Is the legendary CBS eye being blinded?
From Edward R. Murrow’s tough reporting about Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist witch hunts in the 1950s, through Walter Cronkite’s potent critiques of the war in Vietnam, to numerous hard-hitting segments on the news anthology “60 Minutes” — including revelations of the decades of deadly lies sold by the tobacco industry — CBS News has set a high standard for investigative reporting on television.
But a story detailing the unlawful and cruel Trump administration policy of shipping migrants to a torture prison in El Salvador has been put on hold, even after it had been fully vetted by the editors and staff at “60 Minutes.”
The person who held the story back is Bari Weiss, a conservative journalist with no TV experience who was recently installed as editor-in-chief with marching orders to add balance to the network’s reporting. CBS journalists and many others suspect that “balance” actually means “tilt” — a tilt toward more positive coverage of President Donald Trump and his controversial policies.
One reason for the tilt could be that David Ellison, the top man at Paramount Skydance, the parent company of CBS, is making a multibillion-dollar hostile bid for Warner Bros. Discovery. President Trump has indicated he will be inserting himself in the decision to approve or disapprove the deal. The question people are asking is whether Ellison is trying to curry favor with Trump, essentially trading the integrity of CBS News for a big payoff.
CNN is a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery, so there are fears that yet another major news operation could be neutered by corporate greed and pressure from the Trump administration.
A central mark of autocratic regimes is a news media kept under the thumb of the government. The United States is far from that, but the great worry is that we may be drifting in that direction.
See more of David Horsey’s cartoons at: st.news/davidhorsey
View other syndicated cartoonists at: st.news/cartoons
Editor’s note: Seattle Times Opinion no longer appends comment threads on David Horsey’s cartoons. Too many comments violated our community policies and reviewing the dozens that were flagged as inappropriate required too much of our limited staff time. You can comment via a Letter to the Editor. Please email us at letters@seattletimes.com and include your full name, address and telephone number for verification only. Letters are limited to 200 words.
