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    I chaired the FCC. The 60 Minutes settlement shows Trump has weaponized the agency | Tom Wheeler

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    It is time to unfurl the “Mission Accomplished” banner at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Paramount Global, the parent of CBS Television, has agreed to pay $16m to settle a lawsuit brought by Donald Trump over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. Presumably, the FCC can now cease its slow-walking of the Paramount-Skydance Media merger.Just two days after the president took office, the agency’s new chair, Brendan Carr, inserted the FCC into the issues in the Trump lawsuit that alleged “news distortion”. As the New York Post headlined: “Trump’s FCC pick Brendan Carr says ‘60 Minutes’ editing scandal could affect Paramount-Skydance merger review.”That lawsuit was filed in the final week of the 2024 presidential campaign under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, a statute historically used against false advertising. The case was filed in a single-judge federal district court that one legal publication characterized as “a favored jurisdiction for conservative legal causes and plaintiffs”. CBS characterized the case as “without merit”.The 60 Minutes broadcast aired in October; the day before, a different excerpt had appeared on Face the Nation. Soon after, the Center for American Rights – a group that describes itself as “a public interest law firm dedicated to protecting Americans’ most fundamental constitutional rights” – filed a complaint at the FCC alleging CBS had engaged in “significant and substantial news alteration”. The complaint was dismissed as seeking “to weaponize the licensing authority of the FCC in a way that is fundamentally at odds with the First Amendment”. Immediately upon becoming the FCC chair, Carr reversed that decision and ordered a formal proceeding on the matter (but let stand the dismissal of a complaint against a local Fox station over its 2020 election coverage).The election of Trump and the installation of a Trump-appointed FCC chair transformed the Paramount/CBS merger from a review of the public interest merits of the transfer of broadcast licenses into a broader question that included the 60 Minutes editing. Carr told an interviewer: “I’m pretty confident that the news distortion complaint over the 60 Minutes transcript is something that is likely to arise in the context of the FCC review of that transaction.”The formal paperwork for FCC approval of the license transfers was submitted 10 months ago, on 6 September 2024. Now that the lawsuit has been settled, it will be interesting to see how quickly the FCC acts.The CBS case is just one example of the tactical leverage the Trump FCC regularly exerts over those it regulates. Carr, who wrote the FCC chapter in the “Project 2025” Maga blueprint, has not been shy about using this authority to achieve such political goals.Even before formally assuming the FCC chair position, Carr began exercising chair-like authority to advance the Maga agenda. This began with a letter to the CEOs of Alphabet (Google and YouTube), Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Microsoft and Apple alleging: “you participated in a censorship cartel … [that is] an affront to Americans’ constitutional freedoms and must be completely dismantled.” Going beyond traditional FCC authority, he threatened: “As you know, Big Tech’s prized liability shield, Section 230, is codified in the Communications Act, which the FCC administers.” Carr suggested he might investigate whether those editorial decisions were made in good faith.Recently, Carr conditioned the approval of Verizon’s acquisition of Frontier Communications on Verizon agreeing to drop its corporate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies. Continuing his anti-diversity efforts, he launched an investigation into Comcast Corporation because it promotes DEI as “a core value of our business”.In his pre-FCC chair days, Carr championed press freedom. In a 2021 statement, he wrote: “A newsroom’s decision about what stories to cover and how to frame them should be beyond the reach of any government official.” Once he became Trump’s FCC chair, however, he not only picked up on the 60 Minutes matter, but also launched an investigation into the public broadcasters NPR and PBS “regarding the airing of … programming across your broadcast member stations”.The FCC’s regulatory authority directly covers about one-sixth of the American economy while also affecting the other five-sixths that rely on the nation’s communications networks. What was once an independent, policy-based agency has been transformed into a performance-based agency, using any leverage it can discover or invent to further the Trump Maga message.

    Tom Wheeler was the chair of the Federal Communications Commission from 2013 to 2017 More

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      Former CBS anchor slams Paramount settlement with Trump: ‘It was a sellout’

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      A former CBS News anchor and 60 minutes correspondent, Dan Rather, has blasted the $16m settlement between Paramount, the parent company of CBS News, and Donald Trump, calling it a “sad day for journalism”.“It’s a sad day for 60 Minutes and CBS News,” Rather, a veteran journalist who was a CBS News anchor for over 20 years, told Variety in an interview published on Wednesday. “I hope people will read the details of this and understand what it was. It was distortion by the president and a kneeling down and saying, ‘yes, sir,’ by billionaire corporate owners.”Last November, Trump sued CBS News, claiming that the network’s interview with the Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, had been doctored to portray her in a favorable light – which he alleged amounted to “election interference”.Many legal experts had widely dismissed the lawsuit as “meritless” and unlikely to hold up under the first amendment, but on Wednesday Paramount announced that it had agreed to pay Trump $16m to settle the case over the interview that was broadcast on the CBS News program 60 Minutes.The settlement comes as Paramount is preparing for a $8bn merger with Skydance Media, which requires approval from the US Federal Communications Commission. Paramount has said that the lawsuit is separate from the company’s merger.A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said in a statement to the Guardian that “With this record settlement, President Donald J. Trump delivers another win for the American people as he, once again, holds the Fake News media accountable for their wrongdoing and deceit.“CBS and Paramount Global realized the strength of this historic case and had no choice but to settle,” the spokesperson added.According to Wednesday’s announcement, the settlement funds will not be paid to Trump directly, but instead would be allocated to Trump’s future presidential library. The settlement did not include an apology.Rather told Variety on Wednesday that in his opinion “you settle a lawsuit when you’ve done something wrong” and “60 minutes did nothing wrong, it followed accepted journalistic practices”.“Lawyers almost unanimously said the case wouldn’t stand up in court,” he said.Ultimately though, Rather said he was disappointed but not surprised by the settlement.“Big billionaire businesspeople make decisions about money,” he said. “We could always hope that they will make an exception when it comes to freedom of the press, but it wasn’t to be.“Trump knew if he put the pressure on and threatened and just held that they would fold, because there’s too much money on the table,” Rather said. “Trump is now forcing a whole news organization to pay millions of dollars for doing something protected by the constitution – which is, of course, free and independent reporting. Now, you take today’s sellout. And that’s what it was: It was a sellout to extortion by the president. Who can now say where all this ends?”He continued: “It has to do with not just journalism, but more importantly, with the country as a whole. What kind of country we’re going to have, what kind of country we’re going to be. If major news organizations continue to kneel before power and stop trying to hold the powerful accountable, then we all lose.”In his more than 60 years in journalism, Rather told Variety he had never seen the profession face the kind of challenges as those it faces today.“Journalism has had its trials and tribulations before, and it takes courage to just soldier on,” Rather said. “Keep trying, keep fighting. It takes guts to do that. And I know the people at CBS News, and particularly those at 60 Minutes, they’ll do their dead level best under these circumstances. But the question is what [is] this development and the message it sends to us. And that’s what I’m trying to concentrate on.” More

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      Win a game show, become a US citizen? We’ve entered the realm of the truly depraved | Dave Schilling

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      I guess Republicans really love game shows. Just a few days after Fox aired its “isn’t Trump wild” guessing game, What Did I Miss, it was revealed that the TV producer Rob Worsoff has pitched the United States Department of Homeland Security on a series premise he calls The American, which would give immigrants a chance to compete in a series of challenges for the prize of US citizenship. The actual process of winning citizenship is obviously too boring to film. Filling out an N-400 form? Snore. A written exam? I’d rather watch a dog eat grass. Skip all that and give us an obstacle course instead.People have stupid ideas all the time. My child thought it would be fun to squeeze lemon juice in his hot chocolate. He took one sip, almost barfed on the table, then begged me to order him another, lemon-less beverage. Stupid ideas are great, because most of them are harmless. “Oh, I ate a large bug off the ground. Whoops.” The only stupid ideas that are a problem are the ones where the actual government considers cosigning them. The DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin was asked by Time magazine what the status of Worsoff’s pitch was and responded via email that it “has not received approval or rejection by staff”.Gotta really think this one through, I guess. Something like this must be thoroughly vetted by serious people. How cruel is this one, exactly? How desirable is the bloodthirsty demo for advertisers these days? Can we sell a presenting sponsorship? And is this for streaming or broadcast? Can we get Chris Hardwick to host? These are all vital questions to consider before making a decision in show business.Such an idea would be eye-rollingly low-class in normal times, but as the Trump administration attempts to ramp up deportations and to do away with the constitutional right of citizenship by birth (and federal courts bravely fight back), this dumb concept travels at warp speed to the dimension of the truly depraved. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services website takes great pains to describe the process of becoming an American as solemn and full of responsibility. Step 10 of the site’s “10 Steps to Naturalization” is “Understanding U.S. Citizenship”. It states: “Citizenship is the common thread that connects all Americans. Check out this list of some of the most important rights and responsibilities that all citizens – both Americans by birth and by choice – should exercise, honor, and respect.”Yes, but what if you had to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar first?To make his pitch even more appealing to the bigwigs in Washington, Worsoff suggested a few choice ideas for challenges that correspond to the most stereotypical aspects of life in America’s 50 states. A pizza-making contest for New York, a rocket-launching challenge for Florida, and a “gold rush challenge” for California. Nothing says “vital skills for living in 2025” like panning for gold in a pair of tattered Levi’s 501s. Perhaps Levi’s will sponsor the segment. Gosh, this thing pays for itself.But why stop there? Maybe a Breaking Bad-themed meth-making challenge for New Mexico. Polygamy challenge for Utah? How efficiently can you operate a turn-of-the-20th-century steel mill in Pennsylvania? Can you safely land a plane at Newark airport? For Washington state, you just have to answer trivia questions about Seattle inaccuracies in the sitcom Frasier. The possibilities for inanity are significant.In order to advance to the next round of this bottomless pit of human misery, contestants would be subjected to a vote, which Worsoff described as “like a presidential election”. Oh, how fun. Can you contest the results of that vote, too? Worsoff said in an CNN interview that his idea is “not like the Hunger Games”. Mostly because the costume budget isn’t as high.The Democratic opposition in Congress has, naturally, lined up to publicly condemn such a grotesque notion. The New York congressman Jerry Nadler said on X (formerly known as a useful platform for conversation) that “human lives are not game show props.”A nice sentiment, but I must be the bearer of bad news. Human lives have been game show props since the invention of the form. In 2005, Fox (why is it always Fox?) aired a reality show called Who’s Your Daddy, where a woman had to guess which of eight men was her real father. If she guessed correctly, she’d win both an awkward conversation and $100,000. Presumably the cash prize would go directly to her therapy bills. Bravo’s Real Housewives franchise, while not a game show (the real winners are the viewers, I suppose) is a reality universe where women frequently abuse alcohol to the detriment of their own lives and the lives of others around them. If human lives are not props in these shows, are they even entertaining to the masses?An idea like The American, then, is the natural extension of the genre, taking someone’s desperation, fear, and overwhelming desire and squeezing all the drama possible out of it. Worsoff told CNN that he had pitched this idea to previous Democratic administrations, but weirdly, we never heard about it back then. It’s only now that such a concept feels enough in line with the zeitgeist of immigration paranoia that Worsoff felt emboldened to speak freely about it.He said: “I’m putting a face to immigration. This is a great celebration of America.” Yes, it is a celebration of America. Specifically our worst impulses: the desire to make everything a game and revel in the bread-and-circuses spectacle of life and death, but to cloak it in nobility and charity. Worsoff continued: “I’m very fortunate and lucky and honored to be an American. And I want everybody to understand the process.”At no point did I think that a pizza-making contest was part of the process.

      Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist More

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      ‘Fight back’: journalist taking Trump administration to court calls for media to resist attacks

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      The lead plaintiff in a lawsuit fighting Donald Trump’s order to dismantle Voice of America has said the media has to resist as the administration becomes increasingly aggressive against the press.“I never in a million years thought I would have to fight for freedom of the press in the United States of America. And yet here we are,” says Patsy Widakuswara, the White House bureau chief for the broadcasting network. “As journalism is under attack, it feels empowering to fight back. We need more people to resist and fight back.”Kicked out of press conferences on multiple continents for asking pointed questions, Widakuswara is not the type to balk at challenging powerful leaders. In her three decades as a journalist those instincts have served her well, and perhaps at no better time than now.The White House reporter is now leading the charge to save VOA, which the US president has described as “anti-Trump” and “radical”. In March, Trump signed an executive order that effectively cut off its funding via its parent company, the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM).Launched in 1942, initially to counter Nazi propaganda, VOA is a federally funded international broadcasting network, produced in dozens of languages that reach about 350 million people around the globe.View image in fullscreenFor decades it has been seen as a form of soft power, encapsulating the values of liberal America. But after Trump’s order its operations have been suspended, with virtually all of VOA’s staff of 1,300 placed on immediate administrative leave and about 600 contractors terminated.The lawsuit filed by Widakuswara and several of her colleagues follows lawsuits the Trump administration has taken out against ABC News and CBS’s 60 Minutes in the US, and attempts to expel some press from the White House. Those backing the case argue that VOA has for decades provided an important source of objective information, especially in illiberal environments.“These are not just women in Afghanistan or farmers in Africa,” said Widakuswara of VOA’s audience. “They’re also activists in Russia and decision makers all around the world who are also facing the onslaught of disinformation and propaganda from Russia, Iran, China, and extremist organisations like [Islamic State] and al-Qaida.”At home having a quiet Saturday when she received the email about VOA’s demise, Widakuswara says to do nothing was inconceivable. In a matter of days she had rallied a team to fight against it, and by Friday morning had filed a lawsuit.“It’s just the way I’m wired,” she says over the phone from Washington. “Congress gave us a mandate to tell America’s story to the world through factual, balanced and comprehensive reporting. If they want to change the size, structure or function of VOA, they can’t just shut us down. They must go through Congress. That’s the law.”View image in fullscreen‘Holding autocratic governments to account’Starting her career in Jakarta in the late 90s, just as Indonesia’s decades-long dictator Suharto was being toppled, the Indonesian-born journalist has seen first-hand the impacts of authoritarian regimes.Widakuswara worked at a campus radio station, and later as a fixer for foreign journalists when they flooded in to cover the event, as mass student protests inundated the parliament building and forced Suharto to step down.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That was my first taste in media,” she says. “Holding autocratic governments to account.”The experience led to a career in television, and a British Foreign and Commonwealth Office scholarship to obtain her master’s in journalism at Goldsmiths, University of London. After stints at the BBC and Channel 4, she was named VOA’s White House bureau chief in 2021.Now, she finds herself pushing against fascistic tendencies in her adopted home. “I grew up in 80s Indonesia where there was no press freedom and newspapers had to be careful what they printed to avoid government closure,” she says. “Could the US backslide that far? Not if enough people resist, and that’s why I’m fighting back.”Her lawsuit, backed by Reporters Without Borders and four unions, argues the Trump administration, through the actions of the defendants, USAGM, and the government’s special adviser Kari Lake, are attempting to unlawfully dismantle VOA’s operations because they deem it contrary to the government’s agenda.Widakuswara argues that Trump’s executive order is a violation of press freedom, the first amendment, and laws to prevent executive overreach, with VOA funding approved by Congress, not the president.Another motivating factor is to support her 47 colleagues at VOA on J-1 or journalist visas in the US, who could be sent back to countries such as Russia, Belarus, Vietnam and Myanmar which have previously jailed journalists.Widakuswara’s efforts to save VOA appeared to score an early win, with a judge in April ordering the Trump administration to restore funding to VOA and other US-funded media. But the preliminary injunction was only a temporary measure.On Saturday, just as VOA staff were preparing for a “phased return” to work, a court of appeals issued a stay on that ruling, saying the court did not have the authority to block Trump’s executive order regarding employment matters.Keenly aware of the unfavourable political climate she is up against, Widakuswara says it is hard to know if their case will ultimately prevail, but the only choice is to try. “Even if it’s just like a 5% chance or even a 1% chance, that’s better than a 0% chance, which is what happens if we do nothing.” More

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      The loss of editorial freedom at 60 Minutes is a sorry milestone for US media | Margaret Sullivan

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      There have been so many red alerts for press freedom in the United States over the past few months that it can be hard to know which ones really matter.The one at CBS’s 60 Minutes really matters.It came as a one-two punch. First, Bill Owens, the highly respected executive producer of the venerable news show stepped down, writing in a letter to employees that he no longer felt he had crucial editorial independence. It had become clear, he wrote, “that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it”.Although he wasn’t specific, corporate interference was clearly the problem, as the network’s parent company, Paramount, has been trying to get federal approval for a big media merger.Owens’s departure was a shocker, but one that was mostly felt internally at CBS and in media-watching circles.Last Sunday night, the problem went public – dramatically so. One of the most well-known faces of 60 Minutes, the correspondent Scott Pelley, closed out the program with a remarkable statement to the audience. He praised Owens and made the context painfully clear.“Stories we’ve pursued for 57 years are often controversial – lately, the Israel-Gaza war and the Trump administration,” Pelley said. “Bill made sure they were accurate and fair … but our parent company, Paramount, is trying to complete a merger. The Trump administration must approve it. Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways.”Pelley said that, to date, no story had been killed but that Owens “felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires”.Pelley’s comments were picked up widely, and now the world knows that viewers can no longer fully trust what they see on the Sunday evening show that has done such important and groundbreaking journalism for decades.Of course, as with so many of the red alerts mentioned above – lawsuits, threats, changes in long-held practices that protect the public’s right to know – the problem involves Donald Trump’s overweening desire to control the media. Controlling the message is what would-be authoritarians always do.Trump sued 60 Minutes for $20bn a few months ago, claiming unfair and deceptive editing of an interview with his then rival for the presidency, Kamala Harris. And his newly appointed head of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, took an aggressive approach by reopening an investigation into CBS over supposed distortion of the news. The editing of the Harris interview, by all reasonable accounts, followed standard practices.What has happened with 60 Minutes is a high-octane version of what is happening everywhere in Trump 2.0.Those who could stand up to Trump’s bullying are instead doing what scholars of authoritarianism say must be avoided, if democracy is to be salvaged. They are obeying in advance.Not everyone, of course. It’s inspiring to see prominent institutions – Harvard and other universities, many law firms, Georgetown law school and the Associated Press – refusing to buckle.They may pay a price. Perhaps a lucrative merger won’t go through, perhaps important federal grants will be lost, perhaps they’ll lose access to news sources, or be punished in some other way. But they’ll have their reputations and integrity intact.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFor universities, for law firms and certainly for media companies like CBS, that’s extremely important.And what’s more, yielding to Trump’s bullying is never successful in the long run. The goalposts of appeasement will be moved, again and again.Just think of what happened with Jeff Bezos, who has put at risk the editorial independence of the Washington Post, which he owns, in order to please Trump and protect the fortunes of his companies, including Amazon.Did all his bending the knee – including killing a Post endorsement of Harris just before the election – buy him long-term protection? Certainly not. When Amazon reportedly planned to display the cost of Trump’s tariffs next to prices on the site, the White House went ballistic, calling it a “hostile and political act”.You can guess what happened next. Amazon buckled, disavowing and scrapping the plan.If the rich and powerful won’t stand up to Trump, what hope can there be for the disenfranchised and powerless?Journalists at 60 Minutes are telling us that Shari Redstone, the executive and heiress who is the controlling shareholder of Paramount, is doing real damage by appearing to intrude into her venerable show’s independence. She may get the merger she wants but only at great cost to the journalism of which she should be a stalwart steward.There was another road to take – certainly a less traveled one but one with a far better destination in mind.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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      Shake-up for Trump era gives liberal MSNBC a whiter, more centrist look

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      The brutal shake-up at MSNBC, the liberal news channel that has been been at the forefront of scrutinizing Donald Trump and his politics, could lead to the loss of progressive voices and stories affecting people of color, media experts said.All of this arrives at a time when the Trump administration is actively attacking the media.MSNBC announced on Monday that the progressive host Joy Reid was being fired from her weeknight show, with Alex Wagner also losing her prime-time nightly broadcast. Katie Phang and Jonathan Capehart also lost their solo weekend shows, along with Ayman Mohyeldin, who has been a fierce critic of Israel’s bombing of Gaza. A “bloodbath of non-white anchors”, as the Daily Beast termed it, as the move was widely criticized, including on MSNBC.“Indefensible,” was the verdict of Rachel Maddow, the channel’s highest-profile host, as she lambasted the network live on her show on Monday. “I think it is a bad mistake to let [Reid] walk out the door. It is also unnerving to see that on a network where we’ve got two non-white hosts in prime time, both of our non-white hosts in prime time are losing their shows, as is Katie Phang on the weekend.”Other criticism was even more strident. Elie Mystal, justice correspondent at the Nation, wrote on Twitter/X: “I owe the television part of my career to Joy Reid, as do so many other Black voices y’all never would have heard of if not for her. And *that’s* why she’s gone. They can treat black folks as interchangeable, but everybody Black knows that Joy was indispensable.”Mehdi Hasan, a progressive journalist and Guardian columnist whose MSNBC show was canceled in 2023, wrote: “It’s a big loss for MSNBC viewers as [Reid] did talk about issues – racism, fascism, Gaza – that other hosts have avoided. And I’m also sad to see my brilliant friend Ayman lose his unique show, too.”Phang and Wagner will remain with the network, Phang becom​ing a legal correspondent and Wagner a political analyst, and​ Capehart and Mohyeldin will become co-hosts on other programs. But with non-white journalists underrepresented in the media, the loss of those voices from prime-time shows and at the helm of their own programs represents a blow for those concerned about diversity.“Joy Reid represents another loss of amplifying Black and brown voices who will report news on stories that oftentimes go under the radar or underreported by mainstream journalists,” said Emmitt Riley, a professor of politics and African and African American studies at the University of the South and the president of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists.“When we think about what diversity truly means, it means that we bring a wide variety of perspectives to the table. And certainly a person’s life experiences with discrimination, their life experiences in terms of where they occupy certain positions of power or lack thereof, informs what stories they decide to amplify. And so we saw Joy covering a number of different stories that I think will go under the radar now.”Along with losing the perspectives that journalists from a range of backgrounds and life experiences can bring, there is also concern that MSNBC is losing progressive voices and sidelining some of its most prominent critics of Israel, including Reid and Mohyeldin.At a time when Trump has made it clear that he will offer little support to Gaza – last week the president shared an AI video showing the US turning it into a cross between Dubai and Las Vegas – the loss of those voices is a concern.Reid’s show will be replaced by Symone Sanders Townsend and Michael Steele, who are Black, and Alicia Menendez, who is of Cuban descent. Although Sanders has progressive bona fides as a former national press secretary for Bernie Sanders, Steele is a former chair of the Republican national committee who describes himself as “an American, a conservative and a Republican, in that order”.Menendez also has deep connections to the center of US politics – her father is Bob Menendez, the former Democratic senator who in January was sentenced to 11 years in prison for taking bribes. Her brother, Robert Menendez, is a Democratic congressman.Wagner, who in 2022 MSNBC described as the only Asian American to host a prime-time cable news program, platformed critics of Joe Biden as he declined in mid-2024. She will be replaced by Jen Psaki, who served as Biden’s White House press secretary and previously had roles in communications for centrist Democrats including Barack Obama and John Kerry.“It is going to change the discourse,” said Heather Hendershot, a professor of communication studies and journalism at Northwestern University.“It’s still going to be in keeping with the MSNBC brand, it will still be liberal. But they’re moving a little bit away from the left with these recent changes.”The moves came two weeks after the Federal Communications Commission, led by the Donald Trump appointee and Project 2025 co-author Brendan Carr, launched an investigation into Comcast, MSNBC’s parent company over its diversity, equity and inclusion policies, part of a broader policy which has seen Trump order an end to all DEI programs in federal government and also target the programs in schools and universities.“At a time when the very value of diversity in American institutions is in question, implementing changes which result in firing and demotions of the channel’s highest-profile non-white anchors seems a bizarrely off-brand action for a news channel that is supposedly liberal-oriented,” Eric Deggans, an NPR TV critic and media analyst, wrote on his Switching Codes Substack.It is a delicate time for Comcast, which is seeking approval to spin out MSNBC and other cable shows into a new company, called SpinCo, later this year. The shake-up also comes as other media organizations have been targeted by the Trump administration.The FCC is investigating NPR and PBS to assess whether they should be continued to be allowed access to public funding, while Trump is suing CBS, alleging that they selectively edited an interview with Kamala Harris – something CBS denies – and has threatened legal action against the New York Times, among others.There are signs some news organizations are already acquiescing to Trump. This week Jeff Bezos, who pulled an endorsement of Harris in the run-up to the 2024 election and later attended Trump’s inauguration, announced that the Washington Post editorial pages would in the future only publish pieces “in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets”.The Post’s former editor, Marty Baron, described the move as a “betrayal of the very idea of free expression” that had left him “appalled”, and the Post’s opinions editor quit in the wake of the move, which could further hit the Post’s number of subscribers – 250,000 people previously canceled their subscriptions after Bezos blocked the Harris endorsement.At MSNBC, Mark Lazarus, who is set to be CEO of SpinCo, told staff at a meeting: “The only thing I’ll say is the worst thing any leader can do is change something that’s working just because they can. So, if this is working, then there’s no reason to change it.”However, Oliver Darcy reported for Status that Lazarus had suggested he would like the network to be on better terms with Republicans.“The SpinCo boss, who now oversees the progressive network, has privately indicated to people that he would like the outlet incorporate more GOP voices on its air,” Darcy reported.Apart from the need to have media that stand up to the Trump administration, left-leaning organizations were missing an opportunity by not standing their ground, Hendershot said.“Part of the bigger picture of MSNBC is that now is the time for these stations or newspapers or magazines that lean left, to lean into what they do best. Anything that slants left does the best in terms of ratings when the right is the White House. And likewise, when the other party is in the White House, publications who are on the right do best,” she said.“If you lean toward objective coverage of the authoritarian situation we find ourselves in right now, your numbers could go up, whether you’re MSNBC or the New York Times or whatever entity. So it’s hard not to read it as bowing to the authority of the White House. I don’t see any other interpretation. That’s certainly how Trump sees it.” More

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      Lester Holt to exit NBC Nightly News as MSNBC cuts Ayman Mohyeldin’s show

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      NBC’s Lester Holt is stepping down as anchor of its Nightly News show, and MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin is stepping down from a similar role at his namesake weekend evening show as the liberal networks’ owners continue a major programming shake-up on Monday.Others at MSNBC affected by changes revealed on Monday include Katie Phang and Jonathan Capehart, the New York Post reported.Holt, who has served as the anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News for a decade, is leaving the broadcast early this summer, the network reported.A successor for Holt on the program is yet to be named. He will reportedly continue to work with NBC, which shares an owner with MSNBC, as the principal anchor at Dateline, a role he has held for nearly 15 years.At the same time, staff of Mohyeldin’s show, named Ayman, learned on Monday that the last episode of Ayman is likely to air on 20 April. Another source at the network said Mohyeldin would anchor a new program yet to be announced.The New York Post reported learning that Phang and Capehart’s shows were also being canceled but would remain at the network. The plan is for Capehart, like Mohyeldin, to host a new show, and Phang would continue as a legal correspondent.In a recording of a meeting about the cancellation of Mohyeldin’s show, an MSNBC official said the network was “making several changes to our programming lineup”.The official subsequently said that the network had “hit success” with ensemble shows and was looking to invest in shows with the ensemble format in order to meet “audience needs”.Those remarks came a day after news broke that MSNBC had canceled the longstanding anchor Joy Reid’s show, The ReidOut. The network plans to replace Reid’s show with a new one led by three co-anchors: Symone Sanders-Townsend, Alicia Menendez and Michael Steele, who have been co-hosting MSNBC’s The Weekend Show.Mohyeldin has hosted several shows at MSNBC, including Morning Joe First Look, an early morning pre-show for one of the network’s flagship shows. In 2021, his namesake show was given a prime-time weekend evening slot.The anchor also served as a correspondent for NBC in Gaza during a monthlong conflict in 2014, receiving praise from media critics for reporting that departed from “the standard pro-Israel coverage that dominates establishment American press coverage”.The changes affecting Reid and Mohyeldin result from a reshuffling by the network’s new president, Rebecca Kutler, who took over the role in February.Kutler, who was previously MSNBC’s senior vice-president for content strategy, succeeds the former MSNBC president Rashida Jones.According to a statement given to the Guardian by MSNBC, the network will also introduce a new trio of co-hosts to anchor a morning and evening edition of The Weekend on Saturdays and Sundays at 7am and 6pm ET.Jonathan Capehart, an MSNBC host and Washington Post associate editor, will serve as one co-anchor of the morning edition.Mohyeldin will serve as anchor of a different group on the evening addition. Ali Velshi will also expand his namesake program, Velshi, to three hours on the weekends.MSNBC confirmed that Joy Reid will be leaving the network. Rotating anchors will host the hour in the coming weeks.The network also confirms that it will sunset its broadcasting operation in Miami. This affects the Miami-based shows José Díaz-Balart Reports and The Katie Phang Show.According to a source, the entire staff of The ReidOut, José Díaz-Balart Reports and The Katie Phang Show are being let go. Staff will be given the option to reapply for a job on one of the shows or take severance and quit. They have six weeks to decide which option to take, the source said.That source added that the changes are due in part to MSNBC no longer wanting to use Telemundo, the Spanish-language network that is headquartered in Miami.In November last year, the Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski faced backlash after meeting with Trump to discuss “a new approach” after his election in November to a second presidency.Also in November, Comcast announced plans to spin off several cable networks, including MSNBC, as the TV networks faced declining ratings, which only further declined following election fatigue.Chuck Todd, a prominent anchor and former host of Meet The Press, announced in January that he was leaving NBC, another Comcast company, after 18 years. The announcement followed Todd’s pushback against NBC’s decision to hire Ronna McDaniel, the former Republican National Committee chairperson during Donald Trump’s first presidency, in March 2024. McDaniel was eventually removed from her position.Trump, who has previously described news media as “the enemy of the people”. celebrated the cancelation of Reid’s show on his platform Truth Social, saying she should have been “canned long ago”. More

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      Trump calls for ‘termination’ of 60 Minutes in fresh attack on US media

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      Donald Trump has called for the “termination” of 60 Minutes, a long-established fixture of US journalism, in a fresh onslaught against the media that also included baseless claims that money from the country’s beleaguered foreign aid body had been illicitly funding news organisations.The demand that 60 Minutes be taken off the air came in a post on Trump’s Truth Social platform. It was the latest salvo in his long-running dispute with the CBS program over its editing of an interview with Kamala Harris, last year’s defeated Democratic presidential candidate, over which Trump has lodged a $10m suit alleging “election interference”.“CBS should lose its license, and the cheaters at 60 Minutes should all be thrown out, and this disreputable ‘NEWS’ show should be immediately terminated,” Trump wrote, alleging that the program and the network had “defrauded the public” to an extent “never seen before.”The diatribe followed 60 Minutes’ release of an unedited transcript of Harris’s interview to the Federal Communications Committee in an effort to parry Trump’s accusations. The transcript was also posted on its website.“[The transcripts] show – consistent with 60 Minutes’ repeated assurances to the public – that the 60 Minutes broadcast was not doctored or deceitful,” read an accompanying note on the site.The original controversy arose after the transmitted interview featured a different segment of Harris’s answer to a question about Israel from the version screened as a trailer. Trump’s supporters claimed that the final version was more polished than the original, which was mocked as a “word salad”. Trump followed up by accusing the show of editing Harris’s answer to portray her in a more positive light, thus boosting her election chances.Employees of 60 Minutes have denied claims of bias and say such edits are standard practice. However, CBS’s owner, Paramount Global – which is currently seeking an $8bn merger with Skydance Media – has opened negotiations with Trump’s lawyers over the $10m lawsuit amid reports of pressure from the newly appointed FCC chair, Brendan Carr.In an interview with Fox News, Carr said he shared Trump’s opinion about the 60 Minutes interview with Harris.“This is a rare situation where we have extrinsic evidence that CBS had played one answer or one set of words and then swapped in another set. And CBS’s conduct through this, frankly, has been concerning,” he said.Trump – who frequently branded journalists “the enemy of the people” in his first term – broadened Thursday’s attack to other outlets by amplifying false claims that USAid, the currently shuttered foreign assistance agency, had been funding Politico and other news outlets to the tune of $8m.“With the new Democrat scandal that just arose with respect to USAID illegally paying large sums of money to Politico and other media outlets, the question must be asked, was CBS paid for committing this FRAUD?” he wrote.The accusation – denied by Politico and subsequently debunked – was first made by Trump-supporting social media influencers , who tried to establish a link between a glitch that caused a payment delay to Politico staff and the freezing of USAid’s funding by Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), whose agents have accessed the federal government’s payments system.It was later repeated by the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt.In fact, payments to Politico’s subscriptions services have been made throughout the vast government bureaucracy – including from staff of Republican members of Congress, the Washington Post reported. Politico said in a statement that just two separate subscription payments totalling less than $43,000 came from subdivisions within USAid in 2023 and 2024.In a statement to staff, Politico’s chief executive officer, Goli Sheikholeslami, and editor-in-chief, John Harris, wrote that the site “has never been a beneficiary of government programs or subsidies – not one cent, ever, in 18 years”. More