Recent incidents involving Anderson Cooper and Stephen Colbert suggest things are not well at the network after the acquisition financed by Trump supporter Larry Ellison
Anderson Cooperdecides to walk awayfrom broadcast TV’s most prestigious news show, 60 Minutes. Stephen Colbert takes his interview with a rising Democratic politician to YouTubeinstead of his own late-night show. The CBS Evening News anchorpresents a misleading versionof the network’s own exclusive reporting on Ice arrests. And a news producer writes a farewell note to her CBS News colleaguesblaming the loss of editorial independence.
If you connect the dots, the picture of what’s happening at CBS becomes all too clear. That picture comes into even sharper focus once you recall an underlying factor: the network’s parent company istrying to get a big commercial deal doneand needs the help of the Trump administration to bring it over the finish line.
“Media capture” is the name that University of Pennsylvania scholar Victor Pickard gives to what we’re seeing unfold before our eyes.
What’s happening at CBS and elsewhere “isn’t a singular breakdown”, Pickardwritesin a new analysis.
It’s a whole cascade of layers – media ownership, control and market structure – that “endanger our information and communication systems, our First Amendment freedoms, and our democracy”.
In theCBSsituation, the immediate motivation is easy to understand. The network’s parent company, Paramount Skydance, wants to buy Warner Brothers Discovery, which also owns CNN – one of Donald Trump’s favorite punching bags and a news organization he would love to see take the same rightward turn as CBS.
Paramount Skydance is run by David Ellison, son of Larry Ellison, the Trump pal and one of the richest people on earth. Their effort is somewhat against the odds, since Warner Brothers Discovery’s boardfavors a competing offerfrom Netflix.
But the Ellisons haven’t given up, and they have some powerful friends in their corner, since any deal may need FCC approval. The Trump-appointed chairperson of the FCC, Brendan Carr, has shown himself to be a political animal, not the impartial and public-spirited leader that this crucial role calls for.
So much of what’s happened at CBS – the back-of-the-hand treatment of Colbert and the rightward drift of the news division – are ways of signalling that the Ellisons are more than willing to serve Trump’s interests.
Source: Drudge Report
