Type "abc.com" into your browser and watch what happens. It redirects. Not to a news page, not to a homepage, but to something that looks more like a streaming billboard than the news division that once brought you Peter Jennings, Ted Koppel, and the fall of Saigon. That's not an accident. It's a confession.
For decades, ABC News meant credibility. World News Tonight was appointment viewing. Nightline kept insomniacs informed. This was the network that refused to air the 9/11 footage of bodies falling because it deemed it too disturbing for families. That restraint was power. Now abc.com funnels you toward Disney's streaming ambitions like every other asset in the portfolio. The news is a retention tool. You are the product being retained.
Here's the dot most people miss: the domain itself hasn't changed, but the business model behind it has completely inverted. When a legacy newsroom becomes a funnel for a subscription service, the incentive isn't to tell you what's happening. It's to keep you scrolling, clicking, watching, subscribing. Outrage retains better than nuance. Fear retains better than context. The algorithm doesn't care about Woodward and Bernstein. It cares about watch time.
And who owns abc.com? Disney. The same company that owns ESPN, Marvel, Pixar, and a controlling stake in Hulu. The same company whose CEO has publicly floated the idea that news should be more "entertaining." Follow that thread. A single corporation controls the sports you watch, the movies your kids memorize, and the news that shapes what you believe about the world. That's not a conspiracy theory. That's a balance sheet.
The eeriest part is what's missing. Visit abc.com today and try to find a simple chronological list of headlines. You can't, not really. The page is designed to make you feel informed while keeping you in motion. Infinite scroll, autoplay video, recommended clips. The news has been reformatted for the same dopamine loop as TikTok, just with a nicer font and a Peabody Award on the wall.
Meanwhile, the actual journalism that made ABC News matter increasingly lives behind paywalls, buried in streaming docs, or reduced to chyrons designed for screenshots. The reporters are still talented. The institution around them has been re-engineered for a different master.
So ask yourself a simple question next time you land on abc.com: are you reading the news, or is the news reading you? The redirect happens in milliseconds, but the real redirect, the one in your attention, in your trust, in your sense of what's real, happens slowly enough that you never notice it.
The domain stayed the same. Everything else changed. That's how it always works.
**Closing take:** We didn't lose the news to censorship. We lost it to convenience, autoplay, and a corporate spreadsheet that figured out engagement pays better than truth. Stay woke to the difference, because the algorithm sure won't remind you.