In a long FT analysis, Anna Nicolaou and Eva Xiao chart how Donald Trump has reshaped the US media landscape over a decade — from declaring war on the press in 2016 to today, when billionaires sympathetic to him own major outlets, online creators regularly outdraw TV anchors, and his Federal Communications Commission functions as what critics call an "attack dog" on broadcasters. Fox News, his favourite network, averaged roughly 1.9 million viewers a day in March, versus 641,000 at CNN and 759,000 at MS Now (formerly MSNBC).
The legal side is unprecedented. Trump has sued The New York Times for 15 billion dollars, the Wall Street Journal for 10 billion dollars and the BBC for 5 billion dollars. Paramount paid 16 million dollars to settle a CBS News lawsuit widely seen as weak, to clear the path for its regulatory approval to merge with David Ellison's Skydance. Fox News previously paid 787.5 million dollars to settle Dominion Voting Systems' defamation lawsuit over false 2020-election claims — one of the largest defamation settlements in US history.
Ownership has consolidated around Trump-aligned figures. Paramount under David Ellison — son of Oracle's Larry Ellison, a Trump donor — won the battle for Warner Bros Discovery after Trump publicly weighed in. Ellison now controls CBS and CNN and has installed Bari Weiss to lead CBS News; Anderson Cooper and John Dickerson have left amid accusations of editorial interference. FCC chair Brendan Carr warned in March that broadcasters airing what he called "fake news" about the Iran war could face licence revocation, the same day Trump said he was "thrilled". Meanwhile online voices — Candace Owens (nearly 6 million YouTube subscribers, more than The New York Times), Joe Rogan, Matt Walsh — have gained reach formerly reserved to networks. Source: Financial Times, 24 April 2026, Anna Nicolaou and Eva Xiao.