Trump's FTC Wants to Protect Far-Right Media Outlets

The Trump Administration wants to make a deal with the advertising industry. The deal goes like this: Support our friends who own far-right media outlets, and we’ll let you go about your business.

Given how elite universities, the legal profession, and the free press have been treated recently, it’s not surprising that Omnicom’s proposed $13.5 billion acquisition of The Interpublic Group of Companies has raised “antitrust concerns” for the Federal Trade Commission. To address these “concerns,” the FTC accepted a proposed consent order that will place restrictions on Omnicom to prevent it from engaging in collusion or coordination by directing advertisers away from publishers based on the publishers’ political or ideological viewpoints. In other words, the federal government is now in the business of telling brands and their agency partners where to place media dollars.

Daniel Guarnera, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, said, “Coordination among advertising agencies to suppress advertising spending on publications with disfavored political or ideological viewpoints threatens to distort not only competition between ad agencies, but also public discussion and debate.”

That’s one way of putting it. Here’s another. The June 23rd statement from the Chairman of the FTC, Andrew N. Ferguson concluded:

I hope the conditions imposed on this merger will encourage all advertising firms to adopt similar practices and thereby reduce the temptation to collude to the detriment of their customers, independent journalists, small and independent media companies, consumers, and the American public square.

Ferguson wants “all advertising firms” to “reduce the temptation to collude.” Wow. That’s not what’s happening. Let me help. What media buyers are tempted to do is advise agency clients to spend their money wisely, meet their customers where they live, and keep their brands far away from trashy shit on the internet.

I appreciate how Julia Angwin, in a guest opinion for The New York Times, breaks this all down. “While the move would theoretically affect platforms of any political persuasion, there’s little doubt that it is a thinly veiled attempt to prop up X.”

“Controlling advertising is a back door to controlling media itself,” Angwin writes. She also points out that marketing research firm Forrester has advised clients to buy ads on X to protect themselves from legal threats and investigations.

Here’s a different option, not from Forrester. Don’t feed the Broligarchs.

As a next step in the approval process, the FTC will now allow interested parties to make public comments on the merger for 30 days. According to Digiday, the public comment stage is unlikely to derail the deal.

“While the FTC is obligated to invite comments, it isn’t required to listen to them,” Ray Seilie, litigator at Kinsella Holley Iser Kump Steinsapir LLP, told Digiday in an email.