CBS Shows Sign Of A Backbone In Standoff With Trump And His Extremist FCC

Last October,Trump sued CBSclaiming (falsely) that a 60 Minutes interview of Kamala Harris had been deceitfully edited" to her benefit (they simply shortened some of her answers for brevity, as news outlets often do). AsMike explored, the lawsuit was utterly baseless, and tramples the First Amendment, editorial discretion, and common sense.

CBS/Paramount is looking for regulatory approval for its $8 billion merger with Skydance (run by Larry Ellison's kid David). Trump and his FCC boss Brendan Carr quickly zeroed on on this, and began using merger approval as leverage to bully CBS into even more feckless coverage of the administration.

Carr's assault hasn't been what you'd call subtle. Last week that even included changing the FCC website to try and redirect visitors to whine about CBS' supposed editorial bias:

At first, there were signs that CBS, like ABC, was going to let Trump bully the company and settle the complaint. But there's some indication that Carr and Trump's behavior has finally pissed off CBS and Paramount enough for them to develop something vaguely resembling a backbone. Maybe.

Last week CBS/Paramount lawyers began indicating they may fight the FCC, with CBS lawyers throwing all kinds of things at the wall, including claims those suing violated fine print arbitration requirements and that the Trump administration is engaged in pretty obvious judge shopping:

Its multipronged legal strategy revolves around arguments that Trump is judge-shopping, choosing to file the lawsuit at a court where a sympathetic judge is likely to oversee the case, and the possibility that those suing the company agreed to arbitration clauses when they used services hosted by the entertainment conglomerate."

Earlier in February, Trump revised the complaint to add Republican U.S. Rep. Ronny Jackson, his former doctor who lives in Texas, to keep the case in Trump-friendly federal court in the Northern District of Texas. CBS wants the case transferred to its hometown of New York for what should be obvious reasons:

U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who's overseeing the litigation and is the only judge in the Amarillo division of the court, was nominated to his position by Trump in 2017 and has been a member of the Federalist Society since 2012. In his five years on the bench, he's issued rulings against several initiatives implemented by former President Joe Biden, some of which were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court."

Republicans have been seeding their friendly news outlets (like the NY Post) with the bullshit narrative that CBS is in legal trouble because it has a left wing bias." In reality, Trump's FCC boss is a power-abusing extremist, who wants to bully all media companies into kissing Trump's ring.

The great irony in all of this is that like so many media giants, CBS had already responded to authoritarianism by making its journalism gentler to Republican ideology years earlier, in response to the all-pervasive lie that the corporatist, center-right U.S. press has a liberal bias."

It's worth noting that CBS' attempt to appease extremist right wingers has only resulted in more harassment by said right wing, providing useful lessons to other media companies considering throwing their journalistic standards and the First Amendment in the trash in order to kiss the ring.