Money And Power Converge As CBS Becomes Trump State Media

Stephen Colbert, the host of CBS’s “Late Show,” was incredibly direct when he told his audience on Monday why he could not show them an interview he did with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico.

Colbert said that CBS’s lawyers had called and told him directly that he could not air the interview due to threats leveled by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, Colbert said. Carr had previously stated that he might repeal the rule that treats talk show interviews with political candidates as “news,” and instead hold the shows to a standard that would require they provide equal time to opposing sides. That rule has not actually been changed.

“My network is unilaterally enforcing it as if he had,” Colbert said. “But I want to assure you, ladies and gentlemen, please, I want to assure you that this decision is for purely financial reasons.”

This is just the latest in a saga of how the Trump administration is abusing the regulatory authorities of the executive branch to suppress dissenting voices, and taking advantage of corporate America’s pursuit of monopoly power.

What Colbert meant is that CBS is bowing to political pressure because of Paramount Skydance, the network’s parent company. Recently created when Donald Trump megadonor Larry Ellison and his son David Ellison bought Paramount, the network, which has already announced that it would be ending the run of Colbert’s own show — which it attributed to, again, “financial reasons” rather than Colbert’s prominent criticism of Trump — is actively trying to win favor from the Trump administration as it bids to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery. The FCC, headed by Carr, approves media company mergers.

CBS denied that Colbert was forbidden from airing the Talarico interview in a statement.

“THE LATE SHOW was not prohibited by CBS from broadcasting the interview with Rep. James Talarico,” the statement read. “The show was provided legal guidance that the broadcast could trigger the FCC equal-time rule for two other candidates, including Rep. Jasmine Crockett, and presented options for how the equal time for other candidates could be fulfilled. THE LATE SHOW decided to present the interview through its YouTube channel with on-air promotion on the broadcast rather than potentially providing the equal-time options.”

Just as Colbert issued his broadside against his own company, “60 Minutes,” also under the CBS umbrella, lost its most well-known contributor as Anderson Cooper announced he would resign to focus on his CNN show and spend more time with his family. But media reporter Oliver Darcy reported that Cooper left because of the “rightward direction the network has taken” and management’s increasing interference with “60 Minutes’” reporting.

By jaw-boning media companies into censoring content with regulatory threats, Trump’s FCC seeks to limit how critics access the airwaves — whether they are opposition politicians, comedians, or just general dissenters. It is reminiscent of Viktor Orban’s Hungary, where public state-run and private regime-allied media provide only five minutes of airtime to opposition politicians every four years.

The rationale used can vary: Carr’s FCC also opened an investigation on Feb. 7 into ABC’s “The View” for supposedly breaking the same rule about equal time by hosting Talarico without offering equal time to the other Democratic candidate and eight Republican candidates in the Texas Senate race. But ABC late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel was temporarily suspended in December after Carr tried to get him fired for innocuous remarks about the murdered conservative activist Charlie Kirk, and threatened to pull ABC’s broadcasting license if he wasn’t fired.

The capitulation of CBS has been the most visible and blatant example. Since being acquired by Skydance when it merged with Paramount, CBS leadership under the newly installed conservative sniveller Bari Weiss, hired by David Ellison despite no broadcast news experience, has been happy to contort itself to administration desires as Ellison pursues more media consolidation.

The first instance occurred when Paramount agreed to pay Trump $16 million in a legal settlement over editing in a “60 Minutes” interview with his Democratic opponent Vice President Kamala Harris. Most legal observers believed the lawsuit had no merit, but the company settled just as Skydance’s takeover faced its final regulatory approval. The administration and Paramount both deny that the settlement and the merger approval were connected.

Then Colbert’s show, No. 1 in its time slot, was abruptly canceled on July 17 with an end date of March 2026, just days after he criticized that settlement.

“I absolutely love that Colbert got fired,” Trump posted online afterwards.

CBS continued to distort its coverage following a Trump attack on Paramount Skydance after it opened its hostile takeover bid to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery away from Netflix on Dec. 8.

“For those people that think I am close with the new owners of CBS, please understand that 60 Minutes has treated me far worse since the so-called ‘takeover’, than they have ever treated me before,” Trump wrote on Dec. 16. “If they are friends, I’d hate to see my enemies!”

That weekend Weiss pulled a “60 Minutes” segment three hours before it was set to air that exposed the human rights violations that occurred when the Trump administration rendered more than 200 Venezuelan and Salvadoran immigrants to the brutal CECOT prison in El Salvador. Weiss claimed that the segment needed more balance from administration sources.

The segment eventually aired on Jan. 18 with little advance notice and up against a highly anticipated NFL playoff game.