In the world of news organizations the strict separation of editorial policy from the sales function is supposed to be an unbreakable rule. Editorial is of course content, and sales is all about the business side, selling things like advertising and subscriptions. I wouldn’t suggest that this separation is unrealistic, though one would have to be an imbecile to image that advertisers, for example, never lean on news organizations to temper a story not in their best interests, or perhaps to kill it outright. Or in a more ideological sense, I doubt, for instance, many businesses nestled in the bosom of our capitalist system would have much interest in advertising in a publication that was critical of the profit motive.
Whether convenient fiction or a goal towards which news outlets may strive, we’d like to think there is some degree of objectivity in the information we consume not totally corrupted by the business of business.
In addition to the simpler every day world of making money through advertising and subscriptions, and the impact that may have on news content, is the larger corporate universe in which decisions of a different kind are made.
On May 19th, the New York Times reported that the president of CBS News Wendy McMahon was forced out “amid an ongoing showdown involving President Trump, CBS and its parent company, Paramount.” The backstory is that Trump has been suing Paramount in the amount of $20 billion because of what he has called deceptive editing in an interview the network did with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. The Times writes that many legal experts say the case is baseless, which you might think would be the end of it. The reason it is not is because Shari Redstone, Paramount’s controlling shareholder, is keen to settle. Coincidentally Redstone is seeking approval from the Trump administration for the multibillion-dollar sale of Paramount to a Hollywood studio, Skydance,” a deal with potential significance for Paramount’s survival.
Beyond settling this suit in a way amenable to Trump, is the whole issue of how CBS News and “60 Minutes” might handle Trump’s tenure in its entirety.
This messy situation is what caused executive producer of “60 Minutes” Bill Owens to resign last month as he pointed to his inability to enjoy journalistic independence under these circumstances. McMahon has supported Owens.
According to a story in Variety, no “60 Minutes” segment has been pulled but “Paramount did install, partly at Redstone’s behest, a new layer of checks and balances in the form of a team led by Susan Zirinsky, the former CBS president,” the implications of which are pretty clear.
The drift of the story in Variety is that Redstone can’t save both “60 Minutes” and Paramount. She needs the sale to go through for business reasons, which means steering clear of angering Trump who has the power through the FCC to kill it. In order to keep Trump happy, she may not be able to protect the integrity of “60 Minutes.”
Ugly, ugly, ugly.
Some may point out that a private media company can hire and fire who they like, and has wide berth to report the news as it see fit. This just smells bad but is fully consistent with the kind of hostage taking we see in pretty much everything Trump does.
I don’t have a better economic system than capitalism to offer at the moment, but this is a pretty big design flaw.
Retired political staffer/civil servant. Dual U.S./Canadian citizen writing about politics and the arts on both sides of the border.