Hmmm. Let’s see. the Trump Administration sues the Paramount Corporation, the parent company of CBS, for $20 billion (yes, that’s BILLION) on a bogus charge claiming that the legendary CBS 60 Minutes program had deliberately used deceptive editing techniques to make then Presidential candidate Kamala Harris more appealing. I have already written in this publication about my position detailing why I believe that charge is completely illegitimate. Yet, despite protestations from the journalists at 60 Minutes and beyond, Paramount basically CAVED into Mr. Trump’s demands and settled with him for a mere $16 million. “This settlement allows Paramount to focus on its prospective sale, and CBS can maintain its principles,” said C. Kerry Fields, a business law professor at the USC Marshall School. “But principle has its price, and there certainly was one set here.” * More on the prospective sale in a minute.
Then, Paramount announces the cancellation of its long running and #1 rated late night talk show, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert citing financial considerations. Of course, none of the executives at Paramount would bother to mention that Colbert uses a very particular AND popular brand of humor to regularly poke fun at the President. Mr. Trump has made NO secret of his dislike of Mr. Colbert or his sense of humor. Colbert and a plethora of other late-night personalities and media celebrities came together and challenged the REAL reason why the show was canceled.
Well, after 8 months of intense pressure from the White House, the prospective sale mentioned above by Dr. Fields, i.e. the purchase of Paramount by Skydance Media in the amount of $8 billion finally went down. It seems that the sale was exacerbated by the fact Shari Redstone and her family, the majority owners of CBS, are deeply in debt.
So. why is the timing of all this significant? Well, it seems that since both entities are media companies the sale would require the approval of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). And who basically controls the FCC? That’s right, one Donald J. Trump. And, without making HIM happy, it simply wasn’t going to happen.
It doesn’t take a 60 Minutes journalist to fathom how dangerous this is. And it’s just beginning; more purges have been promised. It’s so important to understand that whoever controls the media controls the message and, therefore, the people. Malcolm X once said: “The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.”The fact that this administration has severely cut back if not eliminated Federal funding to local PBS Stations is further evidence of Mr. Trump and his administration’s desire to control the message by eliminating ANYONE who might speak against him. THIS MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN.
I am usually reluctant to compare American politics with that of Nazi Germany. It often simply leads to more division and hate. However, if it is appropriate then it must be said. In my research for this article, I found this. It’s the Wikipedia entry for Joseph Goebbels:
Goebbels, who aspired to be an author, obtained a doctorate in philology from the University of Heidelberg in 1922. He joined the Nazi Party in 1924 and worked with Gregor Strasser in its northern branch. He was appointed Gauleiter of Berlin in 1926, where he began to take an interest in the use of propaganda to promote the party and its program. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Goebbels’s Propaganda Ministry quickly gained control over the news media, arts and information in Nazi Germany. He was particularly adept at using the relatively new media of radio and film for propaganda purposes. Topics for party propaganda included antisemitism, attacks on Christian churches, and (after the start of the Second World War) attempts to shape morale.
This is NOT hyperbole! And I hate being a harbinger of doom, but if we do not act and stop this now, it will become our reality.
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Photo credit: Frank LoBuono
