The Ellisons Prepare to Expand Their Media Empire

47 snips

Feb 28, 2026

Guest

Craig Renaud

Craig Renaud, filmmaker who made an Oscar‑nominated film about his brother Brent, reflects on long‑form war reporting and personal loss. Jodi Ginsberg, head of the Committee to Protect Journalists, discusses 2025 as the deadliest year for press members and patterns of targeted killings. Victor Pickard, media policy professor, explains media capture, consolidation, and why reform matters for democracy.

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INSIGHT

How Advertising Reshaped US News

The U.S. built a hyper‑commercial broadcast system early, shifting newspapers and broadcasters to ad dependence and weak public funding.
Pickard notes US public media gets ~$1.59 per person annually vs ~ $100 in the UK, correlating with weaker democratic indicators.

ANECDOTE

Minot Train Crash Exposed Radio Consolidation Risks

Minot, North Dakota shows consolidation costs: after radio consolidation, automated programming left residents uninformed during a toxic train derailment.
Clear Channel's automated formats meant no staff answered phones and emergency broadcasts weren't run for over an hour.

INSIGHT

Billionaire Ownership Creates Mixed Incentives

Oligarchic capture can coexist with philanthropic support: billionaire owners may fund strong journalism while retaining political leverage.
Pickard highlights Jeff Bezos subsidizing The Washington Post while potentially benefiting through unrelated government contracts.

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Netflix is backing out of a bid to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery, clearing the way for Paramount to take over. On this week’s On the Media, what happens to journalism and democracy when a tiny group of billionaires are calling the shots. Plus, four years since Russia’s war on Ukraine began, a look at the legacy of the first American reporter who was killed there.

[01:00] Host Micah Loewinger speaks with Victor Pickard, professor of media policy and political economy at the University of Pennsylvania, to discuss why what’s happening at CBS, The Washington Post, and Paramount is simply the latest stage of a phenomena called "media capture," and what we can do to free ourselves from its binds.

[17:58] Micah first sits down with Miriam Berger, a Pulitzer-finalist who spent two years reporting from Israel on the war in Gaza for The Washington Post, to talk about what we’ve lost with the termination of the paper’s Middle East bureau, and then Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists, on why her organization labeled 2025 the most deadly year for the press since it began collecting data–largely due to Israeli forces in Gaza.

[35:49] Micah talks to filmmaker Craig Renaud about his Oscar-nominated documentary, “Armed Only With a Camera,” which is part tribute to his brother, Brent Renaud, the first American journalist to be killed by Russian soldiers while covering the war in Ukraine, and part salute to war journalists who are still reporting and risking their lives.