"encirclement": deny the left resources and wrest control of their sources of support.
On another front, Trump is personally guiding the shift in the ownership of TikTok to give control of the popular social media platform to Larry Ellison, the Murdoch family and Michael Dell, the chairman and chief executive of Dell Technologies. All three are reliably Republican.
These developments constitute a maneuver suggesting that the right has adopted the concept of encirclement, a classic military strategy used to surround adversaries while denying them resources and wresting control of their sources of support.
In this context, Fox and Skydance are part of a far more encompassing, long-term drive to challenge liberal control of both the media and many cultural institutions.
Two conservative companies, Sinclair and Nexstar Media Group, own, operate or provide services to 386 television stations, far more than any of their competitors. Nexstar has entered into an agreement to acquire Tegna, which, if approved by regulators, would push the total number of stations controlled by Sinclair and Nexstar to 450.
Nexstar currently reaches 70 percent of U.S. households, and that will rise to 80 percent if it wins approval of its purchase of Tegna’s 64 stations. Sinclair’s stations reach 58 to 66 percent of U.S. households, depending on the measure used.
At least two political science papers have reported that after Sinclair buys a television station and sets programming policy, the Republican share of the local vote rises by 3 to 5 percentage points.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/23/opinion/media-trump-ellison-murdoch-kirk.html?unlocked_article_code=1.oU8.CNqU.t3IK_iETkefi&smid=url-share
= new reply since forum marked as read
