Republicans, Musk, Pretend To Care About Media Consolidation… When George Soros (Read: A Jew) Is Involved

Though Republicans are the worse of the two offenders, neither Democrats nor Republicans have cared all too much about preventing media consolidation. As a result, U.S. journalism and media has increasingly fallen into the hands of a handful of wealthy corporations and billionaires; and it’s routinely reflected in terrible journalism (especially political journalism) and bumbling companies like Time Warner.

In fact, you might remember that in 2017 the Trump FCC went comically out of its way to strip away what was left of media consolidation limits so that Sinclair Broadcasting — a right wing propaganda empire posing as a local news channel — could merge with Tribune Broadcasting. The irony: Sinclair lied so much during its merger application that even the Trump FCC had to ultimately block the deal.

That’s a long way of saying that Republicans historically couldn’t care less about media consolidation at the hands of rich billionaires and corporations. In fact, they routinely, actively encourage it. Unless, of course, George Soros is distantly involved, apparently.

In what would otherwise be a completely ignored deal, the FCC earlier this month voted 3-2 to approve the bankruptcy restructuring of Audacy, the nation’s second biggest owner of radio stations. Audacy was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange last May due to company incompetence and an overall downturn in interest in traditional media (though Audacy is also involved in a lot of podcasts).

The bankruptcy is expected to reduce Audacy’s debt about 80% to $350 million. As part of that restructuring, the post-bankruptcy Audacy will see a 57% ownership stake by Laurel Tree Opportunities Corporation. It’s not really any sort of controversy, and the kind of restructuring that happens constantly.

But Laurel Tree Opportunities Corporation is owned by FPR Capital Holdings LLC, which in turn is managed by the Soros-funded Fund for Policy Reform. This, apparently, was enough to send Republicans and Elon Musk into an absolute tizzy over the last week. With folks like Musk lying for attention, claiming that Soros was buying the bankrupt radio company to “spread propaganda”:

Soros, as you might or might not know, is held up as a bogeyman and bizarre caricature by the right wing because he’s Jewish. Soros’ investments, like most extremely rich people, cover the gamut of industries and businesses. But because this latest investment is in media, Republicans (as per a very classy tradition) immediately jumped to seed antisemitic tropes about Jewish-control of media.

Highly-consolidated, Rupert Murdoch owned, right-wing news outlets, traditionally and quite correctly accused of spreading propaganda, got right to work pretending there was something illegal or nefarious about the FCC’s fairly routine bankruptcy restructuring vote:

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, who quite simply could not give any less of a shit about propaganda (if it’s coming from right wing sources like Fox, Sinclair, OAN, Newsmax, Breitbart, or any of a million other conservative organizations pretending to do journalism), or any less of a shit about media consolidation (whether it’s Time Warner or Fox or Sinclair) also put on a little hissy fit, claiming that the FCC’s approval of the bankruptcy restructuring was somehow illegal:

The FCC, for its part, was forced to issue a polite statement that nothing about this transaction was illegal or even out of the ordinary, and that Republicans were being, well, fucking gross:

“The process we use to facilitate this license transfer is identical to the one recently used by the agency in the bankruptcy proceedings of Cumulus Media in 2018, iHeart Media in 2019, Liberman Television in 2019, Fusion Connect in 2019, Windstream Holdings in 2020, America-CV Station Group in 2021, and Alpha Media in 2021. To suggest otherwise is cynical and wrong, as this precedent clearly demonstrates. Our practice here and in these prior cases is designed to facilitate the prompt and orderly emergence from bankruptcy of a company that is a licensee under the Communications Act.”

Now it certainly is true that both parties of government have historically failed utterly to rein in corporate consolidation in radio, TV, and pretty much every other industry (with occasional exception). That’s resulted in no limit of harm to journalism and media as competition and diverse voices are forced out of the market and Americans are bombarded by a rotating crop of corporatist and partisan mush.

But as is often the case, the Republican outrage here is entirely performative.

This is a party that routinely supports unchecked corporate power, monopolization, and consolidation at every turn. The only time it even tries to pretend otherwise is either in an instance like this when they’re seeding panic about Jewish ownership, or when they’re trying to gain leverage over companies for some reason (like when they pretended to care about “antitrust reform” for a few weeks to successfully scare tech companies away from moderating right wing racist propaganda on the internet).

These are not serious people. The GOP is not a serious party. It cares about two things: the power of rich white Christian men and unchecked wealth accumulation. Everything else is performance. Ironically our highly consolidated press, more worried about maximum engagement and access than the truth, routinely fails to point this fact out to the American public, giving ignorant propaganda efforts like this one more traction and “legitimacy” than they might otherwise deserve.