For many experts, CBS had a slam dunk case to fend off the Trump lawsuit. Instead, they chose cowardice and settled.
When it comes to the integrity of the larger news operations, there is often two sides that we end up seeing.
On the one side, you’ll see the mainstream media project a sense of confidence where they are there to defend democracy and present the objective truth to the audience. This while speaking truth to power and holding the powerful accountable.
Then there is the other side that shows that when push comes to shove, many mainstream media companies wind up grovelling at the feet of the powerful and will be more than willing to bury facts and stories if it meant pleasing the powerful. In short, they serve their interests and not the audience that they so frequently say they defend.
This is the sort of thing we have seen here in Canada. During the Bill C-18 debate of he last government, media types were asked if they are influenced by advertisers. The answer, provided by Paul Deegan at the time, was an unequivocal ‘no‘. In short, if an advertiser comes running up to a news organization and says that they don’t like their coverage, then the media organization would pound sand. Naturally, their MP buddies during the hearing didn’t question it.
Yet, hilariously, some time after that happened, the Ontario Doug Ford government announced that they would be spending more ad dollars on the media companies in the province. The response? glowing coverage of the Ford government, arguing that if only other governments were as great and wonderful as the Doug Ford government. The media companies were practically falling over each other to give the best fellatio to the premier – facts be damned. Ultimately, the incident showed the true colours of the mainstream media. When it comes to the wealthy and the powerful, the media has a habit of being spineless cowards and will do anything and everything to please the very people they always claim to be holding to account.
We also happen to know that this is far from a one off incident and this sort of ‘surrender to the powerful’ on the part of the media isn’t exclusively a Canadian thing. In the US, Trumps rise to power meant that the Washington Post decided to implement heavy censorship policies on its own staff, doing anything and everything in their power to please the Trump dictatorship even before the election. The LA Times was also doing the same thing with their own efforts to censor their contributors in an effort to please the Trump regime.
Seeing those two papers cower in the face of the rise of a regime that is threatening to burn the whole country to the ground is infuriating. They are abdicating the responsibility of what news organizations should be doing: holding the powerful accountable. These news organizations have the money to defend themselves, yet they chose the cowards way out, throwing free speech and journalism under the bus in the process.
One of the many targets of the Trump administration also happens to be PBS. Trump has long demanded that PBS should be defunded for the crime of not being pro-Trump enough. PBS, along with NPR, were later hauled before congress to explain why they aren’t being pro-Trump enough in a witch hunt style hearing.
CBS is also on the receiving end of political attacks from the Trump administration. After daring to air an interview of political candidate, Kamala Harris, the Trump administration has been attacking the organization on baseless “election interference” claims. The case was an obvious slam dunk win for CBS as it is not a crime in the US (not yet, anyway) to interview a political rival. Instead of standing up for the truth, however, it seems that CBS has chosen cowardly surrender to the Trump’s anti-free speech attacks. Techdirt is noting that CBS has surrendered to the Trump regime and decided to settle their obviously winning case:
When last we checked in with CBS, the company was preparing to fold under pressure from the Trump administration, amidst bogus accusations that 60 Minutes had unfairly made Donald Trump look bad. As we’ve noted previously, the accusations are utterly baseless, but that’s apparently not stopping the CBS board from kissing authoritarian ass and throwing their journalists under the bus.
According to the New York Times, CBS/Paramount board members, keen on getting approval of their $8 billion merger with Skydance, are likely moving forward with a fat settlement with the Trump administration. In the process they’re sending a very loud message to everyone that they’re no longer interested in protecting journalism, or their own journalists:
“Paramount’s interest in settling has dismayed CBS’s news division, in particular the staff of “60 Minutes,” the country’s most popular weekly news program. Four days after the April 18 board meeting, the show’s executive producer, Bill Owens, abruptly announced he would resign, citing encroachment on its journalistic independence and saying Paramount “is done with me.”
Last weekend 60 minutes covered the fracas in what feels like a death knell for the once-respected cable TV news magazine:
This absolutely does send a strong message. Journalists in America are expected to make Trump look as good as humanly possible. Failure to do so will result in the full force of Trump’s law to punish those who do not adhere to the Trump regime’s expectations. The surrender on the part of CBS only emboldens this effort to crack down and silence journalists as those who are willing to stand up for what’s right will find that they have fewer allies, making the fight for actual true free speech more difficult.
There’s no mistake here: the CBS surrender was cowardly, orchestrated by the executives who are willing to throw their own journalists under the bus to pursue favour of the Trump administration and what they perceive as their own financial interests. If American’s are looking for an organization that will stand up for the truth, CBS ultimately send a clear signal here saying that they aren’t that organization.
