By Terence Smith
I worked for two television news organizations in my journalistic career: CBS News and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, now the PBS NewsHour. Both eminently worthwhile, both very different, and now, in the Age of Trump, both under MAGA assault and threatened.
PBS, at least, is fighting back. They have sued the Trump Administration, challenging the President’s executive orders suspending the Federal payments to the network and, crucially, to the member stations. Stay tuned on that one.
CBS, at least as I write this, seems to be caving in. Paramount, which owns CBS, appears to be offering some $15 million to settle a preposterous, meritless, almost laughable, $20 Billion Trump suit claiming that 60 Minutes aided the Kamala Harris Presidential campaign with a routine edit to a 60 Minutes segment last fall. (Note to Trump World: Harris lost; you won.)
Shari Redstone, the largest Paramount stockholder, reportedly is pushing to settle the suit rather than fight it so that the Trump-appointed FCC will give the necessary approval to Paramount’s multi-billion dollar sale to Skydance. The sale, of which CBS is a minor component, will further fatten Redstone’s already considerable bank account.
Redstone also has reportedly cracked down on any criticism of Trump on CBS, leading to the principled resignations of 60 Minutes’ excellent executive producer, Bill Owens, and the News Division president, Wendy McMahon, lest such reporting jeopardize the proposed sale of Paramount. Money talks, and in this case, in a loud and unmistakable voice.
The best discussion of the 60 Minutes/CBS dilemma I’ve heard is on the current New Yorker RadioHour, with New Yorker editor David Remnick questioning the estimable Lesley Stahl about the reaction and response of the 60 Minutes staff of correspondents. It is available online. Listen and weep as they discuss the “fragility” of the news business in the face of Trump’s frontal assault.
Mainstream media is indeed “fragile” these days. We all need to stay tuned as the twin challenges to PBS and CBS play out. Our democracy is at stake.