Democracy dies in the darkness
Yesterday at the United Nations, CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins asked Trump when the war with Iran would end, citing a poll showing that two-thirds of Americans don’t think the U.S. is winning.
“I’m surprised that CNN is here covering me,” Trump began before telling Collins: “You should not be here covering me. You said you weren’t going to cover me. You shouldn’t be covering me.”
Collins told Trump that the U.N. allowed her organization into the General Assembly, even though Trump had days before banned CNN (along with MSNOW and Politico) from covering his White House because he didn’t like their coverage of him.
Collins then repeated her question twice while Trump ignored her.
CNN’s days of asking hard questions of Trump may be coming to an end anyway, now that California Attorney General Rob Bonta has allowed Trump lapdog billionaire Larry Ellison and son David to take over CNN.
Bonta caved presumably because the Ellisons threatened to begin moving Paramount’s operations out of California starting in October if Bonta refused to settle his antitrust lawsuit against them.
Trump’s game plan all along has been for the Ellisons to control a huge media monopoly that won’t utter a critical word about him — including CBS News, CNN, Comedy Central (home to Jon Stewart), HBO (John Oliver), and even TikTok (where 1 out of 5 Americans now get their news).
What’s next for CNN? I doubt it will be gutted. That would be too obvious. It will just be defanged.
When the Ellisons gained ownership of CBS, they got rid of Stephen Colbert by not letting CBS renew his contract, and they ripped the guts out of CBS News and its flagship “60 Minutes” — firing Scott Pelley and other senior producers who refused to walk the Trump walk.
One departing producer there explained in a farewell memo to colleagues that she could no longer work where stories are “evaluated not just on their journalistic merit, but on whether they conform to a shifting set of ideological expectations — a dynamic that pressures producers and reporters to self-censor or avoid challenging narratives that might trigger backlash or unfavorable headlines.”
Anyone who believes the Ellisons will treat CNN (or Comedy Central or HBO) any better than they’ve treated CBS News hasn’t been paying attention to Trump’s and the Ellisons’ maneuverings over the past few months.
When Warner Bros. Discover — CNN’s parent — went up for sale, Trump said it was “imperative” that CNN be sold as part of the deal. “CNN should be sold because the people that are running CNN right now are either corrupt or incompetent,” he told reporters at an event at the White House. He continued:
“I think any deal, it should be guaranteed and certain that CNN is part of it or sold separately, but I don’t think the people that are running that company right now and running CNN — which is a very dishonest group of people — I don’t think that should be allowed to continue. I think CNN should be sold along with everything else.”
Last December, when a CNN reporter asked Trump a question he didn’t like, he shot back: “You know you work for the Democrats, don’t you? You’re basically an arm of the Democrat Party.”
The Ellisons — per et fils — have already promised Trump they’ll bring CNN to heel.
According to The Wall Street Journal, David Ellison promised Trump he’d make “sweeping changes” to CNN if he were allowed to acquire its parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery.
A White House official even discussed with Larry Ellison potential programming changes at CNN, including firing reporters such as Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar, whom Trump is said to loathe.
At a press briefing in March, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth complained about a CNN report that the Trump administration had underestimated Iran’s ability to disrupt global oil traffic by closing the Strait of Hormuz. “Patently ridiculous,” Hegseth told reporters, adding that “the sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better.”
It’s the neofascist playbook: Take over the media and silence criticism. Even better (because it’s less out in the open), have your cronies take over the media and have them silence criticism. Better still, make deals with your cronies so when they take over the media, they have ongoing financial incentives to silence criticism. If they’re billionaires, they can keep buying up media and silence criticism as they make even more money.
Jeff Bezos has defanged the editorial page of The Washington Post. Elon Musk has turned Twitter into global neofascist X. Trump suck-up Mark Zuckerberg controls Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Threads.
And now the Ellisons, and CBS News and CNN (and Comedy Central and HBO).
What do you get when you combine the richest people in America with the biggest media corporations in America with the thinnest-skinned and most corrupt president in American history?
One thing you don’t get is an informed public.
Robert Bernard Reich is an American professor, author, lawyer, and political commentator. He worked in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, and served as Secretary of Labor from 1993 to 1997 in the cabinet of President Bill Clinton. He was also a member of President Barack Obama's economic transition advisory board. Reich has been the Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley since January 2006. He was formerly a lecturer at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and a professor of social and economic policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management of Brandeis University.
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