This is getting very strange. You heard how Bari Weiss spiked a 60 Minutes segment because it might be disturbing to Donald Trump. The segment was about Venezuelan men who were deported by the Trump administration to a prison in El Salvador. And “spiked” is a journalism term meaning to pull a story for political reasons. In any event, the piece may not have made the 60 Minutes broadcast but it did go to Canada and was broadcast there — and from there it went on to pull heavy views on the internet, due to the Streisand Effect. That’s when something that you don’t want seen (in Streisand’s case, pictures of her Malibu mansion) gets seen in abundance due to the fact that you’re suppressing it.
So that was Round One for Truth. Now CBS is on a real winning streak because they piqued Trump again on Tuesday night when he hosted awards at the Trump Kennedy Center. CBS sent out a memo stating that the Center would simply be referred to as the Kennedy Center until such time as the legal decision is made regarding the Center’s official name. That’s enough to make Trump roar in anger but not like cutting his twelve-minute, offpoint rant down to two minutes. The gloves are off now.
The network also trimmed Trump’s opening remarks from roughly 12 minutes to about two minutes for viewers at home, cutting out some of his freewheeling asides—including his crack at the laughing crowd as “miserable, horrible people.”
The on-air snub came as CBS’s relationship with Trump has taken repeated hits, often with 60 Minutes at the center.
In July, Paramount, the network’s parent company, agreed to pay $16 million to Trump’s presidential library to settle his $20 billion lawsuit over what he claimed was deceptive editing of a Kamala Harris interview, a deal the company announced without an apology.
Since then, Trump has continued his attack on the network, even as CBS has been accused of bending over backwards to placate him. In November, it aired a 28-minute version of a Trump 60 Minutes sit-down with Norah O’Donnell, as well as a separate 73-minute extended cut.
Yet it left out a tense exchange in which Trump expressed irritation over questions about a crypto mogul he pardoned amid reports of a $2 billion deal tied to a Trump family crypto venture. The edits also omitted Trump’s comment about CBS’s payout related to the settlement.
Then came the network’s leadership turmoil. After Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison, 42, installed Bari Weiss, 41, as CBS News editor-in-chief in October, the MAGA-curious boss spiked a 60 Minutes segment at the eleventh hour last weekend.
It featured interviews with deportees sent by the Trump administration to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador, with Weiss claiming the segment needed more work before it could air. Her last-minute decision sparked concerns of White House interference and triggered fury inside the newsroom.
And as we said, a Canadian broadcaster aired it, and now Paramount Skydance is invoking copyright violation/takedown notices, and reposts are being scrubbed from the internet. But it is out there. The internet has a memory such to make a herd of elephants look amnesiac and once it’s on the internet, it never dies. It merely pops up for a while, is seen, then vanishes again, after more copies are made.
So are CBS and Trump at war? Let’s just say that there is evidence of intra-corporate infighting and institutional resistance to saying “how high?” when Trump says “jump.” That’s good for a start. Even Andy Borowitz is getting into the act, by satirically stating that, “Bari Weiss announces news will not be tolerated at CBS.” Is Edward R. Murrow rolling in his grave? Either that or he’s at the big shabeen in the sky having a beer with Walter Cronkite and rolling his eyes.
