On The Bill Press Show, Matt Gertz explains how Trump's FCC is helping Rupert Murdoch become more powerful

From the December 18 edition of Free Speech TV's The Bill Press Show:

MATT GERTZ (SENIOR FELLOW, MEDIA MATTERS): You had [FCC Commissioner] Ajit Pai come in and be the one who sort of took -- he had been a commissioner, a Republican commissioner, and became the head of the FCC and now he's sort of pushing through a series of presents for various gigantic corporations that run media outlets. 

BILL PRESS (HOST): So, how does Donald Trump square his pledge to be there as fighter for the middle class, fighter for the little guy, fighter for the forgotten people? I mean, this is the exact opposite of that.

GERTZ: Oh, absolutely. And I think it very clearly comes down to whether Donald Trump likes the particular company and the particular people who would benefit from this. I wrote last week about the FCC's decision to begin consideration on whether they're going to raise the cap that currently prevents individual companies from owning more -- owning broadcast stations that reach more than 39 percent of the American people. And this is something that's been a huge priority for [Fox News executive chairman] Rupert Murdoch for a very long time, because the Fox broadcast stations are currently at I think around 37 percent. And so he can't go on a buying spree and pick up more stations and sort of expand his reach that way. And what I wrote was between that decision and the report that the Disney purchase of a bunch of Fox assets, it's really setting Murdoch up to gain a lot of power in the press, more than he has right now because he's going to have from selling off all of his entertainment assets, he's going to have a big cash hoard and he's still going to have a fairly large cash flow from Fox News and Fox Business. You can take all of that, put it into buying a string of new stations. Maybe he buys Gannett's TV stations, maybe he buys Hearst's TV stations, something like that, and then he can use those to pump Fox News or Fox News-type content out into all of these different local broadcast stations.


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To watch the full interview click here.