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Can the free press be saved?

We are now witnessing mass public capitulation from corporate media owners in a way that feels unprecedented.

Whether today’s billionaire media owners are angling for large federal contracts
or anticipatorily bending the knee so their companies are not seen as “the enemy”,
the chilling effect is the same:
major media publications are even more incentivized now to treat the rich and powerful with kid gloves,
if not outright sycophancy.

The few that refuse to do this will have to face the wrath of our notoriously censorious, litigioushead of state.
The most powerful man in the world is currently suing Iowa pollster Ann Selzer for merely predicting that Kamala Harris would win the state last November;
what he calls “election fraud” most people call “polling”.
With that context, is there any reason to expect that prominent players like Paramount and Skydance would do anything but hold the line if it means getting FCC approval for their merger?

The natural counterbalance to for-profit media would seem to be non-profit newsrooms.
They need not go cross-eyed from trying to keep in view both the public’s interest and that of their owner.
In the US alone there are at least 475 independent outlets,
from the Marshall Project to the Center for Public Integrity -- which has won several Pulitzer prizes for its investigative reporting.
And independent journalism is currently enjoying a renaissance on self-publishing platforms
like #Substack and the newly launched #Noosphere.
These sites offer refuge for writers that have renounced
(or been renounced by)
corporate news -- including Mehdi Hasan and Matt Taibbi.
The journalistic equivalent of farm-to-table, it cuts out any meddlesome middle-moguls between the writer and the reader.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/13/free-press?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other