Thursday, March 19, 2026
Contact: Daiquiri Ryan Mercado
Director of Advocacy, National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC)
communications@nhmc.org | 703-634-9034
Today, the FCC chose to side with corporate consolidation over local communities, approving a merger that will allow one singular company to control local television stations reaching nearly 80 percent of American households.
This decision comes as Nexstar is already cutting local newsroom staff across the country — including at major stations in New York and Los Angeles — even while reporting it earned $1.56B in profit last year amid ‘better-than-expected’ growth.
This is exactly what consolidation produces: fewer journalists, more centralized control, higher retransmission fees passed on to consumers, and less independent local reporting in the communities that rely on it the most. Congress established a 39 percent national broadcast ownership cap specifically to prevent this level of concentration. In approving this transaction, the FCC is clearly overstepping the legal boundaries set by Congress as a protective measure for the American people.
This merger will not strengthen local journalism. It will accelerate newsroom consolidation, reduce competition in local media markets, and increase leverage in retransmission negotiations that historically translate into higher monthly bills and more blackout disputes for consumers.
The #DefendThePress undersigned organizations are calling for:
Members of Congress to condemn the FCC’s lawless decision and hold the agency accountable for this blatant disregard for the law through real oversight.
State Attorneys General to immediately challenge this unlawful, anticompetitive merger.
Federal courts to review the agency’s action and enforce the statutory 39% ownership cap.
Local journalism is civic infrastructure. It is how residents learn when their water is unsafe, how voters evaluate candidates for school board and city council, and how communities organize in the wake of a disaster. When local newsrooms are gutted, the democratic functions they serve do not disappear — they go dark.
Historically underserved communities lose the most when local stations consolidate: coverage of their neighborhoods shrinks, their voices go unheard, and corporate programming fills the vacuum. The FCC's approval of this merger is a decision about whose communities matter.
The fight for local journalism is the fight for democracy. This approval does not end the conversation. It begins the accountability phase.
