John,
Yesterday we told you about ABC’s unprecedented decision to pull Jimmy Kimmel Live! after threats from Trump’s FCC Chair.
The suspension wasn’t good enough for the Sinclair Broadcast Group.
The largest owner of ABC affiliates in the country, Sinclair says it won’t let Kimmel back on the air unless he apologizes to Charlie Kirk’s family and makes a “meaningful personal donation” to them and to Turning Point USA.
They’re also demanding “formal discussions” with ABC about “professionalism.”
That is not accountability—it’s coercion. And it’s exactly why your support for COURIER is so important right now: we are fearless, independent, and we will never bow to political pressure or billion-dollar mergers. Our commitment is to defend our democracy. Period.
Will you chip in $25 today to ensure fearless, independent journalism survives?
Censorship under a fascist regime doesn’t always look like Orwell’s 1984 or Putin jailing his rivals.
In 2025 America, it looks like corporations doing MAGA’s bidding — silencing voices to protect billion-dollar deals.
Disney, which owns ABC, has a high-stakes deal pending with ESPN’s acquisition of the NFL Network. Standing up to Trump could jeopardize that deal, so instead they pulled Jimmy Kimmel Live! off the air.
Just months ago, CBS ended The Late Show with Stephen Colbert days after its parent company, Paramount, struck a $16M settlement with Trump to smooth a merger with Skydance. Critics called it “censorship by contract.”
And at The Washington Post, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, we’ve seen the opinion section revamped to be friendlier to MAGA, a six-figure ad calling for Trump to fire Elon Musk killed before publication, and the paper’s tradition of presidential endorsements abruptly ended — insiders say to shield Bezos’ empire from Trump’s wrath.
The through-line is chilling: corporations with business before Trump’s regulators are folding to MAGA to protect their own bottom lines.
If this trend continues, we’ll be left with a media ecosystem MAGA-fied from top to bottom — sanitized news, silenced critics, and propaganda in place of truth.
That’s why supporting independent grassroots-funded journalism is so important right now. COURIER doesn’t have mergers to protect or shareholders to appease. We only have our obligation to truth and American democracy. And that’s what makes us fearless.
In solidarity,
COURIER