This, from the New York Times, is depressing in its predictability:
When Donald J. Trump sued CBS for $10 billion days before the 2024 election, accusing the company of deceptively editing a “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, many legal experts dismissed the litigation as a far-fetched attempt to punish an out-of-favor news outlet.
Now Mr. Trump is back in the White House, and many executives at CBS’s parent company, Paramount, believe that settling the lawsuit would increase the odds that the Trump administration does not block or delay their planned multibillion-dollar merger with another company, according to several people with knowledge of the matter.
Settlement discussions between representatives of Paramount and Mr. Trump are now underway, according to three people with knowledge of the talks. There is no assurance, though, that they will result in a deal, and it is unclear what the terms of any such deal might include.
Shari Redstone, Paramount’s controlling shareholder, strongly supports the effort to settle, according to two people with knowledge of her thinking. Ms. Redstone stands to clear billions of dollars on the sale of Paramount, the media empire founded by her father Sumner Redstone, in a deal with Skydance, an entertainment company backed by the billionaire Larry Ellison and run by his son David.
As a reminder: Trump sued CBS because the network ran two different answers that Harris gave on foreign policy on two of its different shows. He insisted that they had deceptively edited the interview to make Harris look better in the answer that ran on the primetime edition of “60 Minutes” because they wanted her to win the election.
At the time, CBS made clear nothing of the sort had happened. “The interview was not doctored,” a CBS spokeswoman said — dismissing Trump’s claim as “completely without merit.”
And yet, here we are.
Why? Money. I give you:
Now Mr. Trump is back in the White House, and many executives at CBS’s parent company, Paramount, believe that settling the lawsuit would increase the odds that the Trump administration does not block or delay their planned multibillion-dollar merger with another company, according to several people with knowledge of the matter.
Right.
CBS is owned by Paramount. Paramount is trying to merge with Skydance Media. The big corporate bosses at Paramount will get even richer if the merger goes through. So, why piss off Trump, who could make the merger harder to happen?
It’s the exact same logic that led Disney to settle a lawsuit brought by Trump alleging that George Stephanopoulos had defamed him in talking about his interactions with E. Jean Carroll.
Disney didn’t make that settlement decision based on the journalistic or even legal merit of Trump’s claims. They did it because they didn’t want to antagonize the soon-to-be president, who has shown himself to be decidedly vengeful.
And it’s the same reason billionaire media owners Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong blocked their editorial boards from endorsing Harris over Trump in the 2024 election.
The message is as clear as day: The legacy media, owned by massive corporate conglomerates and billionaires, is focused on one thing: Money.
Which means that everything else — including the journalism — takes a back seat.
If you ever needed a reason (or reasons) to support independent media creators like me, the Paramount news (and the Disney news and the Bezos news….) is it. Legacy media isn’t going to put journalism first. I will. Always.
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