Another Knife in the News

Sitting atop a backdrop of economic imbalance are Wall Street hedge funds and private equity firms that daily manage hundreds of billions of dollars, leveraging debt to acquire companies, then firing workers, and stripping the carcasses of American industry for asset sales. This destructive way of running our economy is bad news in many sectors. Nowhere is it more pernicious than in communications and the media. Two massive Wall Street funds, Standard General and Apollo Global Management have set out to purchase the second-largest local TV station group in the U.S.—Tegna. The merger would be a disaster from the get-go. It’s another attempt of private equity to take over our nation’s newsrooms. I would call it predatory. It’s one thing, bad as it is, for special interest moguls in other industries, like oil and gas, to wield so much influence in our nation. But media—news and information—is the fuel democracy runs on. An informed electorate is the prerequisite for successful self-government. This merger runs roughshod over the public interest. It must not be allowed to proceed.