The real bias monitor at CBS is Donald Trump | Seth Stern

NEWS points of sale, including CBS, are free to perform their editorial operations as they see fit. If they decide independently to hire a bias mediator, it is their prerogative. If they think that the best person to monitor prejudices at the moment is a career supporter like Kenneth Weinstein, that makes their judgment in question, but not necessarily a first amendment problem.

However, this changes when follow -up is at the request of the federal government. And that’s what’s going on at CBS. The creation of the role of the mediator was one of the many capitulations that CBS owners have made to the Trump administration to persuade the Federal Communications Commission to approve the Paramount-Skydance merger.

Other concessions included a commitment to end DEI and, of course, the 4 million dollars briefs in Trump, bleached as payment of payment to resolve its frivolous trial over 60 minutes from an interview with the vice-president of the time, Kamala Harris. Two days after the check, the FCC approved the merger. And although Paramount denies it, Trump says that there has also been a parallel agreement to soften the agreement with $ 20 million in PSA pro-Trump.

Given the original sin of this rotten transaction, there is no room for the benefit of doubt with regard to the hiring of Weinstein.

The day the rental was announced, the president of the FCC, Brendan Carr – known for his setback with a golden bust of Trump – told the Wall Street Journal that his allegedly independent agency was “fully aligned on the agenda that President Trump directs”. Regarding the press, this program is clear: censorship and remuneration.

Weinstein’s Bootlicking past Bootlicking raises questions to find out if it is too biased to monitor biases. Shortly after the administration extracted its last surrender from CBS – a commitment to no longer exercise its constitutional right to modify the interviews, in response to the criticisms of the Secretary of Internal Security, Kristi Noem – It was reported that Weinstein had deleted his X account.

So, the man in charge of transparency police in CBS already obscures his own words? Not an excellent start as a journalistic ethicist.

David Ellison, CEO of New Paramount Skydance Corporation and son of Larry Ellison, who recently became the richest person in the world, insists that Weinstein will not report to the government. The role of the mediator concerns transparency, and not surveillance, he says. This will ensure that CBS has “varied ideological perspectives”, probably including that of his father’s boyfriend in the White House, who also wants to negotiate an agreement for the Ellison family to control Tiktok.

We could argue that a serious bias instructor would focus on the question of whether journalists’ prejudices (and yes, journalists have biases like everyone else) interfere with their continuation of the truth rather than implementing an insane policy “all the prospects are created equal”. But again, in the absence of government interference, Ellison has the right to write the description of the position as he seems.

The government, however, apparently intends to supervise – and, if it judges it, interfere with – the police at CBS. Carr would have declared that his agency was in a “trust but checks the posture”, with regard to the anti-biian commitments which he extracted unconstitutionally. He noted: “When you make a deposit at the FCC, we have rules and regulations that deal with false representations to the agency”, adding that his agency “was going to stay in touch with [Paramount] and follow this problem ”.

In other words, the FCC is positioned to use paramount apparently The commitments forced during the merger process – including the mediator of the bias – punish the CBS if it comes out of the line, or better still, makes it think twice in the first place. A cop independent of the bias would be everywhere in the report of the Columbia Journalism Review Thursday on the alarming interference of companies, by the old and the new property, in order to light the coverage of the network in favor of Israel. What an opportunity to run the ground! But don’t hold your breath.

Legally, the government cannot use regulatory sanctions as an end to the end of the Constitution to control the news. As a previous version of Carr said in 2021: “The decision of an editorial room on the stories to be covered and how to supervise them should be out of reach of any government official.”

But that supposes a government which respects the limits of its authority. The United States does not have one. If this administration needs a pretext to punish the CBS, there will be one – whether they are false alleged statements to regulators or other lawyers of the Bizarre Theory Government.

And do not expect the FCC to pushing. My employer, Freedom of the Press Foundation, filed a disciplinary complaint to the lawyer against Carr in July, which included a list of laundry of its overruns and additional jurisdictional actions, by threatening owners of cable information network companies who do not disseminate Trump’s press conferences to the efforts to get involved in online content.

The FCC does not regulate either cable information or online speech, and Carr knows. He also knows that he cannot even force those he regulates to disseminate what he wants. But those who receive Carr’s correspondence understand that he does not speak to them as an independent regulator but as one of Trump’s henchmen. It is not a question of knowing if they have violated the regulations he quotes (if he even disturbs), it is a question of knowing if they kiss the ring quite categorically with the taste of his boss.

The Trump administration abused its powers to shake Paramount and get a foot in the CBS editorial room. This does not mean that CBS will never criticize Trump again – it would be too obvious. But its owners know that they could be slapped if it goes too far. This is enough to tame a guard dog – in particular that of a business which prioritizes more lucrative efforts than the defense of the first amendment.

The new CBS may not be quite state media, but it will certainly be media supervised by the state. Congratulations to Weinstein for the title, but the real mediator of the bias is Donald Trump.