The Telecommunications Act of 1996. Prior to that, regular for-profit corps couldn't own news companies. This was because the news is SUPPOSED TO BE the "fourth estate" - the watchdog nipping at the gov't's and businesses' heels, catching them in wrongdoing and reporting on it. That's why big for-profit corporations were not allowed to own them - because they would co-opt the news and undermine the Fourth Estate's purpose.

And that's what happened. Since 1996, big corporations have bought up so many news outlets that now approx 90% of all news companies are owned, directly or indirectly, by just six giant corporations. You know, whose CEOs go to Davos every year to plan how they are going to control the world together with their fellow billionaires. This would help explain those compilation videos you've seen where newspeople at both the local and national level are saying the exact same thing - using the exact same words. It's all scripted from above, and they're just reading their lines like the mindless little actors they are.

At this point, the MSM have become the propaganda arm of the elites' corporate and political interests. What is amazing is that half the country still hasn't twigged to this fact.