The warning signs were there before the election. In October, The Washington Post announced it would no longer endorse political candidates. The Los Angeles Times followed suit. These weren’t principled stands for neutrality. They were previews of how mainstream media outlets plan to handle Trump’s second term: with kid gloves and bothsidesism that would make 2017’s coverage look aggressive by comparison.

We’ve seen this movie before. After 9/11, mainstream media outlets abandoned their role as government watchdogs, instead becoming cheerleaders for the Bush administration’s march to war. Reporters who questioned the official narrative were sidelined or fired. The New York Times famously published Judith Miller’s incorrect WMD stories on the front page while burying skeptical reporting. Dissent was treated as unpatriotic.

But this time could be worse. Media billionaires aren’t just staying quiet — they’re actively courting Trump’s favor. The coming wave of media consolidation means these owners have a vested interest in keeping Trump happy. After all, they’ll need his administration’s approval for mergers, favorable regulatory decisions, and continued tax breaks.

The signs of this pre-emptive surrender are already visible in how outlets frame stories about Trump. Headlines have gotten softer. Coverage of his most extreme statements gets buried. Stories about his plans for retribution against political enemies are treated as horserace politics rather than threats to democracy.

This isn’t just about editorial decisions. It’s about ownership. When Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post and needs government approval for Amazon’s various ventures, how aggressively will the paper investigate Trump’s corruption? When Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of the Los Angeles Times, needs regulatory approval for his medical companies, will the paper push back against Trump’s attacks on science?

The truly chilling part is how unnecessary this capitulation is. Trump didn’t have to threaten these outlets directly — their billionaire owners are preemptively repositioning them to avoid conflict. They’ve learned the lesson from Elon Musk: Playing nice with Trump can be very profitable for the ultra-wealthy, even if it means sacrificing integrity.

Independent journalism won’t disappear entirely. But it will be increasingly marginalized, drowned out by the “mainstream” outlets that have decided maintaining access and avoiding conflict is more important than telling uncomfortable truths. Stories that should be front-page news will be relegated to specialty publications with smaller reach.

The bitter irony is that this voluntary surrender won’t protect these outlets from Trump’s attacks. He’ll continue using them as punching bags to rally his base, even as they bend over backwards to appear “fair” to his administration. But their owners calculate that performative criticism is preferable to actual accountability journalism that might threaten their bottom lines.

For those who remember post-9/11 journalism, this feels eerily familiar. But at least then, the press could claim they were caught off guard by an unprecedented national crisis. This time, they’re choosing compliance with eyes wide open, trading their watchdog role for a seat at the billionaire’s table.

The question isn’t whether mainstream media will hold Trump accountable in his second term — they’ve already decided not to try. The question is whether enough independent voices can survive to fill the vacuum they’re leaving behind.