Paramount/CBS’s Shari Redstone Wants Her Merger: Pays $16M Tribute to a King

She bowed to a king in the style of Lisa Murkowski. I can only imagine how the 60 Minutes Staff is feeling this day.

William Paley, Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and Mike Wallace are turning over in their graves as Redstone agrees to pay Der Fuhrer over a frivolous lawsuit.

The CBS Team

“One would have thought having billionaires in charge of media outlets and newspapers would have given them some sort of independence. After all, how many yachts do you need? They are not trying to claw their way to the top of the hill as they are already perched on high.

When Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post, the general consensus was, sure, he could even run it at a loss to uphold journalistic integrity. He’s certainly got the money to withstand lawsuits or advertiser grumbling about stories.

CBS, being owned by Redstone, should have afforded the sacrosanct news bureau its independence with near total journalistic freedom, but Shari needed that 2nd or 3rd or 4th yacht just as Bezos needed more Blue Origin contracts with the federal government.

Had these lawsuits been brought by other companies or individuals, we would not be in this situation as the owners would have surely displayed the guts and had the wherewithal to fight these frivolous suits. Unfortunately, with the power of the DOJ and control over government contracts behind him, an attack by the President won the day while the 1st Amendment suffered a serious injury, but hopefully, not a fatal blow.

It is a sad day for journalism, the media in general and for the 60 year history of 60 minutes with some of the finest reporters and investigative journalists in the business who’ve been assaulted by not only an Orban Style Authoritarian State and leader, but also by corporate greed and their own squeamish taskmasters.

Where does a free press go from here as they are being brow beaten on a daily basis by a man, a president, with a wafer thin fragile ego and a pathological need to control all things and people. It seems that the only way forward is for our embattled press to pay tributes to a king, fealty to a Humpty Dumpty orange blob sitting atop a house of cards.

Thank god for the new wave of free media such as Substack and others to carry on the tradition of Mike Wallace and those like him.”

It is a very sad day”