When the Federal Communications Commission voted on October 1 to scrap a long-standing ownership cap, it looked like just another Washington regulatory move buried in jargon. But for the people who actually produce the news, it was a direct threat to their jobs, their communities, and the very idea of a free press. That rule, approved by Congress more than twenty years ago, prevented any single television station owner from reaching more than 39 percent of the national audience. The FCC’s decision to repeal it didn’t just break with that law—it opened the door to a new wave of broadcast monopolies across the country. The NewsGuild-CWA, along with a broad coalition of media workers and advocates, immediately filed an emergency petition to challenge the order. This isn’t a theoretical debate about corporate structures. It’s about what happens when a handful of megacorporations control the stories we see, the voices we hear, and the facts we trust. Over the last two decades, consolidation in the news industry has helped wipe out tens of thousands of journalism jobs in the United States. When owners merge and swallow up competitors, they don’t invest in reporting; they cut newsrooms, flatten coverage, and turn local stations into echo chambers for corporate interests. The current FCC, the NewsGuild argues, has shifted radically to embrace consolidation, especially for media companies that are friendly to the Trump administration. The emergency petition is a defense not only of a legal cap but of the entire public interest in diverse, independent journalism. It says, loudly and clearly, that news should not be a toy for billionaires or a weapon for politicians.
This legal fight is not an isolated one. The NewsGuild has sued the Trump administration five times over what it calls violations of the First Amendment and other congressional mandates. Those lawsuits are part of a broader, relentless effort to push back against attacks on journalists and media workers. The Guild also helped kill an $8.6 billion takeover attempt of the broadcaster TEGNA by the hedge fund Standard General—a deal that would have concentrated enormous power in the hands of financial speculators with no real interest in journalism. For a union, this kind of work might seem unusual. Unions usually negotiate contracts, handle grievances, and bargain over wages and benefits. But Jon Schleuss, the president of the NewsGuild-CWA, makes clear that this is now a matter of survival. “We have to fight for our right to exist and to do our jobs safely,” he says. “We have to fight to defend everyone’s right to free speech and a free press.” That fight has taken the union into courtrooms, onto picket lines, and into the public square. It has meant building coalitions with other unions, civil liberties groups, and community organizations. It has meant refusing to accept the idea that the news industry must simply bow to the whims of powerful owners and political allies. In an era when local newspapers are shuttering, television stations are being swallowed up, and journalists are being silenced or punished for doing their jobs, the Guild’s legal aggression is not a choice—it is a necessity. The fight against monopolies is not just about preserving competition in the abstract; it is about making sure that the public has access to a range of voices and the truth is not filtered through a single corporate lens.
Nowhere is the challenge more visible than in the new frontier of artificial intelligence. At two newspapers in Ohio—the Akron Beacon Journal and the Kent Ravenna Record-Courier—journalists are refusing to put their bylines on their own work to protest an AI chatbot called DeeperDive that their parent company, USA Today Co., has been implementing on their stories. The reporters say the tool raises serious editorial integrity concerns and violates their parent company’s own standards. USA Today Co. has a corporate policy requiring a “human in the loop” whenever AI is used, meaning no automated content should be published without human oversight. But DeeperDive, the reporters say, is being slapped onto stories with no such oversight at all. And it consistently makes things up. Last week, in a particularly alarming example, the bot substituted the name of a murder suspect with the name of the reporter covering the case. That is not just a technical glitch; it is a dangerous failure that could destroy a journalist’s reputation, mislead the public, and damage the very fabric of trustworthy reporting. The workers are asking for public support through a petition demanding that USA Today Co. pause the use of DeeperDive. Meanwhile, at the St. Paul Pioneer Press in Minnesota, workers are fighting for AI protections in their contract. The outlet’s parent company, Alden Global Capital—notoriously known as a vulture fund that strips newsrooms to maximize profit—keeps rejecting those common-sense proposals. Guild members have suggested simple guardrails: AI-generated content should not appear under a reporter’s byline, should be clearly labeled, and should be reviewed by a human before publication. It is hard to imagine a more reasonable request, and yet management refuses to agree. The Tribune Company is also refusing to put its own AI policy into union contracts, which would leave management with sole control over how AI is used in newsrooms across the Orlando Sentinel, Hartford Courant, Virginian-Pilot, Morning Call, Chicago Tribune suburbs, and other properties. Without contractual protections, the future of editorial judgment is thrown into the hands of algorithms and executives. The NewsGuild is organizing workers and asking supporters to send letters to management demanding strong AI protections. The message is simple: if we do not draw a line now, we will soon live in a world where “news” is generated by code, edited by no one, and indistinguishable from propaganda.
Amid all these battles, there are also victories worth celebrating—proof that organizing still works and that journalists can win real, meaningful protections. At Embarcadero Media Foundation publications, workers have secured a strong first contract three years after unionizing. Their wins include a median 10 percent wage increase, just cause protections, severance, better healthcare benefits, and, crucially, AI protections. Julia Brown, the unit’s chair, described the deal as “the result of countless hours of work from former and current members and staff at Pacific Media Workers Guild.” For a newsroom that fought for years to be recognized, the contract is more than a document; it is a statement of dignity. In Arizona, journalists at the Arizona Daily Star are unionizing after USA Today Co. purchased the newspaper. An overwhelming 95 percent of eligible workers signed union cards with the Media Guild of the West. They are advocating for a living wage, an end to unjustified staff reductions, more affordable health insurance, and AI protections—among other basic needs. The paper, they point out, is locally profitable, averaging $8.5 million in annual net income over the past decade. Yet the staff has faced stagnant or declining wages and repeated layoffs that have shrunk their newsroom to a skeleton crew. When USA Today Co. refused to voluntarily recognize the union, the workers did not blink. They are gearing up for an election, ready to make their case to the National Labor Relations Board if necessary. And in Massachusetts, workers at CommonWealth Beacon organized with The Providence Newspaper Guild and quickly won voluntary recognition from the non-profit digital news organization covering state politics. Chris Lisinski, a senior reporter, put it perfectly: “To get truly impactful reporting that educates the public and holds power to account, you need journalists who can develop expertise, build out sourcing, and refine their craft with a sense of stability.” Those words capture the heart of the labor movement. Union contracts are not just about paychecks; they are about creating the conditions for journalism to thrive. They are about making sure that reporters can do their jobs without fear of being replaced by algorithms, laid off by private equity, or silenced by corporate owners.
There is nothing new about this struggle. The NewsGuild’s first major strike began in the winter of 1934, and one woman at the center of it was Agnes Fahy, a church editor who helped lead the walkout. She was one of the first women elected as a local union president, and later as an international vice president to the Guild. She helped negotiate the first Guild contract in Georgia, and she was fired illegally for her union activity. She fought for years to get her job back. Her story, told today, still resonates, and her advice from 85 years ago remains urgent. Fahy’s courage reminds us that the fight for fair treatment, for basic respect, and for the integrity of journalism is a long one. It is a fight that has been waged by ordinary people doing extraordinary things, people who refused to accept that profit margins mattered more than the truth. That legacy continues in places like the Times Union in Albany, New York, where union members held an informational picket earlier this month to demand a fair contract. Shockingly, workers at the Albany-based newspaper have been without a contract for eighteen years. Eighteen years. That means they have spent a generation without the security of a written agreement, without guaranteed raises, without enforceable protections. It is long past time for Hearst management to start bargaining in good faith. The story of the Guild is a story of persistence—of people who keep showing up, keep speaking out, and keep pushing, even when the odds are stacked against them. Fahy’s lesson, and the lesson of every strike and picket and petition since, is that solidarity is not just a slogan. It is the only thing that has ever made the powerful listen.
The fight for a free press does not stop at the water’s edge. Jon Schleuss recently attended the International Federation of Journalists Executive Committee meetings, his first since being elected to represent journalists across North America. Over two days, he shared updates from the United States and listened to leaders from journalist trade unions around the world. The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate announced a new fundraising drive to support media solidarity centers in the Gaza Strip, places that provide internet, electricity, and safe spaces for journalists to work under unimaginable conditions. In Quebec, the union family at Radio-Canada, known as STTRC, signed a new four-year collective agreement that includes a clause recognizing the human value of labor and treating artificial intelligence as a tool rather than a substitute for human labor. That is a powerful, principled win that will help Canadian Broadcasting Corporation members at the CMG, who began bargaining this month. These international connections matter more than ever. As leaders across the globe—but especially in the United States—withdraw from global cooperation and choose wars of violence or economics, journalists are often the first to be targeted and the first to bear witness. Supporting journalists around the world is not an act of charity; it is an act of self-defense. A free and independent press is the cornerstone of any functioning democracy, and when it is under attack anywhere, it is under threat everywhere. The NewsGuild’s engagement with the IFJ is a reminder that we are not alone. There is a global community of workers committed to the same values, sharing the same struggles, and winning the same battles. In the end, this is what the fight is all about: building a world where journalists can do their jobs safely, where truth is not a commodity, and where every community has access to the stories that shape their lives. That is the world Agnes Fahy fought for, the world that union members at Embarcadero and Arizona and New York are fighting for, and the world that the NewsGuild-CWA will keep fighting for, one contract, one picket line, and one petition at a time.