When our Republic has been in danger, from demagoguery and a paranoid President, reporters for CBS News and the Washington Post have stood out by standing up for the First Amendment. But these days, the stature of both news organizations would allow them to hide only in a field of stubble.
CBS, once the Tiffany of networks, is terminating Stephen Colbert, who poked fun at our prima donna President. CBS recently paid out $16 million to settle a bogus Trump lawsuit. The suit was over how 60 Minutes supposedly edited an interview last year with Trump ‘s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
The Post fired 11-year columnist Karen Attiah, who committed the sin of pointing to extreme positions taken by slain right wing influencer Charlie Kirk, such as opposing landmark civil rights legislation of the 1960s. With a new life and a new wife, Post owner Jeff Bezos has taken to hobnobbing with Trump, who has decried our press as “the enemy of the people.” Bezos is recognizing that with this POTUS, flattery will get you somewhere. Trump has lately taken to saying that criticism of him is “illegal” and “no longer free speech.”
What a world of difference from a half-century ago when The Post faced down the Nixon Administration. Recall campaign manager John Mitchell’s threat to The Post’s then-owner Katharine Graham, saying if the paper ran one Woodward/Bernstein investigative piece: “Katy Graham is going to get her tit caught in a big fat ringer if that’s published.”
The Post persisted, for some time alone, in pursuing the Watergate story. Its legendary cartoonist Herblock depicted. Nixon piling up furniture in the Oval Office and shouting: “Come and get me copper.”
Nowadays, we have Bezos visiting the White House and sitting prominently on the platform as the 47th President was sworn in. Bezos has directed the opinion page focus exclusively on “free enterprise” and personal liberty. Out the door went editorial page editor David Shipley.
Similarly, CBS’ famed commentator Edward R. Murrow — the former Egbert R. Murrow of Blanchard, Washington — decried the Red-baiting smears of Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Murrow was able to power through network timidity with broadcasts that helped bring down Tailgunner Joe.
Network correspondents, dubbed “the Murrow Boys,” made the network look good. And they made enemies. Daniel Schorr was stalked by the FBI and was startled, reading Nixon’s “Enemies List” on the air, to find his own name on it. When Schorr broke details of a not-yet-released House report, detailing Agency misconduct, CIA Director Richard Helms called him “killer Schorr.”
CBS’ recent $16 million “settlement” with Trump, which includes paying his legal fees, has caused fury in the news division, where a stench of payoff is in the air. Paramount, CBS’ owner, has been purchased by Skydance, having needed Federal Communications Commission approval to use public airwaves for the 27 Skydance stations. The FCC is chaired by Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee.
Carr has been in the news of late as an attack dog, using his position to investigate, intimidate, and pressure any in the media who criticize Trump or the MAGA movement. A frequent presence on social media and Fox News, he urged Congress to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
It was Carr who first recommended that ABC suspend Jimmy Kimmel following the late night comic’s comments on the Kirk assassination. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” he said. Within hours, Kimmel was suspended “indefinitely” by the network. Carr has made clear what he means by the “hard way,” saying: “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
The threat was made even more explicit by Trump, talking to reporters on Air Force One. “They’re giving me bad press,” said POTUS. “They’re getting a license. I think maybe their license should be taken away.” He’s showing customary ignorance of federal law. Stations are licensed not networks. But networks do deals that require federal approval. The implicit coercion is meant to be clear.
The most powerful blowback — amazingly — has come from far-right Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who said, “I gotta say that is right out of ‘Goodfellas.’ That’s right out of a Mafioso coming into a bar and saying, ‘Nice place you have here. It would be a shame if something happened to it.’”
And Sen. Maria Cantwell, ranking Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee, commented: “Brendan Carr does not have the authority to police speech that he or the President doesn’t like. Especially when there are pending mergers with the affected parties in front of the FCC.”
Condemnation of the Kirk shooting has come from across the political spectrum. Now Trump is using a high profile shooting, as Kimmel pointed out, to suppress dissent. The assassination has become, for the political right, an American version of the Reichstag fire, the mysterious 1933 Berlin blaze deployed to give Hitler and the Nazis unlimited ruling powers.
The broadcast media have let themselves be intimidated. The Post, under a new publisher hailing from the Murdoch media empire, appears to have axed columnist Attiah. She took to her Substack page to describe circumstances: “I did my journalistic duty, reminding people of President Trump’s partisan rushes to judgment, no suspect or motive has been identified in the killing of Charlie Kirk — exercising restraint even as I condemned hatred and violence.”
Unrestrained hatred is in Trump’s blood and vengeance motivates him. Authoritarian rule involves intimidation, cutting off access, frowning on certain phrases, blackballing certain journalists. It is the stuff of enemies lists and labeling reporters as “enemies of the people.” It discourages criticism and exposure of corruption.
As Edward Murrow pointed out on his first McCarthy broadcast more than 70 years ago, dissent is not disloyalty. Only a would-be authoritarian would think otherwise.
At present, however, our nation’s corporate media appears cowed and coerced. It need not be so. The public rallied to support of Murrow. Seven decades later, George Clooney is making a movie about Murrow. Resistance to American authoritarianism will have to come from the bottom up.
This article also appears in the blog, Cascadia Advocate.
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