Oct. 28
We Jail Stockbrokers for Fraud. Why Not Fox News Hosts and Politicians?
This is not about arresting journalists for opinions. It’s about prosecuting fraud without carving out a political exemption that exclusively benefits bad actors who chase power.
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The pattern is decisively consistent. First consolidate media. Then implement authoritarian policies. Controlled media redirects blame for consequences. The captured information infrastructure prevents democratic accountability from operating. A free and just nation requires an independent and ethical press. It follows then, that the profit incentive is antithetical to democracy and justice.
The United States now exhibits these conditions. Thirty-eight percent of Americans say they regularly get news from Fox News, and 57 percent of Republicans do. Sinclair’s 179 stations in 81 markets reach about 38 percent of the country through local news, and Americans trust local news more than national news by 14 points, 70 percent to 56. Elon Musk has 241 million followers on X, a platform that told investors it has 550 million users.
Worth note, research published in Science and Science Advances finds conservatives share more low-quality sources and misinformation than liberals, with subsequent studies in Nature’s Scientific Reports and the Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review confirming these findings. This creates asymmetry in information environments. When oligarch policies produce economic suffering, these outlets redirect blame to immigrants, Democrats, or claim things are going well. Constitutional violations get alternative explanations or outright denial. Foreign policy failures get reattributed to different causes or reframed as successes.
Follow the money to understand the point. Jeff Bezos “loses” more than $100 million a year to prop up the Washington Post, $100 million in 2024 and more than $100 million again in 2025. That is 0.03% of his $372 billion net worth. At this rate, Bezos could sustain Post losses for 3,700 years. The losses are immaterial to him. His motivations are not financial. These purchases provide value far greater than their dollars and cents cost. It allows oligarchs to shape and direct public discourse away from their sickening behavior.
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Voters in those jurisdictions don’t hold leaders accountable because they cannot identify who caused their problems. The common assumption that people will ‘wake up when things get bad enough’ ignores how sealed information environments function. Economic collapse doesn’t break through when Fox, Sinclair, and X are telling audiences who to blame instead. Suffering alone doesn’t create insight. It creates rage that captured media redirects toward preferred enemies and convenient scapegoats. The worse conditions become, the more these voters will support authoritarian solutions to problems their trusted sources falsely attribute to democratic governance itself.
Forty percent of voters inhabit information environments telling them elections are stolen, policies are sabotage, and opposition is treasonous. That percentage matters because democratic systems require more than simple majority rule. Constitutional governance, legislative compromise, and peaceful transfers of power depend on substantial majorities accepting electoral outcomes as legitimate. Voters who hear that every day will not accept democratic outcomes. They will support unconstitutional measures to restore what their trusted sources tell them was taken illegally. The percentage is large enough to make democratic governance impossible but too large to be dismissed as a fringe.
The federal government will not address this consolidation. Republicans control federal institutions. The billionaires who own media outlets receive tens of billions in federal contracts and regulatory decisions. Their business interests depend on maintaining Republican power. More critically, many of these people face potential criminal prosecution if Democrats restore rule of law. Elon Musk led a government department overseeing agencies that regulate his companies and award him contracts, with at least $2.37 billion in pending federal liability hanging over those companies the day Trump took office. That is corruption. Jeff Bezos killed an endorsement the day his Blue Origin executives met with Trump. That is corruption. Paramount paid Trump $16 million on July 2, 2025, and the FCC approved its merger with Skydance 22 days later. If prosecutors who are not captured by these people ever investigate these arrangements, prison time becomes possible. These billionaires are not just protecting profits. They are protecting themselves. This leaves state governments as the only entities with both motivation and authority to act.
The states that can act are the states where voters still consume diverse information. California, New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, Washington State. These states control access to markets billionaires cannot afford to lose. They must use that power aggressively or watch democratic accountability collapse nationwide.
Republicans and oligarchs are breaking the rules. They are using media ownership to hide open corruption and lawless behavior. They are blocking endorsements to curry favor. They are installing conservative operatives atop news organizations. They do not care about norms or precedent. If states with power refuse to fight back because they are worried about process or precedent, they will lose.
The First Amendment constrains state action but it does not prohibit it. Several pathways remain constitutionally viable. States must pursue all of them simultaneously.
States should establish criminal penalties for systematic disinformation campaigns. Not civil penalties. Criminal penalties. Prison time. The law sends a telemarketer to prison for a lie that takes a retiree’s savings, yet accepts that billionaire-controlled media can lie about economic responsibility, redirect blame for policy failures, and conceal corruption affecting millions without criminal consequence. When Fox News anchors or Sinclair broadcasts knowingly spread false information to protect oligarch interests, that constitutes fraud. When social media executives allow coordinated lies that redirect public blame away from billionaire policy failures, that constitutes fraud. The distinction matters: editorial judgment and political commentary remain protected. Knowingly lying to protect federal contracts, conceal corruption, or prevent democratic accountability does not.
Prosecutors should file criminal charges against media figures and executives engaged in these operations. Make them defend it in court. Make judges rule explicitly that the First Amendment protects billionaire-funded systematic deception. Force that confrontation. These media operations exist to shield their owners from consequences. States either prosecute this fraud with the seriousness they prosecute any other scheme to defraud the public, or they accept that oligarchs can simply buy the right to lie without legal consequence.
Right now the only legal cost of a lie on cable is a defamation suit, and only the person the lie names can file one. Fox paid Dominion Voting Systems $787.5 million in 2023 to settle its suit over the network’s 2020 election coverage, and Gavin Newsom’s $787 million defamation suit against Fox is set for trial in March 2028. The viewer who was lied to has no claim at all.
A state can prosecute that fraud under a bill built on the standards every other market already lives under. A stockbroker who misstates a material fact answers to New York’s Martin Act, under which the attorney general recovers the money without proving a single investor relied on the lie. A company that lies in an ad answers to a consumer protection act that counts every day the lie stays up as a new violation. A company that lies to the market answers to every investor who bought while the lie stood, and a robocaller answers to every person who picked up. Politics is the one market with none of those rules, and the bill applies all of them. The Fraud Is Fraud Act makes it a crime to knowingly lie to a mass audience for money, to sell a lie as news, to lie in a paid political message, or to keep people from voting, and it lets the people who paid sue for three times what they lost, and lets anyone physically hurt by a knowing lie they relied on, the pandemic lies included, sue for three times the damage. Fox sells its programming straight to viewers through Fox One, a $19.99-a-month streaming service that includes Fox News Channel, so under the bill a Fox News host who knowingly presents a falsehood as fact faces the same fraud charge as a telemarketer who lies to your grandmother to get her savings. The same sections reach a politician: a fundraising email built on a lie is taking money by fraud, and a knowing lie about when, where or how to vote is a crime under the bill, whoever says it. The attorney general gets the power New York’s attorney general has used against securities fraud since 1921, to subpoena witnesses and records before filing any case. Our team will email the bill to every Democratic state legislator in the country, about 3,200 of them.
This is not about arresting journalists for opinions. This is about prosecuting fraud. When someone accepts money from foreign governments to spread disinformation without disclosure, that is already illegal under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The DOJ indicted two RT employees in September 2024 for funneling nearly $10 million to U.S. influencers. In February 2025, Attorney General Pam Bondi limited criminal charges under that act to conduct resembling espionage, so the states are the prosecutors left. When someone knowingly lies about voting procedures to prevent citizens from casting ballots, that is criminal election interference. The distinction matters: editorial judgment and political commentary remain protected. A knowing lie sold as news, a knowing lie in a paid political message, a knowing lie aimed at voters, and a knowing lie that puts someone in the hospital do not. States should prosecute the latter with the same seriousness they prosecute any other fraud that undermines democratic processes.
Sinclair operates 179 stations under licenses granted by the FCC. Federal law lets the FCC grant a license only when “the public interest, convenience, and necessity” are served. Systematic dissemination of disinformation does not serve the public interest. States should petition the FCC to revoke Sinclair licenses. When the FCC refuses, states should challenge that refusal in court. Make federal courts rule explicitly that broadcast licenses protect systematic propaganda. Make them say it out loud.
When Paramount Skydance’s bid for Warner Bros. Discovery came before regulators, I wrote that California and New York should file to block it. Not based on economic competition. Based on information infrastructure. The bid put CBS News and CNN under David Ellison, whose father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, personally guaranteed $40.4 billion of the financing while Oracle was taking a Pentagon software contract worth up to $7 billion. California Attorney General Rob Bonta led 12 states into court on economic grounds, then settled on Sept. 30 for film production promises, a worker fund and an editorial independence board for CBS and CNN. The merger closed on Oct. 6. CBS News and CNN now have one owner, and a board the owner appointed is what stands between him and their newsrooms.
States should enact their own Foreign Agents Registration Acts requiring anyone receiving foreign government funding to register and label all content. Penalties should be criminal, not civil. When RT employees funnel $10 million to U.S. influencers without disclosure, state prosecutors should file charges. When platforms carry foreign-funded content without labels, states should fine them daily until they comply or ban them entirely.
Media capture preceded authoritarian consolidation in every documented case; Marius Dragomir and Minna Aslama Horowitz trace the method from Orbán’s Hungary to today’s platforms. The sequence has operated in Hungary, Russia, and Turkey. It is operating in the United States now. Federal action is impossible when federal institutions are captured. The states most damaged by oligarch-controlled media are the states least likely to regulate it.
This leaves states with remaining power facing a choice they cannot avoid making. Refusing to act is itself a choice with consequences. There is no neutral ground, no procedural path that preserves norms while the other side dismantles them. The other side is using media ownership to protect tens of billions in federal contracts, blocking endorsements to curry favor with the administration, and installing operatives atop news organizations. They are doing this openly. States either use the power they retain or watch it become irrelevant. The consolidation documented in this series establishes that the capture is underway. The question is not whether states will interfere with established norms. The question is whether they will act while action remains possible. The window is closing.
Author’s Note
This article first ran on Oct. 21, 2025, as part two of a series on oligarch media consolidation; part one, the timeline of billionaire media acquisitions, is linked at the bottom. The figures are updated to this week, and the bill is new. The team will email it to legislators, and the CALL TO ACTION below is the part that is yours.
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CALL TO ACTION
Who you are contacting: your own state senator and state representative, whatever their party.
What you are asking for: that they sponsor or cosponsor the Fraud Is Fraud Act in your state’s next session.
What that is: a state bill that makes it a crime to knowingly lie to a mass audience for money, to sell a lie as news, to lie in a paid political message, or to keep people from voting, gives your attorney general the power to subpoena witnesses and records before filing a case, and lets the people who paid for the lie sue for three times what they lost, and anyone physically hurt by a knowing lie they relied on sue for three times the damage. Our team will email it to every Democratic legislator in the country. Your legislator hears about it from a voter when you write, and if your legislator is a Republican, your letter is the first that office sees. The bill is here: Fraud Is Fraud Act.
How to write it: in your own words. Say who you are, where you live, what you do and why you care, so it never reads as a form letter. Attach or link the bill. In Washington State, find your legislators at app.leg.wa.gov/districtfinder. Everywhere else, find yours at openstates.org/find_your_legislator. Email, call, send a free fax through FaxZero, or mail a letter.
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