CBS Killing a '60 Minutes' CECOT Segment Shows Why We Must Back Independent Media |
If anyone doubted that the rich would use their control of the media to push their agenda and silence dissent, CBS removed it with its decision to censor the scheduled "60 Minutes" broadcast on CECOT prison. CECOT is the notorious maximum-security prison in El Salvador where President Donald Trump has sent a number of the people that he has deported. There have been numerous accounts of torture and abusive treatment in the prison, which presumably would have been highlighted in the segment.
CBS, under its new ownership, decided that we shouldn’t see the "60 Minutes" segment, or at least not the one its team had prepared for broadcast last night. Apparently, they were worried it would offend the Trump administration.
According to a leaked account, Bari Weiss, the right-wing zealot that the new ownership put in charge of CBS News , decided that the program could not air without an interview with Stephan Miller, Trump’s deporter-in-chief. The producers of the show had apparently already reached out to the White House, as is their standard practice, but they refused to comment, presumably choosing to instead attack the broadcast as unfair and unbalanced after it ran.
Weiss is insisting that the program include an interview with Miller, giving him an effective veto over when and if the program airs. If we ever do see the segment, it will likely include other edits to make it more Trump friendly.
We do need to come up with ways to support independent media and not just complain about right-wing Trump sycophants taking over the media we have.
There can be a tendency to exaggerate the courage and independence of the pre-Trump media, but news shows like "60 Minutes" have done much great reporting over the years, breaking stories that the rich and powerful would prefer to see buried. This will no longer be the case.
I have been getting regular fundraising notices from Robert Reich, whom I greatly respect, complaining about the takeover of the media by rich Trumpers. Reich is right, but the moral of his story is that we have to increase taxes on the rich.
While taxing the rich more is something we should do, along with taking away the patent and copyright monopolies that make many of them rich, and corrupt bankruptcy laws that give us private equity billionaires, along with a few other changes, we have to go much further to get back impartial media.
The huge gaps in wealth and income create an enormous power imbalance, and plausible changes in tax policy will do little to rectify the situation. If Elon Musk’s fortune was cut in half to $200 billion, he would still have a ridiculous amount of political power. The same applies to the rest of the crew of billionaires.
If we want to get responsible media that does its job in reporting on the deeds and misdeeds of the rich and powerful, plausible reductions in inequality (and how do we get those?) will not be sufficient. We need to look to fundamentally restructure the media.
When the right owns all the major news outlets and social media platforms, the idea that the truth will magically overcome their lies is not the sort of argument that can be taken seriously.
This is not as far-fetched a goal as it may sound. We will not get the current Congress, or even one with a Democratic majority in 2026, to take the lead in pushing for responsible media. But we can have initiatives at the state and local level to build up independent media that is not owned and controlled by the rich and very rich.
My preferred route is a system of individual tax credits, say $100 per person, to support the person’s favorite news outlet(s). This would be a credit, not a deduction, and fully........