The murder of Charlie Kirk last Wednesday sent shock waves not just across US society but also across the media landscape in all its many forms, sparking heated accusations and arguments across the ideological divide.
This was particularly true in the US, where Kirk was a mass media celebrity.
It was also true in Ireland, where middle-aged parents were surprised to learn that, unlike them, their teenage and twenty-something offspring knew exactly who Kirk was.
There couldn’t be a starker illustration of how the new media ecosystem within which Kirk thrived is bringing US politics to younger audiences worldwide.
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Not for the first time, more traditional media struggle to engage with this reality, pumping out a thousand “who is Charlie Kirk?” pieces that often read as if the writers were educating themselves.
Reports painstakingly explained Kirk’s role in Donald Trump’s re-election, his appetite for debate with political adversaries and the role of his organisation Talking Points USA in mobilising young conservatives.
‘Democrats and American progressives have been agonising over why they’re losing the battle on TikTok, YouTube and Spotify’
Kirk is usually described as an activist but it would be more accurate to call him one of the most successful of a new breed of political entrepreneur, who uses the influencer economy to achieve their goals.
For almost a year, Democrats and American progressives have been agonising over why they’re losing the battle on TikTok, YouTube and Spotify.
Following Kamala Harris’s defeat, some suggested the left needed to “grow its own Joe Rogan”, which rather misses the point.
They wondered why right-wing provocateurs were winning the authenticity wars over their left-wing counterparts and how the Democrats had managed to get themselves tainted as the party of finger-wagging, uptight school prefects.
Their alarm at their new media predicament will be heightened by what’s going on at more traditional platforms.
American media has always been shaped by powerful families and deep-pocketed investors. But over the past year a string of high-stakes ownership decisions has tilted the landscape further to the political right.
From the Murdoch dynasty’s internal manoeuvrings to Silicon Valley billionaires buying TV networks, the cumulative effect is unmistakable.
The most eye-catching move came from Rupert Murdoch’s empire. Murdoch had set up an “irrevocable trust” that would eventually give equal control of his media holdings to four of his adult children. Three of those heirs were thought to favour softening Fox News’s hard-edged conservatism. But in a dramatic reversal revealed last week, Murdoch succeeded in unwinding the trust.
Under the new arrangement, his son Lachlan will assume sole control of the family’s voting shares when Rupert dies. Lachlan is widely regarded as even more conservative than his father, as well as being more sympathetic to Trump-era populism. What began as an inheritance dispute now looks like a strategic coup to preserve Fox’s ideological trajectory into the next generation.
Another transformation is unfolding at CBS, now owned by Skydance Media after a complex merger approved this summer. Skydance is controlled by David Ellison, whose father, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, was reported recently to have taken over from Elon Musk as the world’s richest man due to a spike in Oracle’s share price.
Both father and son are Trump supporters. During a regulatory review of the merger, Skydance promised to appoint an ombudsman to protect editorial independence. That sounds like standard practice until you learn that the candidate reportedly favoured for the role has close ties to Trump’s political operation.
Meanwhile, CBS has entered a content partnership with journalist Bari Weiss, whose Substack-based Free Press champions a heterodox but often right-leaning agenda. Reports that Weiss is in talks for a senior newsroom position only reinforce the sense of a deliberate ideological reorientation.
One episode in particular crystallised concerns about CBS’s direction. Early this year the network quietly settled a defamation claim brought by Trump over the way 60 Minutes edited a combative interview with Kamala Harris during the 2024 election campaign.
Meanwhile, at the Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos has ordered a revamp of the opinion section, which insiders say will feature fewer progressive voices. And Disney, parent company of ABC News, is navigating its own political tightrope.
It also chose to settle rather than fight a Trump defamation suit in court, even though First Amendment experts believed it had a strong case. That signalled the company’s eagerness to avoid open confrontation with the administration and its allies as it seeks favourable regulatory treatment for its theme parks and streaming ventures. Critics fear this risk-averse stance will dampen ABC’s investigative zeal.
‘Political polarisation makes media ownership more attractive as a tool for shaping policy debates and protecting business interests’
None of these developments, taken individually, guarantees that American journalism will become a mouthpiece for the Republican Party. But collectively they create a climate in which the boundaries of acceptable debate shift rightward.
Why is this happening now? Partly because conservative billionaires see opportunity. Digital disruption has left many venerable outlets financially fragile. Buying influence in journalism has rarely been cheaper. At the same time, political polarisation makes media ownership more attractive as a tool for shaping policy debates and protecting business interests. The incentives to consolidate power in sympathetic hands are obvious.
Younger audiences inhabit social media spaces that are more unpredictable and hard to corral. But Democrats and their supporters, outpowered in new media by right-wing influencers and losing ground in old media to conservative billionaires, face the grim prospect of an enlarged, energised array of communications networks, all closely aligned with the Maga movement as they prepare to move forward into the post-Trump era.
