SIMON BARBER: Duopoly dragon, not Trump, is the biggest threat to the free press in US
Facebook, Google and Amazon have all cornered the advertising revenues that were the lifeblood of the mainstream media
What presently most endangers a free press in the US is not Donald Trump. The institutions that protect the US’s fourth estate will most likely survive the assaults of the orange mountebank, his cult and their preference for conspiracy theory over objective realities that do not suit them. A more immediate worry is the duopoly, as Facebook and Google are increasingly referred to by those who fret about the stifling power these platforms have amassed. It is a power felt not just in the US but globally, not least by Business Day in whichever form you are consuming it. A thousand or so American journalists got the chop just last week when the owners of Buzzfeed and Verizon, the telephone company that owns the Huffington Post, found the news business insufficiently profitable, at least within the quarterly horizons of Wall Street. Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper chain, simultaneously announced it was slashing Pulitzer-calibre newsroom muscle at its titles, big and small, around ...
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