Journalists and the U.S. State: Structural Alignment, Incentives, and Evidence

Executive summary Link to heading

Claims of a monolithic “yankee-alliance” between journalists and the U.S. state are too strong as a literal description of how U.S. journalism always behaves, but there is substantial evidence for recurring structural alignment between major news institutions and state power—especially on national security, war, intelligence, and policing—produced by incentives, professional routines, and state information-management strategies rather than explicit, permanent coordination. \[1\]

Across 48 markets, trust in “most news most of the time” is reported at 40% (stable for several years), while U.S. news consumption has shifted strongly toward social and video platforms: 54% say they accessed news via social media/video in the last week, exceeding TV news (50%) and news websites/apps (48%)—a shift that intensifies dependence on platform visibility and the reputational economy of “access” and “attention.” \[2\]

At the ownership level, U.S. local TV news is highly consolidated among a small number of corporate groups. In 2024, one station group (Nexstar) is listed with 70% “actual” reach of U.S. TV households (vs 39.1% under FCC cap calculations), while other top groups cluster around the high-30% range. \[3\] This consolidation interacts directly with regulation (FCC reach rules, waivers, merger review), creating clear “state touchpoints” that shape market power and newsroom economics. \[4\]

Economically, journalism is under sustained pressure: U.S. newspaper advertising revenue in 2022 is estimated at $9.8B while circulation revenue is $11.6B, and engagement with legacy news formats has fallen over time. \[5\] Employment is projected to decline for news analysts/reporters/journalists, with a May 2024 median pay of $60,280 (and a very wide wage distribution). \[6\]

These pressures help explain why the most durable “alliance” mechanisms often look banal: dependence on official sources (indexing), routinized “objectivity” practices that privilege authoritative speakers, and competitive “pack” dynamics—rather than overt ideological discipline. \[7\]

Five well-documented episodes illustrate reinforcement of state narratives or state communication goals: (1) pre-Iraq War WMD reporting (2002–03), (2) the Pentagon’s “military analyst” outreach program (2002–08), (3) the Kuwaiti “incubator babies” atrocity story (1990–92), (4) the delayed publication of warrantless NSA surveillance reporting (2004–05), and (5) Cold War/post–Cold War controversies over intelligence relationships with journalists and the downstream danger that journalists are treated as spies. \[8\]

Definitions, scope, and analytic frames Link to heading

This report interprets “unspoken alliance” as systematic, recurrent alignment between major journalistic outputs and state priorities—particularly in national-security domains—arising from structural constraints (ownership, access, legal risk, career incentives) and professional routines (source hierarchies, objectivity norms), rather than assuming a single coordinated conspiracy across all outlets and eras. \[9\]

Three research traditions are especially useful for a rigorous account:

The propaganda model argues that market and institutional “filters” (ownership, advertising, sourcing, flak, dominant ideology) systematically shape what becomes “news,” with sourcing and elite consensus playing a central role. \[10\]

The indexing hypothesis (closely related to official-source dependency) predicts that mainstream news tends to “index” the range of legitimate debate to the range of debate among political elites, especially in foreign policy and security. \[11\]

A field theory approach (associated with, among others, Pierre Bourdieu\[12\]) frames journalism as a semi-autonomous field whose autonomy is continually pressured by economic capital, political power, and status competition—helping explain why “independence” is contextual and uneven. \[13\]

Two important scope limits prevent overstatement. First, U.S. journalism also contains genuine adversarial work that constrains state power (investigative reporting, lawsuits, leak publishing), and the boundary between “watchdog” and “amplifier” behavior shifts across beats, outlets, and momentary political conditions. Second, alignment can be episodic—strong during war scares or crises, weaker during elite fragmentation or after legitimacy shocks. \[14\]

Historical roots from the Progressive Era to the present Link to heading

In the Progressive Era, “muckraking” journalism helped legitimize reform by exposing corruption and corporate power, demonstrating an early pattern in which journalism can both confront and feed into state-building projects (regulation, professional administration) by supplying problem definitions and moral urgency. \[15\]

During Committee on Public Information\[16\] (1917–1919), wartime publicity institutionalized a modern U.S. state capacity to manage narratives across media channels; early public-relations pioneers such as Edward Bernays\[17\] worked in this milieu, linking wartime persuasion to later peacetime PR and “manufactured” consent practices. \[18\]

The early 20th century also saw the consolidation of professional journalism norms—especially “objectivity”—as a legitimating strategy for mass-circulation news in complex political economies. Scholars identify the late 19th/early 20th century as crucial for professionalization and the objectivity norm’s institutionalization. \[19\]

Cold War institutions further deepened state/media entanglements through public diplomacy frameworks and national security secrecy. The U.S. Agency for Global Media\[20\] emphasizes the statutory base of U.S. foreign information programs (e.g., the Smith–Mundt Act text and architecture), illustrating how “state media” functions exist alongside private U.S. press systems. \[21\]

From the 1970s onward, intelligence scandals and subsequent reforms created a dialectic: higher expectations for watchdog journalism, but also stronger institutional incentives for risk management and access. In congressional debate about intelligence and journalists, policymakers and journalists explicitly worried that even exceptional intelligence uses of journalists can increase global suspicion that U.S. journalists are spies—raising the “structural” stakes of perceived state-journalist closeness. \[22\]

Finally, late-20th and early-21st century deregulation and economic disruption (digital advertising collapse, platform capture of attention, newsroom layoffs) have made journalism more dependent on scale, consolidation, and “subsidized” information flows (PR, official sources), shifting bargaining power toward both the state and large private intermediaries. \[23\]

timeline
  title Journalism, state power, and media economics (selected milestones)
  1900 : Progressive Era muckrakers normalize investigative exposure of corruption
  1917 : WWI Committee on Public Information coordinates national publicity
  1920 : Professionalization and "objectivity" consolidate as newsroom norm
  1948 : Smith–Mundt architecture shapes U.S. public diplomacy information flows
  1975 : Intelligence scandals and congressional scrutiny reshape secrecy debates
  1996 : Telecommunications-era consolidation incentives intensify
  2001 : Post-9/11 security expansion raises stakes of access and secrecy
  2003 : Iraq War embedding scales access journalism
  2008 : Pentagon military analyst program exposed as structured influence effort
  2025 : Audience shift to platforms intensifies attention and distribution dependency

The timeline draws on documentation of Progressive Era muckrakers, wartime publicity/PR genealogy, objectivity professionalization, public diplomacy law, post-9/11 security politics, embedding, and contemporary audience platform shifts. \[24\]

Mechanisms that can align journalism with state power Link to heading

Institutional incentives often produce alignment without explicit coordination.

Ownership, scale, and consolidation shape newsroom capacity and risk tolerance. In U.S. local television, the largest station groups are measured in the tens-of-percent household reach; this means a small number of firms can set cost structures and content strategies for a large fraction of local broadcast news. \[25\] Recent merger approvals and reach-cap waivers highlight how regulatory decisions (and litigation over them) become “structural” determinants of news ecology. \[26\]

Advertising dependence and business-model crisis change what kinds of journalism are sustainable. For U.S. newspapers, Pew estimates that advertising revenue in 2022 was $9.8B and circulation revenue $11.6B, with circulation now exceeding advertising—an inversion that pressures outlets to optimize for subscriptions, donor support, or low-cost content production. \[27\] These constraints generally reduce resources for slow, adversarial reporting and increase reliance on wire, public-affairs material, and official events that can be covered efficiently. \[28\]

Access journalism is a rational response to information scarcity in high-secrecy domains. The military embedding program in the 2003 Iraq invasion is an explicit design for providing journalists access under military rules; a RAND assessment framed the embedding effort as a success for the military, media, and public—illustrating how “access” can be mutually beneficial while still setting boundaries on what is visible and narratable. \[29\] The 2025–26 litigation around press access policies at the Pentagon underscores that access is also a lever of control, contested in court as an issue of constitutional rights and viewpoint discrimination. \[30\]

Professional norms and newsroom routines systematically privilege official sources. The “strategic ritual of objectivity” approach shows how objectivity practices can function as professional protection (against accusations of bias) while simultaneously encouraging reliance on authoritative, quotable institutional actors. \[31\] Sociological studies of news production also emphasize how beats, routines, and source networks generate patterned outputs—often reproducing institutional perspectives because they are embedded in the daily supply of “news.” \[32\]

“Pack” dynamics and competitive imitation amplify state narratives when officials coordinate messaging and journalists monitor one another for cues about what is newsworthy and safe. When major outlets treat an official claim as legitimate, others may follow to avoid reputational risk (“missing the story”), producing rapid convergence—even if later corrections diffuse slowly. \[33\]

Legal ties cut both ways: protections enable journalism, but also formalize the state as a key constraint. The U.S. Department of Justice maintains detailed rules for obtaining evidence from members of the news media, including subpoenas and warrants, demonstrating the state’s direct procedural reach into newsroom-source relations. \[34\] Meanwhile, reporter shield protections are strong in many states but vary, and the absence of a uniform federal shield framework leaves journalists exposed in federal leak cases. \[35\]

State subsidies and quasi-subsidies can also structure dependence. Historically, U.S. postal policy explicitly treated newspaper circulation as crucial to democracy and provided very low newspaper rates, a form of infrastructural subsidy. \[36\] Today, public broadcasting is supported through congressional appropriation to Corporation for Public Broadcasting\[37\] (forward-funded), and outlets can be highly sensitive to cuts or shifts in funding. \[38\] Additionally, legally required government notices in newspapers (“public notices”) are a significant transparency mechanism and a revenue stream; policy changes that move notices to government websites can reduce newspaper notice spending and alter local accountability ecosystems. \[39\]

Ideological alignment is often mediated through elite socialization rather than explicit party discipline. The 2022 American Journalist Study reports that U.S. journalists are more educated on average than in 2013 and more likely to identify as Democrats or Independents—evidence consistent with an occupational culture centered in high-education metropolitan milieus. \[40\] This does not mechanically predict “pro-state” reporting, but it does shape what is treated as common sense, who is considered credible, and which “establishment” institutions are granted epistemic authority. \[13\]

Case studies where journalism reinforced state narratives Link to heading

Summary table of episodes and evidence Link to heading

Episode	State narrative or communication goal	Journalism outputs (selected)	Evidence base used here
Iraq WMD and nuclear procurement (2002–03)	Iraq as urgent WMD threat requiring removal; contested intelligence elevated to public certainty	Reporting that amplified disputed claims (e.g., aluminum tubes as nuclear procurement)	Contemporary critique and reconstruction of reporting and sourcing dynamics \[41\]
Pentagon “military analyst” outreach (2002–08)	Shape public opinion on wars and “war on terror” via seemingly independent TV analysts	Retired officers presented as neutral analysts while receiving special access and materials	Investigative reporting + FOIA record + GAO opinion describing intent to influence public opinion \[42\]
Kuwaiti “incubator babies” story (1990–92)	Mobilize support for confronting Iraq via atrocity framing	Broad media repetition of unverified atrocity claims; NGO report repetition; later debunking	Congressional record, C-SPAN hearing clip, major newspaper reporting, and later investigations challenging claim \[43\]
Warrantless NSA wiretapping disclosure delayed (2004–05)	Reduce risk of operational exposure; discourage publication	Major scoop delayed; later published; public debate influenced by timing	Primary story text + government report describing delay rationale and editor statements \[44\]
Intelligence use of journalists (Cold War legacy debated in 1996)	Preserve intelligence flexibility while limiting reputational blowback	Public debate about rules/waivers; journalists warn of increased suspicion and danger	Senate hearing transcript with journalists, policymakers, and CIA Director testimony \[22\]

Iraq WMD reporting and the production of inevitability Link to heading

In the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq\[45\], a key pattern was the elevation of uncertain or disputed intelligence claims into front-page “news” framed around official certainty. Later reconstructions document how reporting on aluminum tubes and other indicators functioned as “case for war” reinforcement even when expert dissent existed. \[46\]

Mechanistically, the episode illustrates (a) heavy dependence on anonymous officials and defectors, (b) competitive pressure to treat elite claims as newsworthy, and (c) a limited bandwidth for sustained technical adjudication when official actors are narrating urgency. The U.S. Senate’s intelligence review documents major failures in prewar WMD assessment, showing the gap between public certainty and intelligence reliability that journalism helped transmit. \[47\]

A rigorous takeaway is not that “journalists lied,” but that state claims gained epistemic advantage because they were institutionally authoritative, time-sensitive, and packaged for repetition—while counter-claims (inspectors, skeptical analysts) had weaker narrative power and fewer distribution advantages. \[48\]

The Pentagon military analyst program as a designed influence system Link to heading

The Pentagon’s outreach to retired military officers who appeared on television as analysts is unusually well documented. David Barstow\[49\] reported (based on extensive records) that the program cultivated analysts as “message force multipliers,” providing access, briefings, and materials while audiences saw the analysts as independent. \[50\]

A U.S. Government Accountability Office legal opinion (B-316443) states plainly that the Department of Defense attempted to “favorably influence public opinion” through these retirees, while concluding the specific conduct did not violate the appropriations “publicity or propaganda” prohibition under GAO’s legal standard. \[51\] That combination—acknowledging intent to influence public opinion while narrowing legal definitions of impermissible propaganda—shows how “state ties” can be simultaneously transparent (in bureaucratic records) and opaque (in on-air disclosure norms). \[51\]

This case is strong evidence for institutional alliance-like behavior: not mere journalistic bias, but a structured state communications program that exploited television authority, military prestige, and minimal disclosure requirements. \[42\]

Kuwaiti “incubator babies” as atrocity propaganda and journalistic transmission Link to heading

In October 1990 testimony before a congressional forum (video circulated publicly), a teenage witness—presented anonymously at the time—claimed Iraqi soldiers removed premature babies from incubators, leaving them to die. The testimony was not the product of independent journalistic verification; it was a mediated event with high emotional payoff and substantial downstream political use. \[52\]

Major news coverage and even human rights reporting echoed versions of the incubator claim during the crisis. For example, a December 1990 article reported an Amnesty International account including “premature babies” cut off from incubators—showing how journalistic reporting can transmit claims that are difficult to verify under wartime access constraints. \[53\]

Subsequent investigations challenged the central incubator-killing claim. A 1992 Human Rights Watch/Middle East Watch report describes the controversy and states it found no credible evidence supporting incubator killings, while also documenting other serious Iraqi abuses—an important distinction for analytic rigor: debunking one iconic claim does not imply innocence of broader occupation violence. \[54\]

The episode demonstrates a recurrent vulnerability: when access is restricted, “atrocity” narratives that match wartime moral frames can propagate through journalism and politics simultaneously, with corrections arriving late and less memorably than the original emotional claim. \[55\]

Warrantless NSA surveillance disclosure and the politics of delay Link to heading

A primary text of the December 2005 scoop on warrantless NSA eavesdropping (published by James Risen\[56\] and Eric Lichtblau\[57\]) describes secret authorization to bypass warrant procedures ordinarily required for domestic spying. \[58\]

A U.S. House report later summarized that the paper delayed publication for nearly a year and quoted the paper’s executive editor explaining that subsequent reporting allowed publication with technical details withheld to avoid exposing methods. \[59\] Contemporary press reporting also described internal debate and noted that the paper had known of the program before publication. \[60\]

Analytically, this is a “reinforcement” case not because the eventual story served the state, but because delay can serve state interests during moments of electoral or policy vulnerability. It illustrates a core alliance mechanism: the state’s national-security harm claims can influence editorial timing decisions, even when journalists believe a story is true and important. \[61\]

Intelligence use of journalists and the reputational hazard of “journalist-as-spy” Link to heading

A 1996 U.S. Senate hearing convened wide-ranging testimony about the CIA’s use of journalists and proposals for bans or waivers. Arlen Specter\[62\] chaired; John Deutch\[63\] (then Director of Central Intelligence) testified; multiple journalists argued that even rare exceptions increase perceptions that journalists are intelligence assets. \[22\]

The transcript captures an important structural point: across decades, U.S. journalists abroad have often been arrested under suspicions of intelligence involvement, and public debate about exceptions can intensify that perception. \[64\] This is not only about hidden alliances; it is about how state practices and debates can reshape the risk environment of journalism globally, influencing how sources and foreign governments interpret U.S. media presence. \[65\]

A complementary insider-investigative account is Carl Bernstein\[66\]’s long investigation of CIA-media relationships during the Cold War, representative of whistleblowing/journalistic self-scrutiny about the boundary between reporting and intelligence collaboration. \[67\]

Quantitative indicators: audiences, ownership concentration, and funding flows Link to heading

Audience data and the platform shift Link to heading

Across all markets in the 2025 Digital News Report, “trust in the news” remains stable at 40%, with major attention to the rise of alternative media ecosystems and to AI-chatbot news use. \[2\]

For the U.S. specifically, the same report shows that social media and video networks reached 54% (as a news source in the last week), overtaking TV news (50%) and news websites/apps (48%), with a decade-long decline in print and shifting patterns of attention. \[68\] This shift matters for state alignment because it increases the value of (a) highly shareable official conflict frames, and (b) access-driven scoops that platforms reward, while bargaining power over distribution moves away from newsrooms. \[69\]

Ownership concentration in local television news Link to heading

BIA data published via TVNewsCheck ranks the top U.S. local TV station groups and reports both “actual” and FCC-calculated reach. The top group is listed with 70% actual coverage of U.S. TV households, while the next tier of large owners sits near the high-30% range. \[70\]

In March 2026 reporting on the Nexstar–Tegna deal, the merged firm is described as reaching around 80% of U.S. TV households (a figure tied to regulatory waivers and measurement rules), highlighting how merger policy and FCC reach rules become direct determinants of local TV news structure. \[71\]

xychart-beta
  title "Local TV station-group reach (US, 2024 actual coverage)"
  x-axis ["Nexstar","Tegna","Gray","Sinclair"]
  y-axis "Actual % of US TV households" 0 --> 80
  bar [70.0, 38.7, 37.4, 36.6]

Values shown are reported as “Actual % Coverage” in BIA/TVNewsCheck’s Top 25 station groups (2024 revenue ranking). \[70\]

Funding flows: nonprofit news as a growing counter-model Link to heading

The nonprofit news sector has grown to a fieldwide revenue estimate of just under $600 million for surveyed INN members from 2022 to 2023 (with caveats about excluding public broadcasters from those figures). \[72\]

Crucially for “state alliance” debates, nonprofit outlets often reduce advertising dependency and can invest in investigative work, but they may become dependent on philanthropic priorities. INN reports three major revenue streams: foundation funding at “about half” of revenue, individual giving at “about a third,” and earned revenue at 17% (noting growth from earlier years). \[72\]

pie showData
  title "Nonprofit news funding mix (INN members, 2023)"
  "Foundation funding (~50%)" : 50
  "Individual giving (~33%)" : 33
  "Earned revenue (17%)" : 17

These proportions are INN’s reported sector-level approximations for nonprofit news revenue streams in 2023. \[72\]

State-linked funding and protections as measurable “ties” Link to heading

Public broadcasting in the U.S. is materially shaped by congressional appropriations to CPB (forward-funded), and contemporary reporting documents budget politics and the operational vulnerability of stations to federal cuts. \[38\] NPR analysis cited by Current reports that member stations relied on federal funding for an average of 14% of total revenue—suggesting that “state ties” can be indirect but operationally meaningful, especially in smaller markets. \[73\]

In international broadcasting, the U.S. government directly funds USAGM activities; its own budget submission page reflects the scale of requested federal support (e.g., $950M requested for FY2025). \[74\]

Meanwhile, press freedom and press-state conflict continue to be adjudicated through law: DOJ’s “news media” evidence rules illustrate the procedural framework for subpoenas and warrants, and courts can block executive policies that restrict press access on constitutional grounds. \[75\]

Comparative perspective: United States, United Kingdom, Germany Link to heading

A useful comparative lens is that the U.S. system tends to externalize “independence” to constitutional protections and market competition, while other democracies more explicitly institutionalize public-service media funding and broadcast impartiality rules—each with different risks of state capture and different buffers against market collapse.

In the United Kingdom, broadcast news is regulated with stringent “due impartiality” and “due accuracy” requirements enforced by Ofcom\[76\]. These rules are explicit, formal constraints that shape newsroom practices differently than the U.S. First Amendment environment. \[77\] The UK also has the BBC\[78\], funded through a licence fee under a Royal Charter system; parliamentary briefings detail how the charter renewal cycle and licence fee politics become recurring points of political contestation. \[79\]

In Germany, public broadcasting is financed through a universal household contribution (Rundfunkbeitrag), providing a stable, non-advertising-centered revenue base that can buffer public-service news from some market pressures—at the cost of ongoing political debate over fee levels. \[80\] Germany also has a dedicated body for concentration control in nationwide private television: the Commission on Concentration in the Media\[81\] (KEK), illustrating a more formalized approach to pluralism than the U.S. local-TV consolidation trajectory. \[82\]

Comparatively, these two systems show different “alliance” hazards. The U.S. hazard is a market-driven narrowing of journalism into consolidated owners plus platform-distributed fragments, which can increase reliance on official sources and PR because those inputs are cheap, authoritative, and always available. \[83\] The UK/Germany hazard is that public funding and formal regulation can create leverage points for political pressure, though design features (independent regulators, multi-stakeholder governance, and stable funding rules) can also protect editorial autonomy. \[84\]

Accountability reforms, research agenda, and uncertainties Link to heading

Actionable accountability reforms Link to heading

Disclosure and conflict-of-interest rules are the lowest-cost, highest-impact reforms where state narrative “laundering” is a risk. The Pentagon analyst program illustrates how influence can operate through “independent expert” formats without transparent disclosure; policies should require standardized disclosure of (a) defense contracting ties, (b) sponsored travel, and (c) coordinated briefing participation for on-air analysts and op-ed contributors. \[42\]

Access governance should be depoliticized and judicially reviewable. The 2025–26 Pentagon press access litigation suggests the need for clear, viewpoint-neutral credentialing standards with due process and rapid court access, reducing the state’s ability to reward friendly coverage via access. \[30\]

Strengthen legal protections against compelled disclosure while narrowing opportunities for coercive surveillance of journalists. DOJ’s news-media evidence rules demonstrate that protections exist but are regulatory and revisable; reforms could codify stronger, uniform protections (including for third-party records) and tighten exceptions. \[34\]

Invest in local accountability capacity using transparent, pluralistic mechanisms rather than discretionary patronage. State-level journalism tax credits and public-notice policy design show that public policy can either strengthen or weaken local watchdog capacity; program design should prioritize independence safeguards, transparent selection criteria, and anti-partisanship guardrails. \[85\]

Competition and concentration policy should treat news pluralism as a democratic infrastructure issue. The scale of local TV consolidation and reach-cap waivers indicates that antitrust and communications policy materially shape the space of political information—so diversity-of-ownership and newsroom-capacity impacts should be integrated into merger review. \[86\]

Research agenda for measuring “yankee-alliance” claims Link to heading

A rigorous research program should move from anecdote to measurement by (1) quantifying the proportion of national-security reporting that relies primarily on official sources vs independent evidence; (2) mapping ownership, reach, and newsroom staffing changes against changes in investigative output; (3) tracing the lifecycle of corrections vs initial claims in war/crisis narratives; and (4) building datasets of “state touchpoints” (press credential denials, subpoenas, surveillance requests, FOIA delays) and correlating them with editorial outcomes. \[87\]

Nonprofit news growth also warrants close study because it may reduce advertising dependence while introducing philanthropic agenda-dependence; INN’s revenue stream data provides a starting baseline for comparative accountability research. \[72\]

Gaps, uncertainties, and explicit assumptions Link to heading

The evidence base is stronger for crisis domains (war, intelligence, policing) than for all beats; “alliance” dynamics vary significantly by topic, newsroom culture, and competitive position. \[88\]

Some high-quality Reuters Institute pages are accessible here via a third-party PDF host; results are treated as valid because the document is the full report, but the hosting is not the Institute’s own domain. \[89\]

The case studies emphasize moments where journalism reinforced state narratives; they do not, by themselves, estimate how often journalism successfully constrained state narratives in adjacent periods. This report assumes the user’s interest is in mechanisms of alignment and thus weights evidence accordingly, while still noting countervailing pressures and conflicts (e.g., access litigation). \[90\]

Terms like “state narrative” are used descriptively (identifying official framings), not as a claim that every journalist acts with conscious loyalty; the strongest claims here concern institutional structure and incentives, consistent with political economy and field-theoretic frameworks. \[91\]

\[1\] \[13\] \[19\] \[78\] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/146488490100200201

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/146488490100200201

\[2\] \[14\] \[49\] \[68\] \[69\] \[89\] https://www.odg.it/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/REUTERS-Digital_News-Report_2025_compressed.pdf

https://www.odg.it/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/REUTERS-Digital_News-Report_2025_compressed.pdf

\[3\] \[25\] \[70\] \[83\] https://tvnewscheck.com/business/article/nexstar-again-tops-station-groups-as-consolidation-prospects-grow/

https://tvnewscheck.com/business/article/nexstar-again-tops-station-groups-as-consolidation-prospects-grow/

\[4\] https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-26-267A1.pdf

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-26-267A1.pdf

\[5\] \[27\] https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/newspapers/

https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/newspapers/

\[6\] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/media-and-communication/reporters-correspondents-and-broadcast-news-analysts.htm

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/media-and-communication/reporters-correspondents-and-broadcast-news-analysts.htm