It is a great illustration of how transition to the authoritarianism happens (I've seen it happen in Russia in 2000s). At first you don't even need censorship, you just need to scare owners of channels/newspapers enough, so that they self-censor.
Fear is the enforcement mechanism because it can't be challenged in court.
It is long past time for everyone in tech to take a long hard look at the current situation and stop doing anything that financially benefits Musk, Ellison, or Thiel.
There is no "who", once stabilizing institutions 'fall' the only remaining option is social pressure (which can come in various forms) but that does require a critical mass as it's very much reliant on network effects.
I went to a tech founder conference recently and it was quite jarring given the current state of startups to see no lecture or discussion of ethics of products people should be building. It was all focused on demands of PE and delivering profit, no matter the moral cost, not a minute to stop and get a broader systemic reality check. “It turns profit, it must be good”. Not sure how we collectively combat these dominant forces of privacy violation, attention demands, and mass exploitation.
It kind of explains quite a lot of behavior of the Russian government like low level aggression in the west, interesting ways of killing people and the like. Maybe also the Epstein files - he was in touch with Moscow a lot, and the behavior of Trump who seems pretty scared by that stuff.
Indeed. Mark Zuckerberg has long said the administration pressured Facebook to censor COVID-related content, including satire and humor. And now the administration has ended public funding for NPR and PBS. Chilling effect
Pressured, as in asked them to do something, which they ignored. Possibly problematic, but the elephant in the room is Trump directly threatening to put Mark Zuckerberg in prison for life: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/28/trump-zuckerberg-el...
> In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn't agree. Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions, including COVID-19-related changes we made to our enforcement in the wake of this pressure.
You're misinterpreting that sentence. It's not that they never agreed. It's that sometimes they disagreed, and they got pressured harder when they did.
Did you read the first two paragraphs?
> In a letter to the US Congress, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has alleged that the US government under Joe Biden "repeatedly pressured" Meta to censor certain content on its platforms.
> In the letter addressed to US House of Representatives, Mr Zuckerberg said that the platform had to make some changes, that "with the benefit of hindsight and new information," they won't make today. He added that he regrets not being "more outspoken" about it.
We know for a fact that Meta had removed over 20 million Corona posts by April 2021 alone [0]. Some of those were genuine misinformation - but a hell of a lot were legitimate and important questions from reputable sources. It's simply not reasonable to believe this wasn't due to pressure.
> Mark Zuckerberg has long said the administration pressured Facebook to censor COVID-related content, including satire and humor.
He said this once and did not describe the pressure. In that same letter, he said that the company didn't agree and government officials "expressed a lot of frustration." There were no threats of fines or lawsuits.
When you say "the administration", it's worth noting you're describing actions by two different administrations. Both political parties have tried to silence dissenting views through soft censorship.
Censoring an interview with a political opponent is a far cry from spreading disinformation that is counter to broadly accepted medical advice during a pandemic with the intent of harming the general population.
More to the point… the same president was in power during when COVID information was supposedly being censored, and today when political opposition is supposedly being censored.
So OPs argument that it’s both parties doing it falls flat on its face.
Sure, but that's the straw-man version of the argument. During COVID, there was aggressive censorship of _everything_ related to the virus that didn't exactly toe the party line. Satire, comedy, and truly live questions (like the weak version of the lab leak hypothesis, that SARS-CoV-2 accidentally escaped from a lab into human population) were censored alongside the obviously false, harmful, and misleading takes about drinking bleach and Ivermectin.
Both science and democracy require active conversation that permits dissenting viewpoints and challenges to the accepted wisdom. Once we have an organization deciding what "the truth" is, we're doomed to stagnation and extremely vulnerable to organizational capture by self-motivated people.
In other words, once you build the political, legal, and technical machinery of censorship, you're half way to having it co-opted by people with anti-social intents.
Weird, cause I remember there being a very lengthy and involved debate about COVID. I remember hearing a ton of dissent and disagreement with the government positions... almost like... they weren't being censored. There are hundreds of thousands of discussions about the lab leak hypothesis, and there were hundreds of those discussions at the time. There was also plenty of conflicting advice given, including "injecting bleach" which was advice given by the then president, and ivermectin, which was advice given by 100s of online podcasters.
Even today, you can find like, hundreds of articles of dissenting opinions that were posted at the time of covid. In fact, no one quite yelled "I'm being silenced" as loudly as covid deniers who were demanding to share untested hypotheses.
What I can't find, is any articles that were pulled-from-the-air for going against the then-administration's opinions. But if you have them, please share. Importantly, they need to not be pulled for "false, harmful, or misleading takes."
> once you build the political, legal, and technical machinery of censorship, you're half way to having it co-opted
Indeed, my original post ("Both political parties have tried to silence dissenting views") was simply about censorship being bad no matter which political party does it. I hate that the current administration is doing it. I hated it when the prior administration did it. If we can't acknowledge that both parties did it, then when the parties switch again, there will still be secret soft censorship happening. It's a moral hazard to reflexively discount when a side I may agree with does something wrong.
It's getting increasingly harder to point out when both parties are wrong without people assuming it's a back-handed defense of the other party.
> "The United States government pressured Twitter to elevate certain content and suppress other content about Covid-19 and the pandemic... Take, for example, Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Kulldorff often tweeted views at odds with U.S. public health authorities ... Kulldorff’s statement was an expert’s opinion—one that happened to be in line with vaccine policies in numerous other countries. Yet it was deemed “false information” by Twitter moderators merely because it differed from CDC guidelines."
"Pressured." They merely suggested that it was better for the country and for business, and most of the companies agreed. There were no threats of fines or lawsuits, and none were levied.
Weren't there huge monopoly cases being furthered against Meta, Twitter and TikTok at that time? And more action against other major tech companies
If I'm threatening you over your 'possible' monopoly with one hand, and 'politely' asking you to censor millions of stories with the other - are those things completely unrelated? Or is there possible an implied message there?
A mafioso will never tell you straight-up that they're threatening and extorting you. But if you look between the lines even a little bit you can discern the message.
(Sometimes the person delivering that message isn't even aware of the threat they're sending; afaik it's entirely possible that Lina Khan was completely genuine with her push.)
> and none were levied.
Well everyone did what they were 'politely asked', didn't they. Meta alone removed or suppressed well over a hundred million posts.
> None of these antitrust cases were dropped for doing what was in their mutual interest.
I'm not understanding either what you're claiming or why you believe it. Keep in mind that I don't believe in always taking what the government says at face value.
> You're grasping at straws.
Why would I be desperate? I've no skin in this game, beyond a general wish not to have legitimate and important speech suppressed and censored.
> Zuckerberg said Meta didn't do everything they were asked.
They didn't do everything, they say (did they ever say what they refused to do?), but they did a lot. As did Twitter. We know this for a fact.
Unfortunately, reasonable views from experts like Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School and Jay Bhattacharya Professor of Medicine at Stanford were also suppressed. Kulldorff only responded to a question saying: "COVID vaccines are important for older high-risk people and their care-takers. Those with prior natural infection do not need it. Nor children." Which is correct, mainstream epidemiology and was the government guidance in the most countries at the time.
> views from experts like Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School and Jay Bhattacharya Professor of Medicine at Stanford were also suppressed
It turns out that when you have millions of doctors (or scientists) in the world, at least some of them are going to say things that go against scientific consensus. This does not mean they're correct.
Here are 2 more examples of people saying things:
> [Kulldorff's] declaration was widely rejected, and was criticized as being unethical and infeasible by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization. Francis S. Collins, NIH director, called him a "fringe epidemiologist". [0]
The lesson here is, if you're cherry picking individuals, rather than going with peer-reviewed scientific consensus, you're liable to be blown way off-course at some point. Personality cults are bad no matter who it is.
He's describing the same administration in two different terms. Mark has no problems lying to people that Biden administration sued Meta (it was Trump's [1]) and individuals like Joe Rogan have no problems not calling him out on it.
Trump was president in 2019, 2020. Covid starts in 2019. It's his administration that the twitter files is talking about when they mention censorship. It's his administration that started the big tech lawsuits.
This seems like a tenuous connection at best. The Biden admin were actually sued for their relationship with social media companies. The suit failed but the conclusion was still that the administration was involved in pushing social media companies to take specific actions. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/court-cases/murthy-v-...
> The Biden admin were actually sued for their relationship with social media companies. The suit failed but the conclusion was still that the administration was involved in pushing social media companies to take specific actions. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/court-cases/murthy-v-...
That's an misleading description of the "conclusion" (and incorrect if by "involvement" or "pushing" you meant unconstitutional behavior). The conclusion of Murthy v. Missouri is that the plaintiffs lacked standing to seek a preliminary injunction against the federal government's (under the Biden administration) requests/"demands" to social media companies to remove users' speech [1]. Why was there no standing? Because the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate a minimum of evidence that the Biden administration had coerced or threatened social media companies to censor users' speech [1]:
> To establish standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will suffer an injury that is traceable to a Government defendant and redressable by the injunction they seek. Because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to seek a preliminary injunction.
Or rather, the plaintiffs did not demonstrate sufficient evidence that, in the period leading up to the original lawsuits, the social media companies' decisions to remove the relevant speech mentioned by the Biden administration had been anything other than the social media companies' voluntary choices.
If you actually read the case the evidence is clear that the government was giving direction to social media sites. Which is what the comment I was replying to was about. Read the dissenting opinion.
I think you're coming at this from the angle of the court is always correct, and not actually examining the case itself.
"actually read the case" includes reading the judgement ("the conclusion"), which overrules your personal judgement (and mine, whatever it might've been).
> Read the dissenting opinion
Dissenting opinions are often irrelevant, equivalent to a loser shouting into the void because they lost. By definition, dissenting opinions are incorrect, because to be correct, they would need to be shared by the majority, in which case they would be in the non-dissenting opinion, if anywhere.
> I think you're coming at this from the angle of the court is always correct
By definition, the court is always "correct" unless contradicted by a constitutionally higher authority. In particular, a court consensus of 9 co-equal judges is more correct than a subset of 1 or 2 of those same judges. And while I'm sure you're a nice, competent person, perhaps even a lawyer, the court is more correct than you here.
They do know that. They are disingenuously attempting to equate asking a platform to remove disinformation with using government resources to threaten a platform into silence.
Didn’t Putin then run for a third term and because he corrupted the voting machines, remain in power? He started having dissenters abducted by plainclothes masked men in vans for the fear factor.
Quietly, dissent stopped and everyone learned that when you go against Putin, you face defenestration.
My question is are there any historical parallels for the slide toward authoritarianism being reversed without a major catastrophe/war.
There were many "ground rules" in American society and politics that Trump has just proved can be thrown completely out the window, and it feels like there is no unringing that bell.
I think the FCC is just enforcing the rule that you have to give equal time to all candidates. The late night talk shows used to get around this policy by using the exception given to news agencies. The FCC is just saying that the late night talk shows aren't really "news" shows. Probably should have been doing this the whole time. They also noted that it would not be a problem on cable or internet broadcasts. Not saying it's not politically motivated though.
It's kind of ironic, so much drama all for a safe centrist corporate democrat. Although perhaps that's why it's such a big deal for liberals, it's oligarchical infighting. It's even more confusing that he's funded by the same billionaires that trump is.
I cheer on and have volunteered for progressive candidates before on the east coast. NYC keeps putting out rockstars. I guess its something about this diverse pressure cooker of a city? I don't know but they keep doing it.
You are talking about Texas, an also ran mess that has a lot of work to do. Lets put aside the fact that they love their unique flavors of voter suppression. At best, for now all we can hope is whichever nobody gets elected does not cause trouble for the party like Fetterman.
And lets be real, they will be gone once the heat dies down post Trump and the state flips back to Republican.
All states seem to be going towards an enlightenment towards the left but at wildy different rates. Progressives focusing on the coasts + the rust belt make sense as those states have a history of economic populism (and are swing states) whereas Texas might come around a long time from now once the oil companies decline enough and the modern company towns made by people like Musk fall apart like they always historically have. You need a trigger of extreme economic pain for the people to finally bite the bullet and try something new. Texas is not there yet. They have better cost of living and enough industry but they are definitely on the road to disaster in many areas.
If its any consolation, I think CBS news will fail miserably. The new captains are at the helm of a sinking ship, which has been taking on water for decades.
Maybe a cynic will say "this was the plan", but if it was, its not a very good plan? If anything, tech executives benefited enormously from their opponents being overly attached to legacy media communication strategies. When Bezos kills the Post or Ellison kills CBS, the talent doesnt magically disappear.
Not Larry, David his son. For some reason people want to keep pretending that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree though. Seen multiple puff pieces about how David just loves movies so much and his dad is the political one.
“They were careless people, David, Megan, and Larry- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
- Once print newspapers were no longer a thing, even local news outlets are struggling to stay alive, and are resulting to sensationalism and entertainment as news
- Corporate sponsors retain a huge influence in mainstream news (or have outright purchased it and use it for partisan politics).
- "Social" media resides in (you guessed it) corporate-owned walled gardens.
- Even those willing to speak out are being targeted by federal agencies
Wondering where others are finding great places to learn what's going on, what's actually relevant to me, and what I can actually do about it.
Follow trusted journalists that have a history of superb journalism. You have to decide what is good for yourself. Also industry specific journalists for deeper insight into industry you care about. Many of the greats realize that all the news companies are sinking ships and are trying to establish their own thing before things completely collapse.
Focus on what each journalist specializes in and don't read too much into it when they report on topics that are not their forte (like Breaking points talking about AI). Many journalists stay in their lane but the groups covering all the news don't. I wish all journalists would stay in their lane but this is not the world we live in anymore.
For everything else that you are not willing to invest the time in, just accept you are not going to get great coverage.
My (typically far left) biases are comfortable with the following (these are not all far left)
Zeteo + dropsite for foreign middle east leaning coverage
Breaking points for daily news
Ken Klippenstein, Glenn greenwald for national security state/us government news. Klippenstein is more fun (when he gets an FBI email asking for info but also politely asking to not release it, he goes ahead and provides a download link). Greenwald feels a bit more dry.
Industry specific: autoline (youtube+website) for automotive, semianalysis for semi.
Again this is just my opinion, please decide for yourself.
There's a decent amount of non-profit news. I read NPR a lot and donate to them and Propublica. I think one of the big issues is advertising so news you actually pay for is a lot less likely to clickbait you.
There's something "Very HN" to see a comment in a discussion about literal political censorship of the news media pointing out the horrifying hypocrisy in one of those media sources running... something sort of like advertisement.
Is this what kids mean when they tell people to touch grass? My generation would accuse you of having lost the plot.
Being forced to run advertisements because one political party in particular decided being unbeholden to corporate interests is a dangerous thing for a news organization to be.
Someone already mentioned NPR. BBC also does a great job reporting on US and international issues. New York Times still does strong reporting. And there are local sources too, such as the Colorado Sun, LA Times, SF Chronicle, or SF Gate (obviously I’m in the US).
Not all the legacy newspapers are failing; NYT is doing well. There are other news sources beyond legacy newspapers, broadcasters, local news, and social media. There are wire services (AP, Reuters), insider access journalism (Axios, Punchbowl, Semafor), public media (NPR, PBS, BBC), investigative journalism (ProPublica), digital-first outlets (Politico, Vox), and the growing wave of small, indie , creator-led media (YouTube, Substack, Patreon).
NYT as a news organization is, charitably, part of the controlled opposition. They are not meeting this moment at all, through cowardice or intentional complicity I'm not completely sure.
It's a corrupt patronage system out in the open, not actually "state control," it's major companies (oligarchs) willingly being controlled.
CBS doesn't "fear the FCC"... who didn't even have a rule. It's just open corruption.
The administration wants to signal what it wants to CBS, without actually doing anything that they could lose in court.
CBS wants to signal they are willing to help the administration by doing the censorship "out of fear" when really they just want a friendly relationship with the administration.
It's exactly the way oligarchs will give patronage to maintain their position in the hierarchy where the leader gives the orders.
It's what happens in Russia. It's literally how the mob does shit: "I didn't tell anyone to pay me any bribe. I just said that I'm in need of money and I'm kind to my friends. They chose to pay me of their own volition."
The right has an extremely large chip on their shoulder when insisting that the their _more popular media outlets_ do not count as "mainstream media" because... reasons.
Fox news, who constantly tells it's listeners that it's #1 in the world for news, also lambasts "mainstream media". After bragging their the most mainstream of mainstream
The FCC opened a probe on The View[0] for hosting Talarico. They haven't made a rule change, but they're definitely acting as if the rules already say what they want it to say.
Already in 2026, Colbert has hosted Senator Jon Ossoff and Governor Josh Shapiro who are both up for re-election this year. Why no probe in those cases?
This whole fight is about something called the "bona fides news exception." Basically, in 2006 the FCC ruled that late night interviews were always bona fides news interviews (and therefore not subject to equal time), on January 21st FCC Chairman Brendan Carr wrote a letter suggesting (but not declaring) that the 2006 ruling was incorrect and might be revoked.
Separately, currently elected politicians are pretty much always considered to be bona fides interview subjects, even if they happen to be running for reelection, because e.g. the Governor of Pennsylvania expressing opinions is news.
If CBS lawyers wanted to fight and bring Talarico on, they would probably win- the letter is not actually changing the rule, and the FCC would have to defend the rule change in court and would probably lose. But the point is that CBS has determined to be working towards the Fuehrer, and wants to do so, and so they are doing what they are doing.
Cynicism warning, but my honest guess is they see that the Colbert problem will be solved in June and so don't feel the need to spend any effort on him.
Correct. CBS is now owned by Larry Ellison's son. They are big supporters of the current administration. This act, among others, shows that they are willing to silence dissenting voices on media properties they own.
This is exactly how effective censorship works. For example, what most people don't understand about Chinese censorship is that the foundation of their system is that everything is attributable to someone eventually. So they start by targeting anonymity. Then when something they don't like is published and gains traction, the originating party and the major distributors are punished -- sometimes very publicly. The chilling effect is that people will learn to self censor. Oh and they keep the rules really vague so you always err on the side of caution.
CBS self censoring is basically the same thing.
The Chinese government can then say "What censorship?" or "It's rare" and now the FCC can do the same.
Playing whack-a-mole is not a good strategy for censorship. The chilling effect of self censorship is the winning strategy.
The chilling effect is the entire point. An FCC source literally told CNN, "the threat is the point." CBS isn't being randomly skittish. Paramount needs regulatory approval for its WBD acquisition, paid $16 million to settle a Trump lawsuit right before needing FCC approval for the Skydance merger, and canceled Colbert days after he criticized that deal. ABC suspended Kimmel after FCC threats. The FCC opened an investigation into The View just for having Talarico on.
And yes, Larry Ellison is a hardcore Trump supporter, but even if he weren't, this is how every network is behaving. Disney's Bob Iger is a Democrat and ABC still paid Trump and suspended Kimmel. When the government holds regulatory leverage over your business, "obeying in advance" isn't cowardice you can blame on the network, it's the intended mechanism of state pressure.
And this is a good thing, if you think that the billionaires running large businesses like CNN will generally act in their own selfish self-interest and that they need the government to hold regulatory leverage over their businesses in order to make them act in a socially-beneficial way.
But then you have to trust the government that manages the regulatory agency to act in a socially-beneficial; and only at most half the US population does at any given time.
> "obeying in advance" isn't cowardice you can blame on the network, it's the intended mechanism of state pressure.
No, there is no reason to absolve the agency of anybody with power (eg money and platform). The ownership class is kowtowing to Trump because they think regardless of whatever happens, they personally will be relatively fine as long as they go along. And they are probably right, even as Trump leads our country off a cliff. But that doesn't mean they get to escape judgement for being cowards.
That's not what I said. I said it isn't cowardice you can blame on the network instead of the FCC, which is what the parent comment did by saying the fault lies "more with CBS." CBS deserves blame. The administration wielding the threat deserves more.
Resistance requires an active, costly choice. The entire structure of public companies, fiduciary duty, short-term shareholder pressure, regulatory dependency, incentivizes compliance. That's not an excuse, it's the point. The system is designed so that capitulation is the path of least resistance, which is exactly why the blame has to center on whoever is exploiting that structure rather than on each individual institution for failing to be heroic. The firms and universities that did fight back (Perkins Coie, Harvard, Jenner & Block) won in court every time, while the ones that cut deals (Columbia, Paul Weiss, Brown) gave up money and autonomy for nothing the fighters didn't get for free. But fighting required leaders willing to accept real personal and institutional risk. Expecting that as the default rather than addressing the coercion creating the dilemma is how you end up with a system where everyone folds and nobody's responsible except the victims.
Of course, increasing the cost of capitulation is one place where consumers actually have power. Disney suffered 1.7 million streaming cancellations after suspending Kimmel, and Kimmel was back on the air within five days. That works. But notice what it required: massive organized public pressure aimed at the company and political pressure aimed at the FCC. Not just finger-wagging for being cowards.
> That's not what I said. I said it isn't cowardice you can blame on the network instead of the FCC, which is what the parent comment did by saying the fault lies "more with CBS." CBS deserves blame. The administration wielding the threat deserves more.
That's fair, this lines up with where I am mostly coming from - we shouldn't absolve blame from one group by focusing it on another.
But your second paragraph then goes on to do that? We're dealing with a societal attack where the fascists are trying to topple all of our societal institutions into a self-perpetuating low-trust low-authority state. If they achieve in doing that, then the Schelling point becomes to not resist as it will be costly and ineffective. But the point we're at now, we should all be pushing to resist the fascists to prevent them flipping the dynamic.
Practically, you're overstating what fiduciary duty to shareholders requires. I'd also say you're also overstating the regulatory threat, as you went on to point out how the organizations who have resisted the fascists haven't really lost out by doing so. You can also apply this argument to politicians like Congress, judges, etc who don't want to rock the boat. But surely it's not sensible to absolve them!
It's not just a matter of "finger-wagging", rather it's pointing out that if the people with outsized power just go along rather than standing up to this, then they're in the same exact camp as the hardcore openly-Trump fascists. Maybe that camp will be lucrative if the fascists do succeed at conquering our society, or maybe they can be stripped of their stature and power when they fail. A lifetime ban on being a corporate officer or board member for abusing that position to try to overthrow the United States wouldn't be out of line.
I was thinking about this a bit in the context of that "March for Billionaires". Why did that seem preposterous? Because billionaires don't deserve a gold star simply for being billionaires! Rather they get credit for what they do with that wealth to help our society. And no, the value they created by growing a business doesn't count - rather when you get that level of wealth, you can use it to move back up the gradient of market optimization, and fix the problems we have that come from being stuck in local minima. If they want recognition and goodwill, this is the work they have to do. And if the poor billionaires really can't think of anything useful to do with that wealth, there is some really low hanging fruit like ending food poverty in the US.
This is arguably worse, isn't it? The administration gets to say that it was the network's own decision and that they had no role in it. Taking over news and public media with the help of oligarch buddies is much more effect than a public spat with them.
Nah the fault lies with the American public for talking the freedom/exceptionalism talk, social projection of grit and ruggedness while the reality is learned helplessness and codependency
democracies past, present, and future inevitably crumble as the need to cater to the demos grows greater and greater with every generation of voters.
i know this is a contrivance but nevertheless: we don't consult the entire hospital how to treat my heart condition yet we accept on face value that obeying the vagaries of the hoi polloi is the best way to decide who controls the levers of power in civil society.
duh. why is this always phrased as if the populace is unaccountable for the very existence of these elites? why is it always assumed that these unaccountable elites are better held in check by the farce of democracy than a proud genuine elite in place of the ignoble “””elite”””?
the people get what they deserve. if democracy was a functional system of government then by its own underlying assumptions the citizenry right now would be shooting, bombing, & stabbing these so-called elites. But we are held in subjugation as a result of our own fealty. It is a choice.
Having grown up rural, fixing farm equipment, rebuilding cars, which propelled me towards a degree in electrical engineering (and after that an MSc in math), my colleagues the last 20 years have watched a lot of TV and played all the video games but can barely bake a potato.
"Unaccountable elites" are enabled by know-nothings in corporate management, software engineering teams, accounting, HR "just following orders".
The lack of muscle memory to be self sufficient keeps people in their lane and unable to look away, fix their own stuff, make their own stuff.
When labor knows nothing but just following orders leadership is empowered to build and fill gulags; what are the people going to do? Resist en masse? Not when they are addicted to GrubHub delivery of Subway.
And the most surprising thing about this particular story to me is that a lot of people (here in the comments) seem surprised about it.
I don't mean to normalize this, because it isn't normal, but anyone surprised by this hasn't been paying attention over the past year+, this didn't arrive out of the blue.
My understanding (please correct me if it's incorrect) is that the "worst-case" scenario for a broadcaster is that they may have to upload a record of political air time to a public file.
If an opposing candidate sees this, they can then request equal air time from that broadcaster.
The rule is in place so that one party or viewpoint can't dominate broadcast media. That's a good thing right?
The rule change here is that traditionally "bona fide" news programs have been, by default, issued an exception to the rule. That has spawned a bunch of "pseudo-news" shows that have also been claiming this exception. Here, the FCC is now saying "hey, you don't just automatically get granted an exception to the rule and get to call yourself a bona fide news program if you're not actually one"". That seems completely reasonable to me.
Broadcast media is held to this FCC standard because they are granted a monopoly for a broadcast spectrum, and it isn't physically possible for a competitor to broadcast on the same spectrum. Streaming etc... doesn't need to follow these rules.
I do think it's wrong that talk radio doesn't seem to be held to the same standard, though.
The worst case scenario now is not limited by process and law. Compliance with politics is taken into consideration for all government business. For examples, see the executive orders blacklisting specific law firms, the withholding of funds to states or areas that vote Democratic, and the threat of investigation into a network after a host said something the President didn't like.
The worst case scenario for a broadcaster is that the FCC commissioner will fabricate an excuse to illegally yank their license, which both he and his boss have explicitly threatened to do to any broadcaster which won't agree to stop criticizing Donald Trump. I agree that one could imagine a reasonable system of broadcast regulation where opinionated talk shows don't host political candidates, but that's not what's going on here.
Everything I've seen is that is specifically what's going on, do you have different information?
The only threat to pulling a license would be if they didn't comply with the FCC rule change, that we've both agreed is reasonable, correct?
Do you have specific examples of the administration threatening to pull a license due to criticism? If that's the case, I'd certainly be vehemently against such action, just as I was when the government illegally acted to suppress and censor alternate viewpoints during covid.
When the FCC chair originally announced he was pursuing this (https://time.com/7318743/abc-kimmel-the-view-brendan-carr-fc...), he was pretty clear that he was doing so in pursuit of the President's directive to punish broadcast channels that say things he doesn't like. Trump himself was pretty explicit that the ultimate goal is pulling their broadcast licenses and his subordinates should fabricate an excuse.
As you say, the FCC has declined to pursue talk radio programs over this issue, even though they're clearly subject to the rule in principle. That's not a mistake, it's because those programs push viewpoints the President favors so he doesn't want to punish them.
Thank you for the link and the concrete reference, I hadn't seen that before.
I think the article and the video summaries I've seen of that interview are a little deceptively edited, but the idea appears to be the same.
Apparently, it's illegal to knowingly broadcast false information [1] within certain guidelines, and that can indeed cause a license revocation:
"The FCC prohibits broadcasting false information about a crime or a catastrophe if the broadcaster knows the information is false and will cause substantial “public harm” if aired. FCC rules specifically say that the “public harm must begin immediately, and cause direct and actual damage to property or to the health or safety of the general public, or diversion of law enforcement or other public health and safety authorities from their duties.”
The FCC chair referenced this law in response to Jimmy Kimmel claiming that the Charlie Kirk shooter was "maga":
“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,”
While this was demonstrably untrue, and it was widely known to be untrue at the time, I agree that it doesn't appear to meet the FCC standard I quoted above.
I actually find the FCC rule itself a bit disturbing, as it seems to position the government as an arbiter of truth.
It isn't a new problem, Jefferson struggled with how to deal with it too [2]
"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle"
What do you suggest as a solution? Should false information be ok to broadcast with a FCC license? Who gets to determine whether it's false?
> What do you suggest as a solution? Should false information be ok to broadcast with a ... license?
This seems like begging the question. The issue here obviously isn't truth vs untruth, it is fealty to the regime vs opposition to the regime. All the evidence points in this direction, and there isn't a better case yet made in the opposite.
Witness the example cited above: right-wing talk radio, famous for spreading untruthful info and agreeing with the regime, is let off scot-free. Or how the regime itself spread untruths about Alex Pretti after they killed him. That categorically debunks any purported "truth vs untruth" decision criteria and seems to confirm the fealty vs opposition decision criteria.
Fun thought experiment: re-read this situation, but imagine it took place in russia, by putin's hand. Like seriously, what oppressive regime in modern history HASN'T had some variation of silencing the opposition "for broadcasting 'false information'"?:
> On the morning of March 4, the last remaining independent news outlet in Russia — the award-winning Novaya Gazeta — announced the end of its reporting on the war in Ukraine in response to Russian government demands.
> A new law that bans the “dissemination of knowingly false information” about the Russian armed forces — and carries up to a 15-year penalty — was the final blow. [0]
This is a terrifying level of chilling effects. What are we to consider about our nation at this point? "Free speech" has long been a term with contested definitions, but this certainly sounds like its death in every sense.
The shift from democracy to dictatorship isn't a cliff that a lot of people imagine it to be. It's a gradual slide with no abrupt changes in between. If you're waiting for a signal, you'll get it at the bottom of the ramp.
Seriously this is why people use to take every government transgression and overreach so seriously. Now multiple times a day it's something that would have been a straight SCANDAL in the past.
It's happening right now y'all because it was always happening and will always happen without constant push back.
If CBS were headed by someone with gumption and less willingness to kowtow to the government, they could resist this pressure and still be fine. Worst case scenario, a merger would get rejected and they would be targeted by some spurious lawsuits. Going out of business is not a realistic risk.
What is a risk, however, is non-optimal shareholder value. We live in a world where the stock price is more important than anything else, including doing the right thing.
For CVS the stock price isn't the driver. It's owned to 77% by the Ellison family, who certainly want to make a buck, but also want political influence and control.
How is CBS a victim here? They have shown by their actions (Bari Weiss, the 60 Minutes neutering, etc) they are fully backing what Larry Ellison and Sons want them to pump out. This isn't victim blaming, it's pointing out a complicit conspirator.
If you give in and comply without a fight, are you actually a victim or are you actually a collaborator? CBS is controlled by Ellison, which makes this look a lot like collaboration.
> On the morning of July 27, 1943, I was told that, according to radio reports, fascism had collapsed and Mussolini was under arrest. When my mother sent me out to buy the newspaper, I saw that the papers at the nearest newsstand had different titles. Moreover, after seeing the headlines, I realized that each newspaper said different things. I bought one of them, blindly, and read a message on the first page signed by five or six political parties — among them the Democrazia Cristiana, the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, the Partito d’Azione, and the Liberal Party.
> Until then, I had believed that there was a single party in every country and that in Italy it was the Partito Nazionale Fascista. Now I was discovering that in my country several parties could exist at the same time. Since I was a clever boy, I immediately realized that so many parties could not have been born overnight, and they must have existed for some time as clandestine organizations.
What I think is fascinating here in this case isn't just the suppression of any old free speech, it's trying to hide the presence of political options.
Reminder that the most reliable way to prevent the rise of the far right is to implement robust safety nets and low inequality, to reduce status anxiety and grievance.
Support for such measures (welfare, healthcare, unionization, high taxes etc) is usually low among Americans.
That is not a reminder, that is just, like, your opinion, man. Many countries with robust safety nets in Europe have far right parties rising in popularity significantly or already in the government/ruling coalition (Italy, Sweden, Germany, etc.).
That's why the rightward shift is unavoidable and corporate Dems like Talarico only further this shift into fascism. Even if liberals win it only means the next right-wing candidate is going to be even more extreme than the last.
People think that's crazy talk, even though it's happening right in front of their faces since Obama, we're cooked.
AOC has just improves her ranking big time in the last few days. If she keeps this up she 'maybe' she has a shot at the White House (maybe, its going to be a long two years).
Think about it: A bernie Sanders type candidate not taking corporate PAC money is currently in the running for the White House! We saw with Mamdani they will throw everything at her. Will she falter? Hope not but feeling better than I have felt in a while.
I'd really like to see a more centrist progressive in the White House in 2028. American politics is a pendulum. We should hope to dampen its amplitude, not intensify it. If we swing that far left, we'll swing even further right in 2032 or 2036.
This is the problem with a 2-party system. There's an implicit bias that the truth is democratically in the middle. But in this case, the right wing doesn't know how to solve its own problems.
The US right wing doesn't do "middle class". It does tax cuts for the rich and hunger games for the rest. If you pander to them, things will just get worse and the far right will surge even more ... which is probably what they want.
Obvious question: How is she going to get anything past the gridlocked Congress and hostile Supreme Court? Obama often couldn't after the midterms, and it's much worse this time.
We're seeing with Mamdani, who was elected with a massive mandate, that he can get things done despite a hostile state government that clearly didn't want him to get elected. Obama had a mandate, yet he didn't use it. Looking back, we should have seen this coming when he was mentored by people like Joe Liberman, and we immediately saw the results when he was tested in one of his first goals (healthcare). He dropped the public option immediately and implemented a Heritage Foundation plan(Yeah the Project2025 heritage foundation).
You can do a lot when you have a mandate and you are determined to get things done. How to determine if a candidate is like this? After many cycles of election in my experience there is only one reliable barometer. The only determining factor seems to be money in politics. If your candidate has corporate contributions, you can pretty much guarantee that nothing is going to get done. On the other side, we've seen non‑corporate‑backed candidates actually try, at the very least.
Now, talking about the actual specifics of how you get past a gridlocked Congress and a hostile Supreme Court: with the advantage of being at the top of the party, you have the ability to whip your party into falling in line. We saw this with FDR. He wasn't pulling any punches. If someone got in his way, including the Supreme Court, he made their lives miserable. One of the reasons bernie people feel fond of him.
A lot of these politicians are only there for the corporate donations and in hopes of a job afterwards. So a very low‑hanging fruit is to go after the corporations that are donating to the politician who is holding things up. Make the public aware that this SOB is the one holding up plans that are very popular. Do what Trump did: go into that person's district and get his voters to realize that this is the person that's holding everything up.
For example, paid family‑leave polls show ~71% overall support, including Republicans, Independents, and Democrats. Yet when Biden campaigned on it and then immediately dropped it at the first sign, it showed that he didn't even try.
A lot can be done if the candidate actually tries.
FDR was hugely successful, but part of the reason we still don't have universal healthcare is conservative southern democrats decided it was a threat to segregation. FDR tried to take them out, but couldn't.
In contrast the right does whatever Trump says, no matter how many kids he rapes. They have an idea where the country should be in 50 years, whatever the cost. I haven't seen that level of discipline from the left. I hope it's there now post-Trump, but it certainly wasn't there during the Obama midterms.
Last time it took a huge depression to get people to start working together (FDR's socialism lite).
I think part of the problem is capitalism itself. Most US companies are run like tiny little fascist dictatorships, which is a great training ground for the real thing. It doesn't socialize people to cooperate. Contrast eg Norway, where businesses operate inside a formal 3-way agreement (Trepartssamarbeidet) between the government, employers associations, and trade unions.
The prob has always been the FCC didnt recognize the internet as a Broadcast Medium. Which it is. Anyone can get their message out to a billion people if the algos deem its going to make the platform money. This means the platform support 1 to All messaging ie Broadcast. Thanks to Claude Shannon we know if everyone is given free broadcast capability like giving everyone a mic connected to the same sound system, without a coordination mechanism we get massive noise. How do ppl react to not being heard? They shout louder and louder or keep repeating their message. Amplifying the noise even more. Thats exactly whats happening on the internet today. We had the same issue with radio back in the day when anyone could stick tower on their roof and start broadcasting. This is why Spectrum gets licensed to solve the interference and noise problem. Americans are fed from birth that Free Speech is a right. But no one tells people before the internet Broadcast was not free. You either owned a newspaper, radio station, TV/sat spectrum to broadcast. There is a serious category error happening because the FCC didnt recognize the platforms are really broadcast mediums.
The difference is the airwaves are a limited transmission method. A broadcast medium is not regulated because it's dangerous, it's regulated because it's scarce.
None of the statements in your comment support the idea that the internet is a broadcast medium in the sense relevant to the FCC. It's a medium made entirely of 1-1 connections.
Note that newspapers are an older technology than radio, and they function in exactly the same way that the internet does, and there's never been a question of whether they are secretly "broadcast media".
Recall it was the same lawnmower^W Ellison-owned CBS that last minute pulled a 60 Minutes report on CECOT. They didn't blame that one on the government.
Given that, I believe the higher ups at CBS wanted this to happen, but are colluding with the executive branch or misrepresenting the situation to shift responsibility.
>Many people in or related to the current administration have spoken in favor of free speech, which feels quite ironic.
Indeed. Our government, like most governments across the world in 2026, has moved way beyond the naive notion of "free speech." Talking about it now is either nostalgia, or lies
I think corporate media is mostly lost. We need to build something new. Pay attention to things like The Bulwark or Liberal Currents. It's really early days for all that, so who knows where things go, but people like Bezos would rather destroy media outlets than sell them to someone who would allow them to speak out against the regime.
I have been The Bulwark listener/subscriber since day one. Those people are keeping me sane.
That said, their day will come. Just like in Russia, after the low-hanging fruit is cut, the state will come for The Bulwark and Steve Jobs's widow, because The Atlantic is going be get increasingly annoying.
This is doomerism, and I get the pull of it, but I have been trying to avoid it lately, because at the end of the day, it is doing the work of the fascists for them. It is "complying in advance" to prematurely admit defeat. We are not Russia.
People will be accusing others of TDS even when Trump is well into his 3rd term. If I listed half the things that happened in the last year, you would have called me "hysterical".
The US government is telling a comedian who he can and cannot interview.
Russia has a pretty professional riot police that does not pop off cannons for funzies. Russian corruption has to be exposed. It's not out in the open - Putin is not excepting gold bar bribes on live TV.
I'm not saying things are fine. Not at all. It's a really tough line to navigate and I struggle with it myself. If you go around telling everyone we're doomed - DOOMED! Then it's not really helping, just as if you go around saying things are fine and everything will be back to normal in a few years.
What was normal is gone and it'll take the rest of my life to fix things if we're lucky because the damage they've done is generational.
But fix it we can and must, and they aren't actually all that popular. They're even underwater in polling on immigration.
Liberal Currents is great. Bulwark is too, but I want to remind people that they are a center-right publication. Yes they hate the hell out of the infernal despicable corrupt sodden actions now, and are quite eloquent & good calling for some moral character & values.
Sure, this is correct. But... these are strange times. I'm old enough to remember Bill Kristol the neocon from the Iraq war days and the other day he was quoting Chuck Schumer on Blue Sky saying "Abolish ICE!". Me from 2002 would have really struggled with that one.
They'll respond to a loss of business or reputational damage.
Reputational damage is a less useful tool today, when so many of the people in power at CBS have personal reasons for wanting to curry favor with the administration. So, loss of business: simply boycotting or changing the channel can help.
And eventually, future calculations from CBS about whether they have more to lose by suppressing the story or airing it will favor the latter. Or so few people will still watch CBS that their business fails. Either way, it's a win.
I know things may look bleak, but America has a large, loud, well-funded contingent of free-speech advocates. As soon as Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and Thomas Chatterton Williams hear about this, there'll be hell to pay!
"In an emailed statement, CBS said: “THE LATE SHOW was not prohibited by CBS from broadcasting the interview with Rep. James Talarico. 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."
It's a terrible look for CBS. At the same time, I find it unbelievable that they don't fire Colbert. This is obvious gross insubordination, and he is an employee.
His final show is coming in May, and I'm sure that they can expect Colbert to continue to embarrass them (as the spineless sycophants they are) every week until then. It's a tremendous self own.
Colbert is not a CBS employee. He runs Spartina Productions which, along with Busboy Productions, produces The Late Show for CBS. It's a coordinated project of the three companies, he's not their employee and likely can't just cancel the show except for very specific circumstances.
Really? CBS's lawyers cited the equal time rule, which only applies to broadcasts sent over limited airwaves. I think the equal time rule doesn't actually apply in this case (because why couldn't CBS provide equal time in the near future? who even requested equal time and was denied it?), but more relevantly the equal time rule does not apply to publishing the same interview over the internet instead of over the "air".
If you don't like a coworker questioning your behavior, maybe don't engage in questionable behavior;
If you just want them to do what you say unquestionably, maybe you should have been born during a time when slavery was more common;
If you are having trouble getting good output out of a direct report that previously has produced good output, chances are you are currently a failure of a boss; and if you use terms like "insubordination" instead of asking "what am I doing wrong?", you probably have pointy hair, too.
we'll need more facts but if there is substance to this then the reaction from Bari Weiss (now cbs news editor-in-chief and a long-time public advocate of free speech) and team will be interesting.
what i meant is this may be a good real world litmus test. i dont claim to know if there are differences or not between her word and actions - i have not followed her closely. but i always like 'tests' like this for heads of media orgs as free speech (Free Speech) imo needs to be the backbone of those orgs
Although apparently not a fan of Jimmy Kimmel as a comedian, her Free Press objected to his suspension. "... the FCC’s coercion undermines our most fundamental values"
"Centrist" is an utterly meaningless term, as the only thing it implies is not one of the two major-partisan extremists. You can call me a centrist, with my views being anchored in a libertarian perspective. Back a few decades ago when the major parties' Venn diagrams overlapped a bit more, you could call people at the intersection of the parties' authoritarian policies centrists. And as for Bari Weiss, you can can call her centrist because she will do the bidding of her employer regardless of which Party's administration they are currently bribing.
"Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower" includes not anthropomorphizing its individual parts, like the blades. Even when those blades are swapped out for new ones, re-sharpened, and put onto a different lawnmower.
Trump, while an objectively horrible person who belongs in prison for many distinct types of crime, is primarily a minstrel for people to hate on. While he is (unfortunately) a good first-pass litmus test for an individual's politics/intelligence, criticizing him is not really the same as critiquing all of the entrenched interests that installed and continue to enable him.
Will it? Weiss seems to understands her role here very well. Her competence at it is still in question but she is consistent. CBS is state media now, she'll say what she's expected to say.
"Didn't air" doesn't mean what you think it means. It means the interview didn't go over the airwaves via broadcast towers. The full interview is online, which thanks to the Streisand effect already has millions of views and therfore helped CBS in terms of funding. This can be seen as a 4D chess move by CBS. They'll certainly do this again if they're hitting millions of views.
It isn't. CBS is owned by the Ellisons, who are big Trump supporters. They are absolutely complicit in attempts to quash dissenting voices.
You're right that the Streisand effect is in play here, but it's not 4D chess. It's garden-variety incompetence, because the policy makers in the government are too old to see anything other than broadcast TV as the most valuable medium.
Comedians have a knack for succinctly expressing the truth:
> "Let's just call this what it is: Donald Trump's administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV because all Trump does is watch TV," Colbert joked.
Technically doesn't Trump also spend a lot of time golfing, and attending events where people praise Trump - admittedly for broadcast on TV but not necessarily while watching TV?
I see that it's become harder to track because the White House doesn't disclose what he's doing as much, but yeah, lots of golf still.
Sure, jokes are often technically incorrect while performing a directionally-correct summation of the truth of the matter.
But also, the few times I've been unfortunate enough to have to go to mega golf venues, the clubhouses generally have TVs prominently all over the place. So there is quite the demographic overlap.
The youtube video currently has ~1.4 million views. Colbert averages 2 to 3 million television viewers per night, plus some number of youtube views that I haven't looked up the stats for.
That is, this interview has been seen by fewer people than it would have, had it been on television.
3.1 million views as the sun goes down here in Tennessee. I'll concede that's not significantly "surpass" but it's still approximately equal, and may have been more people than saw the actual broadcast.
It is a great illustration of how transition to the authoritarianism happens (I've seen it happen in Russia in 2000s). At first you don't even need censorship, you just need to scare owners of channels/newspapers enough, so that they self-censor.
Fear is the enforcement mechanism because it can't be challenged in court.
It is long past time for everyone in tech to take a long hard look at the current situation and stop doing anything that financially benefits Musk, Ellison, or Thiel.
Chilling effect has a long history of being well considered as unconstitutional harm in the courts
https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/chilling-effect/
A history of anything in the courts doesn’t seem to be given too much consideration nowadays.
Who would have standing to challenge this though?
There is no "who", once stabilizing institutions 'fall' the only remaining option is social pressure (which can come in various forms) but that does require a critical mass as it's very much reliant on network effects.
I went to a tech founder conference recently and it was quite jarring given the current state of startups to see no lecture or discussion of ethics of products people should be building. It was all focused on demands of PE and delivering profit, no matter the moral cost, not a minute to stop and get a broader systemic reality check. “It turns profit, it must be good”. Not sure how we collectively combat these dominant forces of privacy violation, attention demands, and mass exploitation.
It kind of explains quite a lot of behavior of the Russian government like low level aggression in the west, interesting ways of killing people and the like. Maybe also the Epstein files - he was in touch with Moscow a lot, and the behavior of Trump who seems pretty scared by that stuff.
Indeed. Mark Zuckerberg has long said the administration pressured Facebook to censor COVID-related content, including satire and humor. And now the administration has ended public funding for NPR and PBS. Chilling effect
It goes back even further, just see the 1941 FCC “Mayflower Decision” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayflower_doctrine
Pressured, as in asked them to do something, which they ignored. Possibly problematic, but the elephant in the room is Trump directly threatening to put Mark Zuckerberg in prison for life: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/28/trump-zuckerberg-el...
> asked them to do something, which they ignored.
They certainly did not ignore the request [0] (which came at the same time as the FTC were suing Meta for monopoly).
Hundreds of millions of posts were taken down or suppressed.
0 - https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/biden-administration-repeate...
That article does say they ignored it:
> In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn't agree. Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions, including COVID-19-related changes we made to our enforcement in the wake of this pressure.
You're misinterpreting that sentence. It's not that they never agreed. It's that sometimes they disagreed, and they got pressured harder when they did.
Did you read the first two paragraphs?
> In a letter to the US Congress, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has alleged that the US government under Joe Biden "repeatedly pressured" Meta to censor certain content on its platforms.
> In the letter addressed to US House of Representatives, Mr Zuckerberg said that the platform had to make some changes, that "with the benefit of hindsight and new information," they won't make today. He added that he regrets not being "more outspoken" about it.
We know for a fact that Meta had removed over 20 million Corona posts by April 2021 alone [0]. Some of those were genuine misinformation - but a hell of a lot were legitimate and important questions from reputable sources. It's simply not reasonable to believe this wasn't due to pressure.
0 - https://www.cnet.com/news/social-media/facebook-removed-more...
> Mark Zuckerberg has long said the administration pressured Facebook to censor COVID-related content, including satire and humor.
He said this once and did not describe the pressure. In that same letter, he said that the company didn't agree and government officials "expressed a lot of frustration." There were no threats of fines or lawsuits.
When you say "the administration", it's worth noting you're describing actions by two different administrations. Both political parties have tried to silence dissenting views through soft censorship.
>Both political parties have tried to silence dissenting views through soft censorship
You're right, thanks. If I could edit I would
Censoring an interview with a political opponent is a far cry from spreading disinformation that is counter to broadly accepted medical advice during a pandemic with the intent of harming the general population.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
More to the point… the same president was in power during when COVID information was supposedly being censored, and today when political opposition is supposedly being censored.
So OPs argument that it’s both parties doing it falls flat on its face.
Sure, but that's the straw-man version of the argument. During COVID, there was aggressive censorship of _everything_ related to the virus that didn't exactly toe the party line. Satire, comedy, and truly live questions (like the weak version of the lab leak hypothesis, that SARS-CoV-2 accidentally escaped from a lab into human population) were censored alongside the obviously false, harmful, and misleading takes about drinking bleach and Ivermectin.
Both science and democracy require active conversation that permits dissenting viewpoints and challenges to the accepted wisdom. Once we have an organization deciding what "the truth" is, we're doomed to stagnation and extremely vulnerable to organizational capture by self-motivated people.
In other words, once you build the political, legal, and technical machinery of censorship, you're half way to having it co-opted by people with anti-social intents.
Weird, cause I remember there being a very lengthy and involved debate about COVID. I remember hearing a ton of dissent and disagreement with the government positions... almost like... they weren't being censored. There are hundreds of thousands of discussions about the lab leak hypothesis, and there were hundreds of those discussions at the time. There was also plenty of conflicting advice given, including "injecting bleach" which was advice given by the then president, and ivermectin, which was advice given by 100s of online podcasters.
Even today, you can find like, hundreds of articles of dissenting opinions that were posted at the time of covid. In fact, no one quite yelled "I'm being silenced" as loudly as covid deniers who were demanding to share untested hypotheses.
What I can't find, is any articles that were pulled-from-the-air for going against the then-administration's opinions. But if you have them, please share. Importantly, they need to not be pulled for "false, harmful, or misleading takes."
> once you build the political, legal, and technical machinery of censorship, you're half way to having it co-opted
Indeed, my original post ("Both political parties have tried to silence dissenting views") was simply about censorship being bad no matter which political party does it. I hate that the current administration is doing it. I hated it when the prior administration did it. If we can't acknowledge that both parties did it, then when the parties switch again, there will still be secret soft censorship happening. It's a moral hazard to reflexively discount when a side I may agree with does something wrong.
It's getting increasingly harder to point out when both parties are wrong without people assuming it's a back-handed defense of the other party.
> During COVID, there was aggressive censorship of _everything_ related to the virus that didn't exactly toe the party line.
Not by the government. This was by companies that wanted their customers not to die, so they could make money.
Zuckerberg says the White House pressured Facebook to 'censor' some COVID-19 content during the pandemic: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/zuckerberg-says-the-wh...
> "The United States government pressured Twitter to elevate certain content and suppress other content about Covid-19 and the pandemic... Take, for example, Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Kulldorff often tweeted views at odds with U.S. public health authorities ... Kulldorff’s statement was an expert’s opinion—one that happened to be in line with vaccine policies in numerous other countries. Yet it was deemed “false information” by Twitter moderators merely because it differed from CDC guidelines."
How Twitter Rigged the Covid Debate: https://www.thefp.com/p/how-twitter-rigged-the-covid-debate
"Pressured." They merely suggested that it was better for the country and for business, and most of the companies agreed. There were no threats of fines or lawsuits, and none were levied.
> There were no threats of fines or lawsuits
Weren't there huge monopoly cases being furthered against Meta, Twitter and TikTok at that time? And more action against other major tech companies
If I'm threatening you over your 'possible' monopoly with one hand, and 'politely' asking you to censor millions of stories with the other - are those things completely unrelated? Or is there possible an implied message there?
A mafioso will never tell you straight-up that they're threatening and extorting you. But if you look between the lines even a little bit you can discern the message.
(Sometimes the person delivering that message isn't even aware of the threat they're sending; afaik it's entirely possible that Lina Khan was completely genuine with her push.)
> and none were levied.
Well everyone did what they were 'politely asked', didn't they. Meta alone removed or suppressed well over a hundred million posts.
> Or is there possible an implied message there?
None of these antitrust cases were dropped for doing what was in their mutual interest. You're grasping at straws.
> Well everyone did what they were 'politely asked
Zuckerberg said Meta didn't do everything they were asked.
> None of these antitrust cases were dropped for doing what was in their mutual interest.
I'm not understanding either what you're claiming or why you believe it. Keep in mind that I don't believe in always taking what the government says at face value.
> You're grasping at straws.
Why would I be desperate? I've no skin in this game, beyond a general wish not to have legitimate and important speech suppressed and censored.
> Zuckerberg said Meta didn't do everything they were asked.
They didn't do everything, they say (did they ever say what they refused to do?), but they did a lot. As did Twitter. We know this for a fact.
Unfortunately, reasonable views from experts like Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School and Jay Bhattacharya Professor of Medicine at Stanford were also suppressed. Kulldorff only responded to a question saying: "COVID vaccines are important for older high-risk people and their care-takers. Those with prior natural infection do not need it. Nor children." Which is correct, mainstream epidemiology and was the government guidance in the most countries at the time.
https://undark.org/2024/01/08/covid-misinformation-censorshi...
How Twitter Rigged the Covid Debate: https://www.thefp.com/p/how-twitter-rigged-the-covid-debate
> views from experts like Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School and Jay Bhattacharya Professor of Medicine at Stanford were also suppressed
It turns out that when you have millions of doctors (or scientists) in the world, at least some of them are going to say things that go against scientific consensus. This does not mean they're correct.
Here are 2 more examples of people saying things:
> [Kulldorff's] declaration was widely rejected, and was criticized as being unethical and infeasible by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization. Francis S. Collins, NIH director, called him a "fringe epidemiologist". [0]
The lesson here is, if you're cherry picking individuals, rather than going with peer-reviewed scientific consensus, you're liable to be blown way off-course at some point. Personality cults are bad no matter who it is.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Kulldorff
No hes not.
He's describing the same administration in two different terms. Mark has no problems lying to people that Biden administration sued Meta (it was Trump's [1]) and individuals like Joe Rogan have no problems not calling him out on it.
Trump was president in 2019, 2020. Covid starts in 2019. It's his administration that the twitter files is talking about when they mention censorship. It's his administration that started the big tech lawsuits.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTC_v._Meta
It is incredible to me that "Trump was president in 2020" appears to have been memory holed in all discussion of authoritarian response to covid.
This seems like a tenuous connection at best. The Biden admin were actually sued for their relationship with social media companies. The suit failed but the conclusion was still that the administration was involved in pushing social media companies to take specific actions. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/court-cases/murthy-v-...
There are also correspondence about moderation right after Biden was elected from his admin. So he's not blameless here. https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/115561/documents/...
Personally I don't care, but we should at least be factual in criticism.
> The Biden admin were actually sued for their relationship with social media companies. The suit failed but the conclusion was still that the administration was involved in pushing social media companies to take specific actions. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/court-cases/murthy-v-...
That's an misleading description of the "conclusion" (and incorrect if by "involvement" or "pushing" you meant unconstitutional behavior). The conclusion of Murthy v. Missouri is that the plaintiffs lacked standing to seek a preliminary injunction against the federal government's (under the Biden administration) requests/"demands" to social media companies to remove users' speech [1]. Why was there no standing? Because the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate a minimum of evidence that the Biden administration had coerced or threatened social media companies to censor users' speech [1]:
> To establish standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will suffer an injury that is traceable to a Government defendant and redressable by the injunction they seek. Because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to seek a preliminary injunction.
Or rather, the plaintiffs did not demonstrate sufficient evidence that, in the period leading up to the original lawsuits, the social media companies' decisions to remove the relevant speech mentioned by the Biden administration had been anything other than the social media companies' voluntary choices.
[1] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/603/23-411/#tab-...
If you actually read the case the evidence is clear that the government was giving direction to social media sites. Which is what the comment I was replying to was about. Read the dissenting opinion.
I think you're coming at this from the angle of the court is always correct, and not actually examining the case itself.
"actually read the case" includes reading the judgement ("the conclusion"), which overrules your personal judgement (and mine, whatever it might've been).
> Read the dissenting opinion
Dissenting opinions are often irrelevant, equivalent to a loser shouting into the void because they lost. By definition, dissenting opinions are incorrect, because to be correct, they would need to be shared by the majority, in which case they would be in the non-dissenting opinion, if anywhere.
> I think you're coming at this from the angle of the court is always correct
By definition, the court is always "correct" unless contradicted by a constitutionally higher authority. In particular, a court consensus of 9 co-equal judges is more correct than a subset of 1 or 2 of those same judges. And while I'm sure you're a nice, competent person, perhaps even a lawyer, the court is more correct than you here.
They do know that. They are disingenuously attempting to equate asking a platform to remove disinformation with using government resources to threaten a platform into silence.
Does this illustration include the law that was passed an about century ago? Or does time start at a different point in the horizon?
Didn’t Putin then run for a third term and because he corrupted the voting machines, remain in power? He started having dissenters abducted by plainclothes masked men in vans for the fear factor. Quietly, dissent stopped and everyone learned that when you go against Putin, you face defenestration.
My question is are there any historical parallels for the slide toward authoritarianism being reversed without a major catastrophe/war.
There were many "ground rules" in American society and politics that Trump has just proved can be thrown completely out the window, and it feels like there is no unringing that bell.
Brazil and South Korea offer two relatively recent examples
I think the FCC is just enforcing the rule that you have to give equal time to all candidates. The late night talk shows used to get around this policy by using the exception given to news agencies. The FCC is just saying that the late night talk shows aren't really "news" shows. Probably should have been doing this the whole time. They also noted that it would not be a problem on cable or internet broadcasts. Not saying it's not politically motivated though.
Except that they haven't said that. They said they were "thinking"about it.
They evidently also don't apply this rule to talk radio, which is overwhelmingly conservative. Talk about putting your thumb on the scale.
Agreed. Although I could see making a case that a radio talk radio show might better satisfy a news format than an entertainment show.
The interview in YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiTJ7Pz_59A
Barbara Streisand
1.5M views
Now at over 3M
It's kind of ironic, so much drama all for a safe centrist corporate democrat. Although perhaps that's why it's such a big deal for liberals, it's oligarchical infighting. It's even more confusing that he's funded by the same billionaires that trump is.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/21/james-talarico-miri...
Not about being a democrat.
A man in seminary renounced christian nationalism. Ruling party wants to own the religion-party entanglement
I cheer on and have volunteered for progressive candidates before on the east coast. NYC keeps putting out rockstars. I guess its something about this diverse pressure cooker of a city? I don't know but they keep doing it.
You are talking about Texas, an also ran mess that has a lot of work to do. Lets put aside the fact that they love their unique flavors of voter suppression. At best, for now all we can hope is whichever nobody gets elected does not cause trouble for the party like Fetterman.
And lets be real, they will be gone once the heat dies down post Trump and the state flips back to Republican.
All states seem to be going towards an enlightenment towards the left but at wildy different rates. Progressives focusing on the coasts + the rust belt make sense as those states have a history of economic populism (and are swing states) whereas Texas might come around a long time from now once the oil companies decline enough and the modern company towns made by people like Musk fall apart like they always historically have. You need a trigger of extreme economic pain for the people to finally bite the bullet and try something new. Texas is not there yet. They have better cost of living and enough industry but they are definitely on the road to disaster in many areas.
Texas is an also ran mess? They love voter suppression?
Do you realize people can read what you post?
I'm sure the CBS political officer^W^Wombudsman advised against airing the interview:
https://www.npr.org/2025/09/12/nx-s1-5537152/cbs-news-elliso...
If only they could "slip on some tea"...
Weird how Larry Ellison manages to do this to everything he touches
If its any consolation, I think CBS news will fail miserably. The new captains are at the helm of a sinking ship, which has been taking on water for decades.
Maybe a cynic will say "this was the plan", but if it was, its not a very good plan? If anything, tech executives benefited enormously from their opponents being overly attached to legacy media communication strategies. When Bezos kills the Post or Ellison kills CBS, the talent doesnt magically disappear.
Not Larry, David his son. For some reason people want to keep pretending that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree though. Seen multiple puff pieces about how David just loves movies so much and his dad is the political one.
It's always daddy's money funding these projects
“They were careless people, David, Megan, and Larry- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
Rough spot in time to be:
- Once print newspapers were no longer a thing, even local news outlets are struggling to stay alive, and are resulting to sensationalism and entertainment as news - Corporate sponsors retain a huge influence in mainstream news (or have outright purchased it and use it for partisan politics). - "Social" media resides in (you guessed it) corporate-owned walled gardens. - Even those willing to speak out are being targeted by federal agencies
Wondering where others are finding great places to learn what's going on, what's actually relevant to me, and what I can actually do about it.
This is just an opinion.
Follow trusted journalists that have a history of superb journalism. You have to decide what is good for yourself. Also industry specific journalists for deeper insight into industry you care about. Many of the greats realize that all the news companies are sinking ships and are trying to establish their own thing before things completely collapse.
Focus on what each journalist specializes in and don't read too much into it when they report on topics that are not their forte (like Breaking points talking about AI). Many journalists stay in their lane but the groups covering all the news don't. I wish all journalists would stay in their lane but this is not the world we live in anymore.
For everything else that you are not willing to invest the time in, just accept you are not going to get great coverage.
My (typically far left) biases are comfortable with the following (these are not all far left)
Zeteo + dropsite for foreign middle east leaning coverage
Breaking points for daily news
Ken Klippenstein, Glenn greenwald for national security state/us government news. Klippenstein is more fun (when he gets an FBI email asking for info but also politely asking to not release it, he goes ahead and provides a download link). Greenwald feels a bit more dry.
Industry specific: autoline (youtube+website) for automotive, semianalysis for semi.
Again this is just my opinion, please decide for yourself.
There's a decent amount of non-profit news. I read NPR a lot and donate to them and Propublica. I think one of the big issues is advertising so news you actually pay for is a lot less likely to clickbait you.
Pablo Torre, the last true sports journalist in America.
Ah yes, NPR who famously doesn't advertise but just tells us about new products! That sponsor programs!
There's something "Very HN" to see a comment in a discussion about literal political censorship of the news media pointing out the horrifying hypocrisy in one of those media sources running... something sort of like advertisement.
Is this what kids mean when they tell people to touch grass? My generation would accuse you of having lost the plot.
Being forced to run advertisements because one political party in particular decided being unbeholden to corporate interests is a dangerous thing for a news organization to be.
Someone already mentioned NPR. BBC also does a great job reporting on US and international issues. New York Times still does strong reporting. And there are local sources too, such as the Colorado Sun, LA Times, SF Chronicle, or SF Gate (obviously I’m in the US).
The Guardian has a decent (enough) US bureau – I think an alum of the Intercept edits it. Of course it's not as thorough as an American-based outlet.
LA Times is in the process of getting Bezosed/Murdoched by their billionaire political activist owner.
Not all the legacy newspapers are failing; NYT is doing well. There are other news sources beyond legacy newspapers, broadcasters, local news, and social media. There are wire services (AP, Reuters), insider access journalism (Axios, Punchbowl, Semafor), public media (NPR, PBS, BBC), investigative journalism (ProPublica), digital-first outlets (Politico, Vox), and the growing wave of small, indie , creator-led media (YouTube, Substack, Patreon).
NYT as a news organization is, charitably, part of the controlled opposition. They are not meeting this moment at all, through cowardice or intentional complicity I'm not completely sure.
NYT is doing well because of Wordle and all other games; their journalism is a joke.
Why do you think I care about your journalism opinions?
Yeah, sorry. I should've said they're doing regime sanewashing the right way, to paraphrase Ezra Klein.
Smacks of state media control don't it?
It's a corrupt patronage system out in the open, not actually "state control," it's major companies (oligarchs) willingly being controlled.
CBS doesn't "fear the FCC"... who didn't even have a rule. It's just open corruption.
The administration wants to signal what it wants to CBS, without actually doing anything that they could lose in court.
CBS wants to signal they are willing to help the administration by doing the censorship "out of fear" when really they just want a friendly relationship with the administration.
It's exactly the way oligarchs will give patronage to maintain their position in the hierarchy where the leader gives the orders.
It's what happens in Russia. It's literally how the mob does shit: "I didn't tell anyone to pay me any bribe. I just said that I'm in need of money and I'm kind to my friends. They chose to pay me of their own volition."
We had little marco rubio (not capitalised on purpose) over here in Europe lecturing us about freedom of speech. Every accusation is a confession.
USA turned into China, Russia and soon N-Korea.
You are not allowed to say anything bad about the current administration and Israel. Little country pulling the strings here.
> Carr suggested the exemption should no longer apply to programs he characterized as being “motivated by partisan purposes.”
I know the timing makes this seem cravenly partisan, but revoking an exemption like this could be motivated by a desire to ensure fairn-
> while the FCC chair was targeting late-night talk shows, he had made clear that right-wing talk radio would not be subject to the equal time notice.
Ah, well.
The right has an extremely large chip on their shoulder when insisting that the their _more popular media outlets_ do not count as "mainstream media" because... reasons.
Fox news, who constantly tells it's listeners that it's #1 in the world for news, also lambasts "mainstream media". After bragging their the most mainstream of mainstream
The interview is on YT. Instead of complaining here, share it with your network https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiTJ7Pz_59A
It is trivial to do both.
That's insane. We're talking about the government threatening a station if they air an interview with a political rival.
Tbh, in this case the fault lies more with CBS for obeying in advance. The FCC hasn't actually made the rule change yet.
The FCC opened a probe on The View[0] for hosting Talarico. They haven't made a rule change, but they're definitely acting as if the rules already say what they want it to say.
[0]: https://www.fox7austin.com/news/fcc-opening-probe-the-view-a...
Already in 2026, Colbert has hosted Senator Jon Ossoff and Governor Josh Shapiro who are both up for re-election this year. Why no probe in those cases?
This whole fight is about something called the "bona fides news exception." Basically, in 2006 the FCC ruled that late night interviews were always bona fides news interviews (and therefore not subject to equal time), on January 21st FCC Chairman Brendan Carr wrote a letter suggesting (but not declaring) that the 2006 ruling was incorrect and might be revoked.
Separately, currently elected politicians are pretty much always considered to be bona fides interview subjects, even if they happen to be running for reelection, because e.g. the Governor of Pennsylvania expressing opinions is news.
If CBS lawyers wanted to fight and bring Talarico on, they would probably win- the letter is not actually changing the rule, and the FCC would have to defend the rule change in court and would probably lose. But the point is that CBS has determined to be working towards the Fuehrer, and wants to do so, and so they are doing what they are doing.
Like you said: re-election. Re-election just maintains the status quo. The concern here is Talarico specifically, and that he might flip Texas.
Talarico's potential future senate seat is already occupied by someone in his own party though
> Talarico's potential future senate seat is already occupied by someone in his own party though
...??
Both current Texas Senators are Republicans. Talarico (a Democrat) is running for Cornyn's seat
Cynicism warning, but my honest guess is they see that the Colbert problem will be solved in June and so don't feel the need to spend any effort on him.
Ossoff and Shapiro had not filed as candidates reportedly.[1]
[1] https://latenighter.com/news/jon-ossoffs-colbert-fcc-equal-t...
Correct. CBS is now owned by Larry Ellison's son. They are big supporters of the current administration. This act, among others, shows that they are willing to silence dissenting voices on media properties they own.
This is exactly how effective censorship works. For example, what most people don't understand about Chinese censorship is that the foundation of their system is that everything is attributable to someone eventually. So they start by targeting anonymity. Then when something they don't like is published and gains traction, the originating party and the major distributors are punished -- sometimes very publicly. The chilling effect is that people will learn to self censor. Oh and they keep the rules really vague so you always err on the side of caution.
CBS self censoring is basically the same thing.
The Chinese government can then say "What censorship?" or "It's rare" and now the FCC can do the same.
Playing whack-a-mole is not a good strategy for censorship. The chilling effect of self censorship is the winning strategy.
The chilling effect is the entire point. An FCC source literally told CNN, "the threat is the point." CBS isn't being randomly skittish. Paramount needs regulatory approval for its WBD acquisition, paid $16 million to settle a Trump lawsuit right before needing FCC approval for the Skydance merger, and canceled Colbert days after he criticized that deal. ABC suspended Kimmel after FCC threats. The FCC opened an investigation into The View just for having Talarico on.
And yes, Larry Ellison is a hardcore Trump supporter, but even if he weren't, this is how every network is behaving. Disney's Bob Iger is a Democrat and ABC still paid Trump and suspended Kimmel. When the government holds regulatory leverage over your business, "obeying in advance" isn't cowardice you can blame on the network, it's the intended mechanism of state pressure.
And this is a good thing, if you think that the billionaires running large businesses like CNN will generally act in their own selfish self-interest and that they need the government to hold regulatory leverage over their businesses in order to make them act in a socially-beneficial way.
But then you have to trust the government that manages the regulatory agency to act in a socially-beneficial; and only at most half the US population does at any given time.
> "obeying in advance" isn't cowardice you can blame on the network, it's the intended mechanism of state pressure.
No, there is no reason to absolve the agency of anybody with power (eg money and platform). The ownership class is kowtowing to Trump because they think regardless of whatever happens, they personally will be relatively fine as long as they go along. And they are probably right, even as Trump leads our country off a cliff. But that doesn't mean they get to escape judgement for being cowards.
That's not what I said. I said it isn't cowardice you can blame on the network instead of the FCC, which is what the parent comment did by saying the fault lies "more with CBS." CBS deserves blame. The administration wielding the threat deserves more.
Resistance requires an active, costly choice. The entire structure of public companies, fiduciary duty, short-term shareholder pressure, regulatory dependency, incentivizes compliance. That's not an excuse, it's the point. The system is designed so that capitulation is the path of least resistance, which is exactly why the blame has to center on whoever is exploiting that structure rather than on each individual institution for failing to be heroic. The firms and universities that did fight back (Perkins Coie, Harvard, Jenner & Block) won in court every time, while the ones that cut deals (Columbia, Paul Weiss, Brown) gave up money and autonomy for nothing the fighters didn't get for free. But fighting required leaders willing to accept real personal and institutional risk. Expecting that as the default rather than addressing the coercion creating the dilemma is how you end up with a system where everyone folds and nobody's responsible except the victims.
Of course, increasing the cost of capitulation is one place where consumers actually have power. Disney suffered 1.7 million streaming cancellations after suspending Kimmel, and Kimmel was back on the air within five days. That works. But notice what it required: massive organized public pressure aimed at the company and political pressure aimed at the FCC. Not just finger-wagging for being cowards.
> That's not what I said. I said it isn't cowardice you can blame on the network instead of the FCC, which is what the parent comment did by saying the fault lies "more with CBS." CBS deserves blame. The administration wielding the threat deserves more.
That's fair, this lines up with where I am mostly coming from - we shouldn't absolve blame from one group by focusing it on another.
But your second paragraph then goes on to do that? We're dealing with a societal attack where the fascists are trying to topple all of our societal institutions into a self-perpetuating low-trust low-authority state. If they achieve in doing that, then the Schelling point becomes to not resist as it will be costly and ineffective. But the point we're at now, we should all be pushing to resist the fascists to prevent them flipping the dynamic.
Practically, you're overstating what fiduciary duty to shareholders requires. I'd also say you're also overstating the regulatory threat, as you went on to point out how the organizations who have resisted the fascists haven't really lost out by doing so. You can also apply this argument to politicians like Congress, judges, etc who don't want to rock the boat. But surely it's not sensible to absolve them!
It's not just a matter of "finger-wagging", rather it's pointing out that if the people with outsized power just go along rather than standing up to this, then they're in the same exact camp as the hardcore openly-Trump fascists. Maybe that camp will be lucrative if the fascists do succeed at conquering our society, or maybe they can be stripped of their stature and power when they fail. A lifetime ban on being a corporate officer or board member for abusing that position to try to overthrow the United States wouldn't be out of line.
I was thinking about this a bit in the context of that "March for Billionaires". Why did that seem preposterous? Because billionaires don't deserve a gold star simply for being billionaires! Rather they get credit for what they do with that wealth to help our society. And no, the value they created by growing a business doesn't count - rather when you get that level of wealth, you can use it to move back up the gradient of market optimization, and fix the problems we have that come from being stuck in local minima. If they want recognition and goodwill, this is the work they have to do. And if the poor billionaires really can't think of anything useful to do with that wealth, there is some really low hanging fruit like ending food poverty in the US.
This is arguably worse, isn't it? The administration gets to say that it was the network's own decision and that they had no role in it. Taking over news and public media with the help of oligarch buddies is much more effect than a public spat with them.
It's definitely worse, I'm just saying one shouldn't lay the blame entirely on the government here -- CBS is an eager partner in this, not a victim.
Sure but the government officials are our representatives so they hold special and unique responsibility for this situation.
As for the corpos.. Cancelled Disney and Hulu when Kimmel was taken off. Maybe it's time to cancel Paramount+ too.
Nah the fault lies with the American public for talking the freedom/exceptionalism talk, social projection of grit and ruggedness while the reality is learned helplessness and codependency
democracies past, present, and future inevitably crumble as the need to cater to the demos grows greater and greater with every generation of voters.
i know this is a contrivance but nevertheless: we don't consult the entire hospital how to treat my heart condition yet we accept on face value that obeying the vagaries of the hoi polloi is the best way to decide who controls the levers of power in civil society.
Our country is being run by unaccountable elites and they're doing a terrible job. They're not catering to anyone other than their donors.
duh. why is this always phrased as if the populace is unaccountable for the very existence of these elites? why is it always assumed that these unaccountable elites are better held in check by the farce of democracy than a proud genuine elite in place of the ignoble “””elite”””?
the people get what they deserve. if democracy was a functional system of government then by its own underlying assumptions the citizenry right now would be shooting, bombing, & stabbing these so-called elites. But we are held in subjugation as a result of our own fealty. It is a choice.
Having grown up rural, fixing farm equipment, rebuilding cars, which propelled me towards a degree in electrical engineering (and after that an MSc in math), my colleagues the last 20 years have watched a lot of TV and played all the video games but can barely bake a potato.
"Unaccountable elites" are enabled by know-nothings in corporate management, software engineering teams, accounting, HR "just following orders".
The lack of muscle memory to be self sufficient keeps people in their lane and unable to look away, fix their own stuff, make their own stuff.
When labor knows nothing but just following orders leadership is empowered to build and fill gulags; what are the people going to do? Resist en masse? Not when they are addicted to GrubHub delivery of Subway.
Normal authoritarian state behavior, no?
> Normal authoritarian state behavior, no?
Yes.
And the most surprising thing about this particular story to me is that a lot of people (here in the comments) seem surprised about it.
I don't mean to normalize this, because it isn't normal, but anyone surprised by this hasn't been paying attention over the past year+, this didn't arrive out of the blue.
It's like people are "oh I thought Project 2025 was just a meme, lol"
My understanding (please correct me if it's incorrect) is that the "worst-case" scenario for a broadcaster is that they may have to upload a record of political air time to a public file.
If an opposing candidate sees this, they can then request equal air time from that broadcaster.
The rule is in place so that one party or viewpoint can't dominate broadcast media. That's a good thing right?
The rule change here is that traditionally "bona fide" news programs have been, by default, issued an exception to the rule. That has spawned a bunch of "pseudo-news" shows that have also been claiming this exception. Here, the FCC is now saying "hey, you don't just automatically get granted an exception to the rule and get to call yourself a bona fide news program if you're not actually one"". That seems completely reasonable to me.
Broadcast media is held to this FCC standard because they are granted a monopoly for a broadcast spectrum, and it isn't physically possible for a competitor to broadcast on the same spectrum. Streaming etc... doesn't need to follow these rules.
I do think it's wrong that talk radio doesn't seem to be held to the same standard, though.
The worst case scenario now is not limited by process and law. Compliance with politics is taken into consideration for all government business. For examples, see the executive orders blacklisting specific law firms, the withholding of funds to states or areas that vote Democratic, and the threat of investigation into a network after a host said something the President didn't like.
Up until this month, talk show interviews were exempt from the equal time rule.
The worst case scenario for a broadcaster is that the FCC commissioner will fabricate an excuse to illegally yank their license, which both he and his boss have explicitly threatened to do to any broadcaster which won't agree to stop criticizing Donald Trump. I agree that one could imagine a reasonable system of broadcast regulation where opinionated talk shows don't host political candidates, but that's not what's going on here.
> but that's not what's going on here.
How?
Everything I've seen is that is specifically what's going on, do you have different information?
The only threat to pulling a license would be if they didn't comply with the FCC rule change, that we've both agreed is reasonable, correct?
Do you have specific examples of the administration threatening to pull a license due to criticism? If that's the case, I'd certainly be vehemently against such action, just as I was when the government illegally acted to suppress and censor alternate viewpoints during covid.
When the FCC chair originally announced he was pursuing this (https://time.com/7318743/abc-kimmel-the-view-brendan-carr-fc...), he was pretty clear that he was doing so in pursuit of the President's directive to punish broadcast channels that say things he doesn't like. Trump himself was pretty explicit that the ultimate goal is pulling their broadcast licenses and his subordinates should fabricate an excuse.
As you say, the FCC has declined to pursue talk radio programs over this issue, even though they're clearly subject to the rule in principle. That's not a mistake, it's because those programs push viewpoints the President favors so he doesn't want to punish them.
Thank you for the link and the concrete reference, I hadn't seen that before.
I think the article and the video summaries I've seen of that interview are a little deceptively edited, but the idea appears to be the same.
Apparently, it's illegal to knowingly broadcast false information [1] within certain guidelines, and that can indeed cause a license revocation:
"The FCC prohibits broadcasting false information about a crime or a catastrophe if the broadcaster knows the information is false and will cause substantial “public harm” if aired. FCC rules specifically say that the “public harm must begin immediately, and cause direct and actual damage to property or to the health or safety of the general public, or diversion of law enforcement or other public health and safety authorities from their duties.”
The FCC chair referenced this law in response to Jimmy Kimmel claiming that the Charlie Kirk shooter was "maga":
“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,”
While this was demonstrably untrue, and it was widely known to be untrue at the time, I agree that it doesn't appear to meet the FCC standard I quoted above.
I actually find the FCC rule itself a bit disturbing, as it seems to position the government as an arbiter of truth.
It isn't a new problem, Jefferson struggled with how to deal with it too [2]
"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle"
What do you suggest as a solution? Should false information be ok to broadcast with a FCC license? Who gets to determine whether it's false?
[1] https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/broadcasting_false_i...
[2] https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_sp...
> What do you suggest as a solution? Should false information be ok to broadcast with a ... license?
This seems like begging the question. The issue here obviously isn't truth vs untruth, it is fealty to the regime vs opposition to the regime. All the evidence points in this direction, and there isn't a better case yet made in the opposite.
Witness the example cited above: right-wing talk radio, famous for spreading untruthful info and agreeing with the regime, is let off scot-free. Or how the regime itself spread untruths about Alex Pretti after they killed him. That categorically debunks any purported "truth vs untruth" decision criteria and seems to confirm the fealty vs opposition decision criteria.
Fun thought experiment: re-read this situation, but imagine it took place in russia, by putin's hand. Like seriously, what oppressive regime in modern history HASN'T had some variation of silencing the opposition "for broadcasting 'false information'"?:
> On the morning of March 4, the last remaining independent news outlet in Russia — the award-winning Novaya Gazeta — announced the end of its reporting on the war in Ukraine in response to Russian government demands.
> A new law that bans the “dissemination of knowingly false information” about the Russian armed forces — and carries up to a 15-year penalty — was the final blow. [0]
0: https://niemanreports.org/putin-ukraine-russia-media/
There's definitely a "both sides" argument here, but honestly that's boring and doesn't really move a conversation forward.
The problem isn't simple, and there don't seem to be obvious answers - civilizations have been struggling with it since recorded history.
I assume you're not trying to make the point that exceeding authority is a characteristic limited to the current administration are you?
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
We've been asking this since at least 1st century Rome.
I think it's more important to evaluate systems, institutions and their effectiveness than specific politicians.
Are you sure you replied to the right post? Mine was about how this action was clearly done on the basis of opposition to the current regime.
Neither the conversation nor the country can really move forward without that shared understanding of where we're at now.
This is a terrifying level of chilling effects. What are we to consider about our nation at this point? "Free speech" has long been a term with contested definitions, but this certainly sounds like its death in every sense.
The shift from democracy to dictatorship isn't a cliff that a lot of people imagine it to be. It's a gradual slide with no abrupt changes in between. If you're waiting for a signal, you'll get it at the bottom of the ramp.
When does a pile become a heap?
When they come for YOU.
Seriously this is why people use to take every government transgression and overreach so seriously. Now multiple times a day it's something that would have been a straight SCANDAL in the past.
It's happening right now y'all because it was always happening and will always happen without constant push back.
Don't wait!
Free speech goes as far as the people who defend it.
CBS and its parent company are greedy cowards. If they won't defend free speech they're the ones causing its downfall.
Governments rule only with the consent of the people.
If you lay down and give away your freedoms you aren't the victim, you're the perpetrator.
Victim blaming?
Greedy for trying to stay in business.
If you didn’t fight hard enough it’s your fault?
You let the government of the hook to easily.
By your logic you‘re a perpetrator too because he don’t blame the real bad guy
> Greedy for trying to stay in business.
If CBS were headed by someone with gumption and less willingness to kowtow to the government, they could resist this pressure and still be fine. Worst case scenario, a merger would get rejected and they would be targeted by some spurious lawsuits. Going out of business is not a realistic risk.
What is a risk, however, is non-optimal shareholder value. We live in a world where the stock price is more important than anything else, including doing the right thing.
For CVS the stock price isn't the driver. It's owned to 77% by the Ellison family, who certainly want to make a buck, but also want political influence and control.
> they could resist this pressure and still be fine
Precisely. See also: TACO
There are lots of things that where unthinkable before Trump.
But it seems this is just business between billionaire buddies
How is CBS a victim here? They have shown by their actions (Bari Weiss, the 60 Minutes neutering, etc) they are fully backing what Larry Ellison and Sons want them to pump out. This isn't victim blaming, it's pointing out a complicit conspirator.
If you give in and comply without a fight, are you actually a victim or are you actually a collaborator? CBS is controlled by Ellison, which makes this look a lot like collaboration.
> If you give in and comply without a fight, are you actually a victim or are you actually a collaborator?
That is victim blaming. Heard the same from judges about rape victims.
> CBS is controlled by Ellison, which makes this look a lot like collaboration.
That changes this completely. That isn’t being a coward, that’s just good old quid pro quo from billionaire buddies.
We're not talking about rape, and you're begging the question.
Your statement just reminded me of a judge who said something similiar to a rape victim.
First off, corporations are not people, so your argument is insane from the beginning.
Were the leaders of Vichy France victims? No, they were collaborators.
Corporations are plenty of people with jobs and families that depend on that jobs.
Where all the people of France that didn't choose to fight to their death collaborators?
Where all the people in the concentartion camps collaborators. Do you blame them or the real perpetrator?
I find it strange to put the blame on the middleman instead on the source of all that.
Corporations are made of people in the same way that Soylent Green is made of people. Your argument is incoherent.
There's a difference between not fighting and obeying in advance.
Yes.
I'm blaming victims.
If you're suffering from government oppression and you go home and cry instead of stand up for your rights, I'm blaming you for your oppression.
You're only a victim if you die with your boots on, so to speak.
You can do that if you are responsible for yourself but there are lots of people with jobs behind that.
It’s not on you to decide they have to die with you.
But the fact that Trump buddy Ellison owns CBS takes that in a completely new direction.
I'm not engaging with someone arguing the point of appeasing, bootlicking cowards.
Can’t decide, is this a strawman or ad hominem.
Beside this case I guess you never where responsible for hundreds of peoples lives.
Or maybe talk to some mothers and fathers what they endure to protect their families what you would call appeasement.
From Umberto Eco's essay on Fascism:
> On the morning of July 27, 1943, I was told that, according to radio reports, fascism had collapsed and Mussolini was under arrest. When my mother sent me out to buy the newspaper, I saw that the papers at the nearest newsstand had different titles. Moreover, after seeing the headlines, I realized that each newspaper said different things. I bought one of them, blindly, and read a message on the first page signed by five or six political parties — among them the Democrazia Cristiana, the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, the Partito d’Azione, and the Liberal Party.
> Until then, I had believed that there was a single party in every country and that in Italy it was the Partito Nazionale Fascista. Now I was discovering that in my country several parties could exist at the same time. Since I was a clever boy, I immediately realized that so many parties could not have been born overnight, and they must have existed for some time as clandestine organizations.
What I think is fascinating here in this case isn't just the suppression of any old free speech, it's trying to hide the presence of political options.
America has only two parties instead of a dozen. This makes political options disappear. Everyone had to rally behind Biden or Trump last time.
Reminder that the most reliable way to prevent the rise of the far right is to implement robust safety nets and low inequality, to reduce status anxiety and grievance.
Support for such measures (welfare, healthcare, unionization, high taxes etc) is usually low among Americans.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/10/welfare-cuts...
This is a reminder that the will of Americans doesn't effect policy. Policy is determined by money*
Source: https://archive.org/details/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_th...
That is not a reminder, that is just, like, your opinion, man. Many countries with robust safety nets in Europe have far right parties rising in popularity significantly or already in the government/ruling coalition (Italy, Sweden, Germany, etc.).
That's why the rightward shift is unavoidable and corporate Dems like Talarico only further this shift into fascism. Even if liberals win it only means the next right-wing candidate is going to be even more extreme than the last.
People think that's crazy talk, even though it's happening right in front of their faces since Obama, we're cooked.
AOC has just improves her ranking big time in the last few days. If she keeps this up she 'maybe' she has a shot at the White House (maybe, its going to be a long two years).
Think about it: A bernie Sanders type candidate not taking corporate PAC money is currently in the running for the White House! We saw with Mamdani they will throw everything at her. Will she falter? Hope not but feeling better than I have felt in a while.
I'd really like to see a more centrist progressive in the White House in 2028. American politics is a pendulum. We should hope to dampen its amplitude, not intensify it. If we swing that far left, we'll swing even further right in 2032 or 2036.
This is the problem with a 2-party system. There's an implicit bias that the truth is democratically in the middle. But in this case, the right wing doesn't know how to solve its own problems.
Since the end of WW2, Democratic administrations have presided over significantly higher job growth than Republican administrations. https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.c...
"A broad middle class can act as a counterweight against oligarchy." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_class
The US right wing doesn't do "middle class". It does tax cuts for the rich and hunger games for the rest. If you pander to them, things will just get worse and the far right will surge even more ... which is probably what they want.
Obvious question: How is she going to get anything past the gridlocked Congress and hostile Supreme Court? Obama often couldn't after the midterms, and it's much worse this time.
We're seeing with Mamdani, who was elected with a massive mandate, that he can get things done despite a hostile state government that clearly didn't want him to get elected. Obama had a mandate, yet he didn't use it. Looking back, we should have seen this coming when he was mentored by people like Joe Liberman, and we immediately saw the results when he was tested in one of his first goals (healthcare). He dropped the public option immediately and implemented a Heritage Foundation plan(Yeah the Project2025 heritage foundation).
You can do a lot when you have a mandate and you are determined to get things done. How to determine if a candidate is like this? After many cycles of election in my experience there is only one reliable barometer. The only determining factor seems to be money in politics. If your candidate has corporate contributions, you can pretty much guarantee that nothing is going to get done. On the other side, we've seen non‑corporate‑backed candidates actually try, at the very least.
Now, talking about the actual specifics of how you get past a gridlocked Congress and a hostile Supreme Court: with the advantage of being at the top of the party, you have the ability to whip your party into falling in line. We saw this with FDR. He wasn't pulling any punches. If someone got in his way, including the Supreme Court, he made their lives miserable. One of the reasons bernie people feel fond of him.
A lot of these politicians are only there for the corporate donations and in hopes of a job afterwards. So a very low‑hanging fruit is to go after the corporations that are donating to the politician who is holding things up. Make the public aware that this SOB is the one holding up plans that are very popular. Do what Trump did: go into that person's district and get his voters to realize that this is the person that's holding everything up.
For example, paid family‑leave polls show ~71% overall support, including Republicans, Independents, and Democrats. Yet when Biden campaigned on it and then immediately dropped it at the first sign, it showed that he didn't even try.
A lot can be done if the candidate actually tries.
Mamdani is a mayor.
FDR was hugely successful, but part of the reason we still don't have universal healthcare is conservative southern democrats decided it was a threat to segregation. FDR tried to take them out, but couldn't.
In contrast the right does whatever Trump says, no matter how many kids he rapes. They have an idea where the country should be in 50 years, whatever the cost. I haven't seen that level of discipline from the left. I hope it's there now post-Trump, but it certainly wasn't there during the Obama midterms.
Last time it took a huge depression to get people to start working together (FDR's socialism lite).
I think part of the problem is capitalism itself. Most US companies are run like tiny little fascist dictatorships, which is a great training ground for the real thing. It doesn't socialize people to cooperate. Contrast eg Norway, where businesses operate inside a formal 3-way agreement (Trepartssamarbeidet) between the government, employers associations, and trade unions.
Airing on broadcast TV (cf. publishing on YouTube) does not offer the same opportunity for surveillance of the audience
The prob has always been the FCC didnt recognize the internet as a Broadcast Medium. Which it is. Anyone can get their message out to a billion people if the algos deem its going to make the platform money. This means the platform support 1 to All messaging ie Broadcast. Thanks to Claude Shannon we know if everyone is given free broadcast capability like giving everyone a mic connected to the same sound system, without a coordination mechanism we get massive noise. How do ppl react to not being heard? They shout louder and louder or keep repeating their message. Amplifying the noise even more. Thats exactly whats happening on the internet today. We had the same issue with radio back in the day when anyone could stick tower on their roof and start broadcasting. This is why Spectrum gets licensed to solve the interference and noise problem. Americans are fed from birth that Free Speech is a right. But no one tells people before the internet Broadcast was not free. You either owned a newspaper, radio station, TV/sat spectrum to broadcast. There is a serious category error happening because the FCC didnt recognize the platforms are really broadcast mediums.
The difference is the airwaves are a limited transmission method. A broadcast medium is not regulated because it's dangerous, it's regulated because it's scarce.
None of the statements in your comment support the idea that the internet is a broadcast medium in the sense relevant to the FCC. It's a medium made entirely of 1-1 connections.
Note that newspapers are an older technology than radio, and they function in exactly the same way that the internet does, and there's never been a question of whether they are secretly "broadcast media".
Recall it was the same lawnmower^W Ellison-owned CBS that last minute pulled a 60 Minutes report on CECOT. They didn't blame that one on the government.
Given that, I believe the higher ups at CBS wanted this to happen, but are colluding with the executive branch or misrepresenting the situation to shift responsibility.
Weird, I thought America was the land of the free and the home of the brave?
All marketing is meant to induce feelings that compensate for reality's deficiencies.
I use cat litter that is "99% dust free". I'll give you one guess what that remaining 1% by weight is.
Unlimited Free Speech, itty bitty living space. - Aladdin's Genie
I have no idea what this means
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ85y3q6K8c
Many people in or related to the current administration have spoken in favor of free speech, which feels quite ironic.
>Many people in or related to the current administration have spoken in favor of free speech, which feels quite ironic.
Indeed. Our government, like most governments across the world in 2026, has moved way beyond the naive notion of "free speech." Talking about it now is either nostalgia, or lies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se14aJNY5nc
Well, what can the average person do to get CBS to air it?
You can call your local affiliate to complain:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cbs-tv-stations-affiliates/
Better yet, call their advertisers:
https://stopmediabiasnow.com/cbs-advertisers/
Watch/like/comment/share the YouTube upload:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiTJ7Pz_59A
More indirectly, you can support the Talarico campaign (fueling a financial Streisand effect could help discourage similar moves in the future):
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/jt-tx-web
CBS is responding rationally (cowardly, certainly, but also rationally) to an administration that is misusing the tools of state.
Change the administration.
> CBS is responding rationally (cowardly, certainly, but also rationally) to an administration that is misusing the tools of state.
CBS is complicit. The Ellisons bought it and installed Bari Weiss for this very purpose of being a (very) lightly camouflaged state media.
I think corporate media is mostly lost. We need to build something new. Pay attention to things like The Bulwark or Liberal Currents. It's really early days for all that, so who knows where things go, but people like Bezos would rather destroy media outlets than sell them to someone who would allow them to speak out against the regime.
I have been The Bulwark listener/subscriber since day one. Those people are keeping me sane.
That said, their day will come. Just like in Russia, after the low-hanging fruit is cut, the state will come for The Bulwark and Steve Jobs's widow, because The Atlantic is going be get increasingly annoying.
This is doomerism, and I get the pull of it, but I have been trying to avoid it lately, because at the end of the day, it is doing the work of the fascists for them. It is "complying in advance" to prematurely admit defeat. We are not Russia.
People will be accusing others of TDS even when Trump is well into his 3rd term. If I listed half the things that happened in the last year, you would have called me "hysterical".
The US government is telling a comedian who he can and cannot interview.
Russia has a pretty professional riot police that does not pop off cannons for funzies. Russian corruption has to be exposed. It's not out in the open - Putin is not excepting gold bar bribes on live TV.
So, yeah, we are not Russia, in a way.
I'm not saying things are fine. Not at all. It's a really tough line to navigate and I struggle with it myself. If you go around telling everyone we're doomed - DOOMED! Then it's not really helping, just as if you go around saying things are fine and everything will be back to normal in a few years.
What was normal is gone and it'll take the rest of my life to fix things if we're lucky because the damage they've done is generational.
But fix it we can and must, and they aren't actually all that popular. They're even underwater in polling on immigration.
Liberal Currents is great. Bulwark is too, but I want to remind people that they are a center-right publication. Yes they hate the hell out of the infernal despicable corrupt sodden actions now, and are quite eloquent & good calling for some moral character & values.
But they're still on the right, and crucially in writing in because sometimes people don't actually know that. Do read/listen! But please be aware. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bulwark_(website)
(In case it's not obvious Liberal Currents is quite left.)
Sure, this is correct. But... these are strange times. I'm old enough to remember Bill Kristol the neocon from the Iraq war days and the other day he was quoting Chuck Schumer on Blue Sky saying "Abolish ICE!". Me from 2002 would have really struggled with that one.
They'll respond to a loss of business or reputational damage.
Reputational damage is a less useful tool today, when so many of the people in power at CBS have personal reasons for wanting to curry favor with the administration. So, loss of business: simply boycotting or changing the channel can help.
You can't get CBS to air it, but you can let people know not to watch CBS.
And eventually, future calculations from CBS about whether they have more to lose by suppressing the story or airing it will favor the latter. Or so few people will still watch CBS that their business fails. Either way, it's a win.
I know things may look bleak, but America has a large, loud, well-funded contingent of free-speech advocates. As soon as Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and Thomas Chatterton Williams hear about this, there'll be hell to pay!
And Elon Musk will absolutely lose it on Twitter.
"In an emailed statement, CBS said: “THE LATE SHOW was not prohibited by CBS from broadcasting the interview with Rep. James Talarico. 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."
Show me the Fascism, please.
All we need now is for zompolits* to be attached to all companies and we too can raise the sickle and hammer!
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_commissar
It's a terrible look for CBS. At the same time, I find it unbelievable that they don't fire Colbert. This is obvious gross insubordination, and he is an employee.
His final show is coming in May, and I'm sure that they can expect Colbert to continue to embarrass them (as the spineless sycophants they are) every week until then. It's a tremendous self own.
Colbert is not a CBS employee. He runs Spartina Productions which, along with Busboy Productions, produces The Late Show for CBS. It's a coordinated project of the three companies, he's not their employee and likely can't just cancel the show except for very specific circumstances.
> likely can't just cancel the show
Because they already have?
> This is obvious gross insubordination
Really? CBS's lawyers cited the equal time rule, which only applies to broadcasts sent over limited airwaves. I think the equal time rule doesn't actually apply in this case (because why couldn't CBS provide equal time in the near future? who even requested equal time and was denied it?), but more relevantly the equal time rule does not apply to publishing the same interview over the internet instead of over the "air".
"insubordination" is such a weird term:
If you don't like a coworker questioning your behavior, maybe don't engage in questionable behavior;
If you just want them to do what you say unquestionably, maybe you should have been born during a time when slavery was more common;
If you are having trouble getting good output out of a direct report that previously has produced good output, chances are you are currently a failure of a boss; and if you use terms like "insubordination" instead of asking "what am I doing wrong?", you probably have pointy hair, too.
Firing satirists is moral now?
Ha, it's spineless that they are self-censoring themselves. Whatever happened to Freedom of the Press?
This is how you get a candidate’s name out there. Master stroke by CBS. :/
we'll need more facts but if there is substance to this then the reaction from Bari Weiss (now cbs news editor-in-chief and a long-time public advocate of free speech) and team will be interesting.
It will not be interesting because she has never been an advocate of free speech.
Either the OP was being sarcastic or they’re unaware of the difference between free speech and Free Speech™
what i meant is this may be a good real world litmus test. i dont claim to know if there are differences or not between her word and actions - i have not followed her closely. but i always like 'tests' like this for heads of media orgs as free speech (Free Speech) imo needs to be the backbone of those orgs
She has always and consistently advocated for free speech when it was beneficial to her or her allies/benefactors
She has defended free speech disliked by both the left and the right on occasions.
She famously left the NY Times after defending the publication of a contrarian op-ed by (Republican) Sen. Tom Cotton.
https://www.npr.org/2025/10/06/nx-s1-5563786/bari-weiss-cbs-...
Although apparently not a fan of Jimmy Kimmel as a comedian, her Free Press objected to his suspension. "... the FCC’s coercion undermines our most fundamental values"
https://www.thefp.com/p/jawboning-and-jimmy-kimmel-free-spee...
And on the same topic, the FP editors wrote: "At last, something we can all agree on: Pam Bondi has no idea what she's talking about."
https://www.thefp.com/p/pam-bondi-vs-the-first-amendment-fre...
For president, she has voted for Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden.
It's fair to call her a centrist.
"Centrist" is an utterly meaningless term, as the only thing it implies is not one of the two major-partisan extremists. You can call me a centrist, with my views being anchored in a libertarian perspective. Back a few decades ago when the major parties' Venn diagrams overlapped a bit more, you could call people at the intersection of the parties' authoritarian policies centrists. And as for Bari Weiss, you can can call her centrist because she will do the bidding of her employer regardless of which Party's administration they are currently bribing.
> she will do the bidding of her employer regardless of which Party's administration they are currently bribing
That's not fair. She left the Wall Street Journal because they didn't want her to write anti-Trump op-eds.
https://reason.com/2018/01/28/bari-weiss-it-was-heartbreakin...
"Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower" includes not anthropomorphizing its individual parts, like the blades. Even when those blades are swapped out for new ones, re-sharpened, and put onto a different lawnmower.
Trump, while an objectively horrible person who belongs in prison for many distinct types of crime, is primarily a minstrel for people to hate on. While he is (unfortunately) a good first-pass litmus test for an individual's politics/intelligence, criticizing him is not really the same as critiquing all of the entrenched interests that installed and continue to enable him.
Bari Weiss cut her teeth in college trying to get professors fired for criticizing Israel. She's hardly an advocate for free speech.
Maybe he was being sarcastic.
Bari Weiss is not a long-time anything, she ran a blog for a couple of years and has been appointed head of CBS to run it into the ground.
Will it? Weiss seems to understands her role here very well. Her competence at it is still in question but she is consistent. CBS is state media now, she'll say what she's expected to say.
> a long-time public advocate of free speech
What? I thought she was associated with & supported by Republicans.
So she'll allow criticism of Israel then?
"Didn't air" doesn't mean what you think it means. It means the interview didn't go over the airwaves via broadcast towers. The full interview is online, which thanks to the Streisand effect already has millions of views and therfore helped CBS in terms of funding. This can be seen as a 4D chess move by CBS. They'll certainly do this again if they're hitting millions of views.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiTJ7Pz_59A
It's 4D chess by Colbert and his producer, not the network.
> This can be seen as a 4D chess move by CBS.
It isn't. CBS is owned by the Ellisons, who are big Trump supporters. They are absolutely complicit in attempts to quash dissenting voices.
You're right that the Streisand effect is in play here, but it's not 4D chess. It's garden-variety incompetence, because the policy makers in the government are too old to see anything other than broadcast TV as the most valuable medium.
Comedians have a knack for succinctly expressing the truth:
> "Let's just call this what it is: Donald Trump's administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV because all Trump does is watch TV," Colbert joked.
Technically doesn't Trump also spend a lot of time golfing, and attending events where people praise Trump - admittedly for broadcast on TV but not necessarily while watching TV?
I see that it's become harder to track because the White House doesn't disclose what he's doing as much, but yeah, lots of golf still.
HN's penchant for pedantic literalism will never cease to amaze (and dismay) me.
It's a joke man, Colbert isn't the only one allowed to make jokes, so don't be dismayed.
Sure, jokes are often technically incorrect while performing a directionally-correct summation of the truth of the matter.
But also, the few times I've been unfortunate enough to have to go to mega golf venues, the clubhouses generally have TVs prominently all over the place. So there is quite the demographic overlap.
The youtube video currently has ~1.4 million views. Colbert averages 2 to 3 million television viewers per night, plus some number of youtube views that I haven't looked up the stats for.
That is, this interview has been seen by fewer people than it would have, had it been on television.
Let's give it some time. It hasn't been up that long, and it's already gone up to 1.9MM views in the 2 hours that have elapsed since you posted this.
Right now it has 2.2 million.
It will surpass Colbert's normal viewership before the sun goes down.
3.1 million views as the sun goes down here in Tennessee. I'll concede that's not significantly "surpass" but it's still approximately equal, and may have been more people than saw the actual broadcast.
5.4 million now. YouTube viewership numbers are a slow burn.
> "Didn't air" doesn't mean what you think it means. It means the interview didn't go over the airwaves via broadcast towers.
That means exactly what I thought it meant. It's still just as bad.