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Beating the Press
CBS’s 60 Minutes has been the top-rated news show in America since 1974, longer than most Americans have been alive. One in three Americans watched it last year, and it reached 100 million viewers total. It is at the heart of American news, a well-funded and well-regarded powerhouse relied on by working-class, poor, rich, white, Black, Latino, and Asian Americans.
Hoping to get a merger waved through by Donald Trump’s Federal Communications Commission, Paramount, the parent company of CBS, has apparently pressured the flagship newsmagazine to muffle its reporting to avoid Trump’s displeasure. Credible reporting indicates the chair of Paramount Global, Shari Redstone, told 60 Minutes producers to suppress stories that were critical of Trump. The executive producer of 60 Minutes resigned, saying he was no longer able to do his job, and correspondent Scott Pelley gave an unprecedented on-air statement, noting that the Trump administration had the power to approve a proposed merger between Paramount and Skydance, and then asserting that “Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways.”
The appalling story of 60 Minutes is not an isolated editorial judgment. It’s a symptom of a deeper, structural crisis in American journalism. Trump started his anti-press campaign by talking about “fake news” in 2016. But in his second term, he has turned from rhetoric to coercive power, wielding threats and lawsuits to attempt to control what is written and broadcast.
While everyone argues about the big-C Constitutional Crisis caused by a break between Trump and the Supreme Court, the small-c constitutional crisis of the press is here. The biggest news organizations are making deals, feeding the incentive for Trump to make more threats and more demands.
Hoping to get a merger waved through by Donald Trump’s Federal Communications Commission, Paramount, the parent company of CBS, has apparently pressured the flagship newsmagazine to muffle its reporting to avoid Trump’s displeasure. Credible reporting indicates the chair of Paramount Global, Shari Redstone, told 60 Minutes producers to suppress stories that were critical of Trump. The executive producer of 60 Minutes resigned, saying he was no longer able to do his job, and correspondent Scott Pelley gave an unprecedented on-air statement, noting that the Trump administration had the power to approve a proposed merger between Paramount and Skydance, and then asserting that “Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways.”
The appalling story of 60 Minutes is not an isolated editorial judgment. It’s a symptom of a deeper, structural crisis in American journalism. Trump started his anti-press campaign by talking about “fake news” in 2016. But in his second term, he has turned from rhetoric to coercive power, wielding threats and lawsuits to attempt to control what is written and broadcast.
While everyone argues about the big-C Constitutional Crisis caused by a break between Trump and the Supreme Court, the small-c constitutional crisis of the press is here. The biggest news organizations are making deals, feeding the incentive for Trump to make more threats and more demands.
https://prospect.org/culture/books/2025-05-28-beating-the-press-enrich-review/