verge of taking over the company that owns the news network.

On Tuesday, California Attorney-General Rob Bonta and a group of Democratic state attorneys-general rolled over and agreed to stop trying to block the $US111 billion ($A158 billion) takeover of Warner Bros Discovery, now to be almost 50 per cent funded by right-wing dictatorships in the Middle East who’ve given billions in gifts, loans, and investments to Trump and his family.

California Governor and presidential hopeful Gavin Newsom hailed the agreement, saying it would both protect California jobs and preserve CNN’s “editorial independence”.

If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge for you in Brooklyn.

As The Lever reported, the fine print tells the entire story.

Going forward, CNN and CBS will be overseen by an “editorial independence board” composed of people hand-picked by the Ellisons and their agents. When Rupert Murdoch took over The Wall Street Journal from the Bancroft family back in 2007, he ran the same scam, as CBS News then reported:

“As part of the deal package that cemented Rupert Murdoch’s longstanding effort to acquire Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co, the two sides agreed to create an editorial board that would act as a buffer between the media mogul and the newspaper…”

That worked out real well, right?

There are also squishy promises for movies and jobs that are not backed up with any meaningful enforcement mechanism, and all of Ellison’s commitments can be set aside via a force majeure clause that lets Paramount off the hook in the event of “strikes, labour disruptions, [or] economic recessions”.

So, all Trump has to do is extend the Iran war another few months to crash our economy and the oligarchs are free to do what they want!

And if that doesn’t happen, there’s still the sunset clause that ends all their commitments in five years. Lee Hepner, of the American Economic Liberties Project, called it “a countdown to a cliff”.

These are the same billionaires who handed Trump a check for $16 million to “settle” a frivolous lawsuit against 60 Minutes, then cancelled Stephen Colbert’s show days after he referenced that as a “big fat bribe”, then reportedly offered the Trump White House up to $20 million in free “public service announcements” and installed a Trump-humping “ombudsman” at CBS News to police “bias” at the network.

The simple reality is that in every country that’s slid from democracy into strongman rule over the past half-century, the first step was capture of the media by friends of the regime.

And the Federal Communications Committee (FCC), run by Trump’s favourite brown-noser Brendan Carr, has blessed Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar taking a 49.5 per cent equity state in the new entity that will control two of the three most important news networks in America.

Don’t expect any future analysis of Saudi involvement in 9/11, critical exploration of what Trump gave up in exchange........

© The New Daily