from the feckless-cowards dept
As predicted, CBS execs have folded like damp cardboard and decided to pay Donald Trump $16 million in an incredible and historic act of cowardice. CBS, seeking FCC regulatory approval for its $8 billion merger with Skydance, wanted to settle a completely baseless Trump lawsuit falsely alleging that 60 Minutes misleadingly edited an election season interview with Kamala Harris.
Again, this lawsuit had absolutely no basis in truth. CBS executives could have fought the lawsuit and found an unlimited supply of public and financial support. Talented lawyers country wide would have been happy to help with the case pro bono in order to shut up an authoritarian bully.
Instead, CBS ownership, keen to head to the exits and transfer ownership of the company to Skydance executives (who look to be even bigger Trump ass kissers), folded to a blatant attempt by our mad king to bully and extort a major media company away from doing basic journalism.
CBS owners like Shari Redstone have effectively put up a giant neon sign advertising they don’t care about integrity or journalism, and most of the people who still work at CBS know it.
The settlement comes after months of negotiations between the two sides, and had been sped along by concerns of discovery and a looming shakeup on the CBS/Paramount board of directors:
“After weeks of negotiations with a mediator, lawyers for Paramount and Mr. Trump worked through the weekend to reach a deal ahead of a court deadline that would have required both sides to begin producing internal documents for discovery, according to two people familiar with the negotiations. Another deadline loomed: Paramount was planning to make changes to its board of directors this week that could have complicated the settlement negotiations.”
It’s worth noting that it takes the New York Times until the fifth paragraph to make it clear Trump’s lawsuit was baseless. Unsurprisingly, Trump’s legal team tries to frame this unconstitutional extortion racket as some kind of big win for the American public:
“A spokesman for Mr. Trump’s legal team said in a statement that the settlement was “another win for the American people” delivered by the president, who was holding “the fake news media accountable.”
“CBS and Paramount Global realized the strength of this historic case and had no choice but to settle,” the spokesman said.”
The great irony is that CBS executives had already spent years responding to surging U.S. authoritarianism by hiring more Republicans and shifting their editorial Overton window rightward to please Republicans. It’s part of a broader (and not at all subtle) U.S. media industry effort to appease increasingly radical right wing ideology in order to protect their financial interests and access.
The CBS settlement comes despite hints from California lawmakers that they’d be investigating any settlement as a potential bribe under California law. CBS execs initially showed some hesitation in the light of the inquiries, but ultimately likely concluded that any financial penalties (after years of inquiries and litigation) were worth the approval for their $8 billion megamerger.
Over on Bluesky, Senator Ron Wyden promised he’d hold CBS executives accountable, and urged state lawmakers to follow through on their bribery inquiries:
It’s important to view this as an extension of a very successful, fifty-plus year mission by Republicans to bully U.S. journalism and discredit factual criticism of often extremely unpopular right wing ideology (destroying social service programs and rural medical care to fund giant tax breaks for rich assholes, as a random example plucked out of a hat):
The myth that U.S. journalism suffers from a systemic “liberal bias” is one of the greatest lies ever foisted upon U.S. public discourse. In reality, most U.S. journalism is comprised of center-right corporatists primarily reflecting the financial interests of affluent, white male Conservative ownership. That CBS folded in this way wouldn’t be a surprise to prominent and long-deceased media studies academics.
CBS’ reward for this feckless appeasement was utterly bogus lawsuits, baseless FCC “investigations,” and getting relentlessly attacked in the right wing media as some sort of leftist rag (when again, CBS, if anything, had spent much of the last decade pandering to the U.S. right). There’s simply no winning when it comes to folding to authoritarian bullshit.
The “new CBS” under Skydance will be owned by David Ellison, the son of Larry Ellison, the right wing tech billionaire who has backed Trump. It seems very likely they’ll either spin off and discard CBS’ news division, or increasingly turn “CBS reporting” into the sort of flimsy infotainment and propaganda artifice that’s slowly devouring the lion’s share of what remains of mainstream U.S. journalism.
Just an immense, historic act of cowardice for a U.S. media industry increasingly comprised of flimsy artifice. The era of Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow it sure as hell isn’t.
Filed Under: bribe, bullying, donald trump, extortion, journalism, media, ron wyden, settlement, shari redstone
Companies: cbs, paramount, skydance
