We're heading into the final weeks of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert - CBS' number one show for nine straight seasons. The official reason: "purely a financial decision." Two weeks earlier, Colbert had criticised a settlement between Trump and Paramount, CBS's parent company, which is currently seeking White House approval for a $110 billion merger. David Letterman called CBS "lying weasels."

Also this week, Reporters Without Borders released the 2026 World Press Freedom Index: the lowest score in 25 years. In 2002, 20% of the global population lived in countries with good press freedom. Today it's less than 1%.

These are not two separate stories. In this episode, Sascha unpacks how press freedom actually erodes in democracies - not through arrests or bans, but through ownership structures, regulatory dependencies, and "financial decisions." Chomsky's Propaganda Model. Agenda-setting theory. The political economy of who controls what gets said.

FUNK !T - media and communication theory for what's actually happening this week.