Trump FCC Installs Babysitter At CBS To Ensure The Network Kisses King Donald’s Ass
from the nannystate-bullshit dept
With the cowards at CBS/Paramount having paid their $16 million bribe, Trump’s FCC was quick to rubber-stamp its approval to the company’s $8 billion merger with Skydance (owned by Trump’s billionaire friends in the Ellison family). Part of that deal involves installing a Trump babysitter to ensure what’s left of the media giant’s journalism division is appropriately deferential to our mad baby idiot king.
The CBS/Paramount/Skydance merger formally closed last Thursday, and the new “bias monitor” is presumably now hard at work ensuring the new CBS news division is appropriately feckless. The FCC’s lone Dem commissioner, Anna Gomez, was quick to (correctly) call the appointment of a government-appointed truth-nanny a “betrayal” of journalistic independence and the public trust:
It’s grotesque, ironic, dangerous, and foreboding that the authoritarian GOP has installed a “truth monitor” at a major media network, especially after spending decades whining about policies like the long-deceased Fairness Doctrine and even longer pretending to have read Orwell’s 1984.
But it’s also hugely problematic that in just 7 months the FCC has been converted from government consumer protection agency into a 24/7 Donald Trump earlobe nibbler and speech police (under the pretense of protecting free speech and “fighting media bias,” no less). No longer does the FCC even try to competently regulate media and telecom giants to protect markets or consumers; its entire function now is to bully companies that aren’t appropriately sexist, racist, or feckless enough for Donald’s liking.
All of that said, this monitor shouldn’t really have much of a job, assuming the incompetent administration ever gets around to actually appointing a full-time staffer in the first place.
The Ellison family broadly supports Trump, and it’s inevitable that whatever’s left of journalism at the new CBS reflects that, despite a lot of the usual, empty rhetoric about a firewall between ownership and editorial. CBS was already becoming more friendly to authoritarians before the merger; it’s inevitable this just gets worse under Trump-friendly ownership and reflects a broader institutional media failure.
I think there’s two paths for the new CBS.
In one, the Ellison family finds a way to competently combine TikTok, Bari Weiss’ Free Press, and CBS to create a modern right wing tech-savvy propaganda empire that rivals News Corporation. There’s some signs that’s already underway. This “news” and propaganda would be a money pit funded by the infotainment arm of the company (see: the $7.7 billion acquisition of MMA rights).
But there’s another path in which all the debt from this acquisition spree results in the usual waves of layoffs and cost cutting and quality erosion that drives potential viewers to the exits. A path in which Larry Ellison’s nepo baby son struggles to adapt to changing markets, over-estimates the public’s thirst for Bari-Weiss style authoritarian-apologist dog shit, and, like other recent disastrous media gambits (the Time Warner Discovery mess), drives the entire operation straight into the ocean.
Either way the FCC’s new “bias monitor” is dangerous extremism, but it’s going to be so much worse if the Ellison family authoritarian coddling and appeasement gambit is actually financially successful.
Filed Under: bias monitor, cbs, donald trump, fcc, free speech, larry ellison, media, propaganda
Companies: cbs, paramount, skydance
Comments on “Trump FCC Installs Babysitter At CBS To Ensure The Network Kisses King Donald’s Ass”
And here it is, the Ministry of Truth, something that “conservatives” claimed the Democrats wanted to create. Lets see the excuses flow defending this abomination claiming this is just a way to fix anti-conservative bias in the media.
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As they say, every accusation is an admission.
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First Amendment anybody? It is not the government’s business to fix even the most egregious biases in the media.
If it were, we wouldn’t be where we are now. We are not in a good place, agreed, but breaking our legs is not the solution.
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Every accusation is an admission.
I really want to see the next Democratic president (if we have one) do this exact same thing, or worse, to Fox.
There’s already signs the Democrats are willing to go low now (Newsom).
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Rapid Response
I’m reminded of the epic Dan Rather meltdown from back in the day. CBS lost a ton of credibility, particularly because of how swiftly the deception was uncovered. It was brutal, and folks lost their jobs because they got caught.
A bias monitor isn’t going to nitpick who gets criticized on the nightly news. The real threat is that more malfeasance will get promptly exposed, thereby rendering it ineffective at swaying public opinion.
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And here he is, setting up strawmen, using whataboutism’s and making distractions as an excuse. Isn’t funny that he says that a bias monitor isn’t going to nitpick when it’s the whole point with a bias monitor, only someone who is stupid as a rock would offer up that argument or someone who are so biased they have to constantly lie to avoid the factual truth.
Koby, this is the Ministry of Truth you have decried so much and yet you are totally okay with it when so called Republicans creates one. You are a liar and a fascist cheerleader.
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At this point, we’d all be better off if Mike gave Koby the same treatment given to Hyman Rosen’s account and directed all of Koby’s posts to the spamfilter by default.
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A curated echo chamber does not prepare you for real life. You don’t need to converse with Koby, but you do need to converse with your relatives, neighbors, and friends. And being prepared for some of the stuff you’ll be hearing there might help you not cutting off your relations, something that does not work in the long term when you are supposed to be living in one country.
Sure, you could go read the comment section at OAN. But it is much more unsavory and does not prepare you for dealing with people who are not completely gone beyond the pale.
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If they’re repeating the same kind of Nazi-adjacent MAGA garbage as Koby? No. No, I do not.
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I’ve already disowned all my conservative family and friends. I live in a diverse neighborhood. Cons are a rarity here.
I actually do not have to engage with conservative garbage.
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True, so why are you echoing Grok?
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The replies he gets are quite entertaining.
Why do you wish to have him censored?
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Moderation isn’t censorship—it’s someone being told “we don’t do that here” and, if necessary, being shown the door. Koby has long since overstayed his welcome, and although I don’t run this site, I’d very much prefer if the people who do run it would stop humoring the asshole and start sending his posts to the Shadow Realm as a message.
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So you want an echo chamber.
Something you don’t want to see is moderating, something someone else doesn’t want to see but you might is censorship. Like the games from last week
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Removing comments from known long-term trolls is not “want[ing] an echo chamber”. That besides, this site isn’t even an echo chamber—because that would imply the regular commenters who aren’t trolls always agree with one another and only ever bounce the same ideas and the same opinions off one another. You know where that kind of shit actually happens? It happens in conservative forums and conservative-heavy social media sites.
The sites you think of as “echo chambers” are, far more often than not, carefully curated online spaces. If you wouldn’t let some rando asshole come into your home and literally shit where they please without some sort of response beyond meekly telling them “hey, stop that”, for what reason should Techdirt let some rando asshole come into these comments section and metaphorically shit where they please without telling them to fuck off?
No. No, it is not.
Plenty of people don’t want to look at hardcore pornography. Their desire to avoid seeing it isn’t censorship any more than my desire to not watch Fox News is censorship of Fox News. A lack of attention is not inherently censorship—and neither is first-party moderation of third-party content, unless you want to seriously argue that a newspaper has an obligation to print every letter to the editor that said newspaper receives. If you do want to make that argument, go right ahead, but know that nobody who has done so here has ever done it in a way that doesn’t get that paper-thin argument ripped to shreds.
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stupid as a rocky
FTFY
you’re welcome
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Can’t you do better or is that the limit of your wittiness?
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FTFY. YW.
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Agreed!
It’s actually the reason I chose it. Glad to see some of you coming around
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Wow. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a straight up admission of guilt not disguised as an acusation.
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Whatabout-ism is when you’re willing to do something that your political opponents have previously done. In this case, we’re talking only one network. For a long time Dan Rather was the face of CBS news. So while I think whatabout-ism is fair play, you need to check your definitions. Just because you heard of a buzzword doesn’t make it applicable.
Also, a monitor isn’t going to shut down anyone’s speech at CBS. The monitor is just going to give us details about how they arrived at their conclusions. In the Dan Rather Killian memo scandal, the involvement of Bill Burkett and the documents’ phony origins would have been promptly uncovered, and not simply the typeface impossibility.
The Ministry of Truth, on the other hand, is a censorship system. It’s pretty much only a left wing thing nowadays, since we would rather let you post your crazy stuff and then make fun of you. During the heyday of Libs of TikTok, they didn’t censor the libs, only the repost.
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No, it’s not. Whatabout-ism is when you try to deflect criticism by coming up with counter-accusations or trying to change the subject. To wit, your bringing up a black spot in CBS’ history as if to say “But what about this bad thing where a bias monitor would have been useful??”. It’s a bullshit tactic, not a valid argument.
Well, if you say that, it’s definitely going to happen, because that’s how the Trump admin operates.
Jesus fucking christ, Koward…
You would’ve fit right in in The Party.
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Bullshit. Your guy fired a statistician for unflattering numbers.
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Bullshit. We all watched your guy try to intimidate a journalist into pretending an obvious Photoshop was a real tattoo.
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So it’s not up to the people to decide what to believe?
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Hey Koby, can you answer a simple question: if the Biden FCC had required that Fox News install a “bias monitor” in order to have a merger approved, how quickly would you be in our comments screaming about how much an attack on free speech and basic rights this was?
My guess is within 30 seconds.
The thing about you that is so disgusting is that you’re such a lazy fuck you don’t even bother to hide that “it’s okay when the GOP does it” is your only guiding principle. It’s pathetic that you live your life that way.
The first path: most likely.
The second path: Also most likely.
Honestly, I think you forget that Ellison did donate to Biden: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/16/biden-fund-gets-money-from-son-of-gop-donor-larry-ellison.html
But, we’ll see where it goes.
Why call it a “bias monitor” or “truth arbiter”? There’s a good, punchy term already available: zampolit (Russian: “political officer”).
I’m sure it’s just coincidence that this “bias monitor”/”truth arbiter” will serve the same purpose as the zampoliti of the Soviet armed forces did.
I’m sure the new Fox news, I mean CBS, will be terrific and unbiased.
So here’s a proposition – Once the bias monitor gets there, have CBS just go crazy on the bias to the right. I mean, make Fox, NewsMax, and OAN look positively ‘leftist’ by comparison. Then see what the ‘bias monitor’ does. If they’re really trying to combat media bias, they should speak up, right?
Oh the Irony
Remember when Elon Musk cried about his false accusations against the Biden Administration for somehow pressuring Twitter to suppress a story?
Now the Trump Admin has a paid position to do that for CBS.
But consent decrees for LEOs are too much. This unlawfulness is perfectly fine tho’.
Will the Comedy “news” count too?
The only news I get from Paramount+ is Daily Show and South Park