The Trump FCC’s CBS ‘Truth Nanny’ Is Unsurprisingly A Trump Lackey Who Has No Idea How Journalism Works
from the flimsy-veneer-of-respectability dept
You might recall that one of the conditions of the FCC’s approval of The Ellison family’s $8 billion acquisition of CBS was that the agency would install a “ombudsman” at the network to ensure CBS journalism was appropriately feckless and deferential to our mad, idiot king.
This was particularly ironic given decades of whining by Republicans about stuff like the “fairness doctrine,” and other short-lived government attempts to set acceptable contours for journalistic speech. But it probably also wasn’t necessary: there’s every indication that CBS under the Ellison “leadership” is going to be repurposed by folks like Bari Weiss to be right wing propaganda.
After some delays, CBS recently hired Kenneth Weinstein to be the “ombudsman.” Weinstein had been the head of the faux-academic right wing Hudson Institute “think tank,” and has absolutely no experience in journalism whatsoever. He’ll report to Paramount President Jeff Shell, who was fired by Comcast back in 2023 for sexual harassment:
“Mr. Weinstein, who has no experience overseeing news coverage, was an unexpected choice for the role. He will report to Jeff Shell, the new president of CBS’s parent company, Paramount, which recently merged with the Hollywood studio Skydance.”
Of course Weinstein isn’t supposed to have any expertise in journalism. His expertise is bullshit and the flimsy veneer of intellectual credibility; pretending that the installation of a truth nanny at CBS has anything to do with journalism, and isn’t just a flimsy ploy by authoritarians to trample free speech and the First Amendment under the pretense that they just really care a whole lot about free speech.
To be clear, CBS, even before the Ellison acquisition, had already been shifting its editorial window rightward to please authoritarians. Now under the Ellison family — and the purported looming leadership of right wing propagandist Bari Weiss — there’s absolutely every indication they’re building another unabashed right wing propaganda mill that’s probably going to be worse than Fox News.
The CBS government nanny exists to ensure that no actual journalists remaining at CBS News don’t get any crazy ideas and try to do actual journalism. Jedd Legum at Popular Information dissected Weinstein’s past online comments and found him to be an unsurprising Trump apologist. Like Bari Weiss, Weinstein’s there, in part, to ensure CBS goes soft on coverage of Netanyahu’s ongoing industrialized slaughter of toddlers.
Again though, I suspect Weinstein won’t have much actual work to do; CBS ownership and management are clearly, unabashedly pro-Trump. Weinstein’s only real function will be to provide a flimsy veneer of legitimacy to the firing of any employees who try to actually do journalism critical of the duo. And because he has no actual legitimacy, I suspect he won’t even do that well.
Repurposing CBS for use as right wing information warfare machine is one part of a much broader, pathetic failure by major media institutions in response to authoritarianism, which, this week, also involved the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post firing its last black female columnist simply for quoting Charlie Kirk’s claims that black females are inferior beings.
Countless mainstream media outlets, like the LA Times, CNN, NYT, and ABC (who paid Trump and gave in to his admin’s threats over Jimmy Kimmel) have met the moment with utter fecklessness. It’s been so pathetic it almost feels satirical. (As an aside, people of ethics should stop funding these outlets and give their money to reputable, independent journalists).
Wealthy, (usually right wing) media owners like tax cuts, mindless deregulation, and the government rubber stamping of shitty mergers. Despite decades of furrowed-brow protestations that this doesn’t impact U.S. journalism or editorial independence, you can very clearly see with your own eyes how, when push comes to shove, that’s usually an obvious lie.
Consolidated corporate media was always going to fail us in precisely this way at the worst possible time. Media academics spent more than fifty years warning us. Advice that American media policymakers (across both sides of the aisle) ignored every single step of the way.
Filed Under: brendan carr, disinformation, fcc, first amendment, free speech, journalism, kenneth weinstein, media, news, propaganda, truth
Companies: cbs, paramount, skydance
Comments on “The Trump FCC’s CBS ‘Truth Nanny’ Is Unsurprisingly A Trump Lackey Who Has No Idea How Journalism Works”
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
You have to be short-bus “special” to think CBS or any other major media company (besides FOXNews) is “right leaning”.
Re:
They are becoming that. You would have to be on the short short bus to not be able to read.
Re:
Are you completely insane?
Re:
You might think that if you’ve been steeped in the “main stream media is radical leftist” propaganda simply because they didn’t suggest murdering homeless people for sport so they must all be blue haired transgender atheists. The main stream media has always been corporate and thus not leftist at all. Questioning Trump in the slightest of manners while still not speaking truth to power doesn’t make one a leftist. And corporate power switches hands, so beyond already having been feckless profiteering influence peddlers, they are getting merged and bought out by increasingly right wing owners, so the illusion is just shattering faster. You won’t remember this comment in a few years when you find yourself nodding your head to whatever right wing bullshit some pundit is riffing on these channels and we’ll have always been at war with East Asia.
Re:
They’re right leaning. Just not insane far right that’s come to define the GOP.
It’s interesting to see a country devolving into a dictatorship in real time, sad but interesting. We are seeing the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda being reenacted in real time answering the often asked questions of “How the heck Germans allowed this to happen?”. Sure there are other dictatorships around the world all the time but the US is the most televised case ever. Being in a very important position economically and culturally speaking amplifies the information coming out from those who are not swallowing this shit and are resisting. I’m fairly sure Germany had people who fought against it and lost. I hope the good USians don’t.
Re:
When dissent is stifled and pulled from the airwaves or the modern equivalent, it does not grow and organize into a countermovement. Humans are tribe people. Directions change by a concerted change of mind. Control the means of communication and the allowed messages, and the “concerted” part goes out the window.
Everyone will fall in line because that is what one sees everyone else doing, and that is what is one is allowed to see everyone else doing, and to show everyone else.
In wartime Germany, it was prohibited to listen to “enemy radio”. This is what the U.S. is right now undertaking.
Re:
It’s already happened in Hungary and Turkey. UK had a 100k+ white men’s March complete with Elon Musk forecasting violence.
It’s not just American democracy the elite are dismantling. The US is just ahead of the curve because we were already a hyper-capitalist hellscape.
Re:
If we do win against Trump & his allies, and sane governance is restored, we’re going to have people like Stephen Stone barging in and yelling when that new government tries to make changes and join other countries at the Big Kids Table of Democracy to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.
So tell me again about how the USA is a democracy. I’ve been warning you people for years, decades, about how the USA is a fascist totalitarian dictatorship. You just kept shutting me down and silencing me. The crows have come home to roost.
In the US, no one is forced to vote and elections are not a foregone conclusion except by the actions of the electorate. Do you need that in simpler words, Chinese agent?
Re: Many elections in the USA are indeed a foregone conclusion
Read any of the recent news articles about partisan gerrymandering and you’ll see that many elections in the USA are in fact a foregone conclusion, regardless of the actions of the electorate.
“We are entitled to five more seats” in Texas, according to Donald Trump, and those currently in power take that as their marching orders.
Re:
That is not true. Elections are rigged in many ways now
Plenty of opportunities for actual journalists
And the Ministry of Truth ensures that yet another major ‘news’ outlet is utterly worthless as anything more than regime propaganda.
I’ll give them this at least, they’re providing excellent motivation for people to move to independent news outlets that actually will engage in journalism, so there’s at least a slight silver lining in the major outlets showing just how worthless they are for getting accurate information.
Re:
It’s disappointing so many of them are moving to Substack.
They picked a president with a hilarious name for this.