https://steady.substack.com/p/heartbreak-for-cbs-news?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=247881&post_id=156209726&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=v8bg&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
It’s not a surprise. Authoritarians must silence their perceived opposition. President Trump believes his No. 1 opponent is a free press. He has long demonized the media, calling it “the enemy of the American people.” He couldn’t be more wrong. A free press is not the enemy, and our Founding Fathers knew it.
They enshrined freedom of the press in the very first amendment to the Constitution, up at the top of the Bill of Rights — not because they were great fans of journalists, but rather because they knew, as Thomas Jefferson put it, that “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free ... it expects what never was and never will be.”
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Paramount is in the midst of a multimillion-dollar merger, which needs approval by the Federal Communications Commission, now run by Trump’s appointee. And Shari Redstone, Paramount’s controlling shareholder and board member, stands to make billions if the deal goes through. See where this is going?
CBS, but really Paramount, is in settlement talks with Trump and co., according to The New York Times, which by the way is one of the few independent national newspapers. “A settlement would be an extraordinary concession by a major U.S. media company to a sitting president, especially in a case in which there is no evidence that the network got facts wrong or damaged the plaintiff’s reputation,” wrote Lauren Hirsch, James B. Stewart, and Michael M. Grynbaum in The Times.
If a settlement is reached, some might characterize it as a payoff. “That’s called a bribe,” Richard Painter, President George W. Bush’s White House ethics lawyer, posted on X.
If CBS settles, it will be the third media company to do so since the election. ABC News agreed to pay $15 million to Trump’s presidential library after he sued for defamation. Meta is giving $22 million to the library to settle a suit Trump brought after his social media accounts were suspended for cause.