The Scoop
For the last year and a half, Truth Social has relentlessly pursued a defamation case against 19 media companies that flubbed a story about the platform’s earnings.
But one outlet that misreported the story managed to quietly convince the owners of Trump’s conservative Twitter clone to drop them from its lawsuit.
The saga began on Nov. 13, when several outlets inaccurately reported that Truth Social had lost $73 million that year. The figure, which the outlet initially attributed to SEC filings, was wrong: filings showed the company had lost $30 million since its launch. But in the scrum of digital media, 20 news outlets repeated the error. Among them was The Hill, the fast-twitch politics-focused digital media company purchased by Nexstar in 2021. In the span of about an hour, breaking news reporter Olafimihan Oshin wrote up and posted a brief article citing the Hollywood Reporter titled “Trump’s Truth Social has lost $73 million in less than 2 years, new filing says.” Truth Social quickly sued outlets that aggregated the story, including The Hill.
The case against 19 news outlets continues in a Florida district court. But on December 1, 2023, Truth Social dropped The Hill’s parent company, a giant in the local television business, from the lawsuit, noting that the companies had reached a settlement. Days later, The Hill fired Oshin.
One person with direct knowledge of the situation told Semafor that Nexstar, eager to avoid Trump’s wrath, had agreed to fire the reporter in exchange for being dropped from the case — which a spokesperson for Nexstar, Gary Weitman, denied.
The lawyer representing Truth Social in the case, Jared Roberts, didn’t respond to an inquiry as to why The Hill alone had been dropped from the lawsuit.
But there’s good reasons for Nexstar to stay out of Trump’s line of fire as the TV company attempts to grow its business and cut costs. The company has big aspirations for Trump’s second term, which founder Perry Sook believes could fundamentally transform its operations and allow it to hoover up the shrinking pool of TV eyeballs and advertising dollars, as its more prominent competitors flee cable for streaming.
The result has been that Nexstar’s executives have tightened their grip over its properties. Some of their moves have been simple corporate cost-cutting aimed at improving the company’s margins. But they have also pursued editorial changes that have largely played out at The Hill, where many staff fear they are attempting to change the site’s editorial bent at a moment when Nexstar is pushing the Trump administration to alter regulations in its favor.
“We’re a small but mighty place,” one employee said. “We feel like it’s being torn apart for no reason. They’re blowing up a good thing.”
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Over the last 30 years, Nexstar has become a major player in broadcast by purchasing local television stations from often distressed media companies looking to offload them. Nexstar owns the country’s largest local broadcasting group, with more than 200 owned or partner stations. Local television remains the strongest part of Nexstar’s business, as the company saw record revenue in 2024 on the back of a massive wave of political advertising.
But as Semafor reported in 2023, the company hit a wall in 2018 when it purchased the Tribune company’s TV stations, running into the FCC-mandated cap on the number of local stations it can own. The company responded by expanding into other media areas, purchasing The Hill in 2021, purchasing a majority stake in the CW, and launching NewsNation, bucking the trend of broadcasters running away from cable.
Its recent bets haven’t yielded the viewership the company had initially hoped for. NewsNation’s attempts to swim against the cord-cutting current have not resulted in a ratings bump for the network in the neighborhood of Fox, CNN, or MSNBC, though it has booked big interviews and had a few breakout moments. The company snatched up the broadcast rights to LIV Golf at a moment when other broadcasters did not want to be in business with Saudi Arabia, but the golf league left the CW for Fox earlier this year.
But the change in the White House has presented Nexstar with an opportunity, as the company’s national media play has seemed to atrophy.
Sook was one of the media executives who praised FCC chairman Brendan Carr’s appointment to chair the regulatory agency. And just two days after the election, Sook publicly called for the incoming Trump administration to roll back the station ownership cap.
“Our industry’s real competition comes from big tech companies who have unfettered access to every screen in America, from phones, desktops to the TV in the living room. Yet our ability to compete with those behemoths is stymied by regulations that were last updated in 2004,” Sook said days after Trump’s reelection. “This industry needs strong companies who can compete on a level playing field for both viewers and advertisers on every screen in America, not just some of them. And the time is now to seek this reform and Nexstar is once again prepared to lead.”
The company told investors earlier this year that it expects the FCC to deregulate, allowing it to grow beyond its current station ownership in 2025. The company hired a government affairs official, Scott Weaver, and Sook has made the rounds in a more conservative Washington to push lawmakers for deregulation.
Rank-and-file staff across Nexstar have worried that the increased political pressure from the business side could color the company’s editorial focus. Earlier this month, Nexstar ordered its 160-plus local television stations to air segments calling on the FCC to eliminate restrictions capping the number of local stations any company can own.
Some of the company’s journalists also worry that the company’s overall commitment to pursuing deregulation will mean more positive coverage of the White House. While NewsNation has maintained a relatively centrist posture, its executive ranks are filled with former Fox News executives, and staff have at times revolted over what some have seen as overly sympathetic coverage of Trump. The network has some formal ties to the president.
Sean Compton, a former radio and local TV executive responsible for helping boost Sean Hannity’s national radio profile and giving Trump a radio talk show deal in the early 2000s, oversees much of the company’s news operations. And as Semafor reported in 2022, NewsNation anchor Markie Martin’s sister, Margo Martin, is a communications adviser to the president, a fact that goes unremarked upon when Martin interviews other members of the administration. In an all-staff meeting with NewsNation employees in March in Chicago, Sook acknowledged to staff that he had recently met with Trump, who told him he wanted to see more conservative personalities on NewsNation’s air. A Nexstar spokesperson said that Sook’s comments about Trump’s opinion of The Hill were “said in jest and meant to reflect the fact that The Hill wasn’t immune from the President’s overall criticism of the media.”
The company has also begun to take a stronger interest in the editorial direction and finances at The Hill. As the Independent reported late last year, Nexstar informed The Hill in recent months it was going to lay off around two dozen of the publication’s editorial staff, amounting to a significant reduction in the newsroom. The company also declined to renew the contract of its longtime Editor in Chief Bob Cusack.
The cuts targeted reporters that cover beats related to diversity, equity and inclusion, climate change, and immigration, including the reporter covering race and politics, the Latino issues, the energy and environment reporter and both sustainability reporters. The staff’s union has protested the layoffs, saying the company has violated labor laws and is leaning away from coverage that could upset conservatives.
“The Hill is a market leader and trusted news source because we’ve been able to stay nonpartisan,” The Hill’s employee union said in a statement. “These layoffs threaten the future of the paper and the product that our readers depend on.”
A spokesperson for Nexstar disputed the characterization, arguing that the suggestion that any position was eliminated because of any political viewpoint, left or right, “is simply wrong.” The spokesperson also noted that other news organizations have undergone cuts in recent months.
In a private leadership meeting earlier this year, Compton said the focus of the layoffs was to get rid of the “losers,” according to an employee who heard the comments firsthand, and another staffer who was told about them afterwards from a different source. Compton had also complained privately that the Hill’s coverage was too similar to that of news outlets like HuffPost.
A spokesperson for Nexstar said Compton has never referred to employees as “losers.”
“As to any comparison to other media outlets, The Hill is always looking for ways to differentiate itself from its competitors,” the spokesperson said.
Some of Nexstar’s recent moves appear to be the usual corporate synergies, such as the directive for The Hill to write up moments from NewsNation or promote NewsNation interviews even when interview subjects have not made any news. The Hill also has financial concerns: Two sources told Semafor that while the publication has had strong online traffic in recent years, its Washington events business has slowed significantly, and some events have struggled to find corporate sponsors.
“This is a period of unprecedented change in the media industry,” a Nexstar spokesperson said. “The Hill, however, remains the dominant force in the political media space, drawing a larger audience than any of its primary competitors.”
Correction: A previous version of this article inaccurately identified Compton as a former Fox News employee.
Max’s view
Sook’s argument is correct in one sense. The FCC’s rules prohibiting a single company from owning stations with a combined reach to more than 39% of U.S. households were written to prevent a monopoly on viewership at a time before online video streaming. Now, even if Nexstar owned a majority of local television stations, it would hardly have a monopoly on what people watch, considering that millions of people no longer watch broadcast television at all.
A former television anchor himself, the Nexstar CEO has said that his argument appeals to Democrats who believe that a strong broadcaster like Nexstar could continue to fuel local journalism. Indeed, journalists at The Hill told Semafor that Nexstar has facilitated some collaboration between DC-based staff and local broadcast journalists. Further, as many streamers have run away from news, Sook has also publicly touted Nexstar’s willingness to broadcast hours of local and national news programming.
But with the quiet firing of a Hill journalist who got on the wrong side of Trump, and the willingness to wipe clean reporters covering issues important to the left, Nexstar has shown it is willing to alter its editorial vision in ways that seem likely to please the administration. As some broadcast media organizations ponder legal deals with Trump, the question of how to report fairly and aggressively on Trump and the administration while remaining free of the president’s personal and federal legal challenges is one of the most pressing concerns for media outlets today.
Room for Disagreement
Nexstar pushed back hard on the notion that it has bent its coverage to please the administration or made legal concessions to Trump. In an email to Semafor, a spokesperson noted the long list of contributors and perspectives from news organizations shared on its platforms.
“The Hill, The Hill TV Show, and NewsNation regularly feature guests and contributors from competitors like The Wall Street Journal, NY Times, Axios, Politico, The Atlantic, and even Semafor,” the spokesperson said. “Each of these media outlets has always been treated fairly and respectfully. The Hill welcomes all viewpoints.”