Remaining CBS Journalists Pen Letter To David Ellison Politely Asking Him To Stop Destroying What’s Left Of Journalism

By now it’s pretty clear that right wing, billionaire, Trump ally Larry Ellison bought CBS to convert what was left of the news division into lazy agitprop that blows smoke up the ass of wealth and power. Leading the charge is CBS News boss Bari Weiss, an unqualified contrarian Substack troll who recently vividly demonstrated her purpose by killing a story critical of the administration’s concentration camps.

If you’re one of the few journalists left at CBS (who didn’t leave after the network’s embarrassing effort to bribe the president), this is obvious not a good time. Pre-holiday, a collection of CBS journalists got together to pen a letter to Larry Ellison and his nepobaby son David, urging them to reconsider their plan to turn CBS News into a right wing propaganda mill:

“In the public letter, which is addressed directly to Ellison, the signatories declare that they “stand in solidarity” with the 60 Minutes team that worked on “Inside CECOT,” the story that was pulled by Weiss shortly before it was set to air on December 21. They also note that this signaled a “breakdown in editorial oversight” and risked “setting a dangerous precedent in a country that traditionally valued press freedom.”

Ellison, of course, won’t balk. Much like Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, the Ellisons bought CBS (and a part of TikTok) with the goal of information control. The goal is the same goal billionaires have had for generations: dominate mass media, soften its criticism of wealth and power, and befuddle, distract, confuse, and disorient an already pretty fucking dim electorate.

They’re not going to back off that agenda because you said “pretty please.”

It’s worth reiterating that CBS already wasn’t in great shape to begin with. Even before Ellison, the network’s very first response to rising U.S. authoritarianism was to hire more Trump-friendly Republicans. And if you haven’t read it already, this piece by longtime journalist Spencer Ackerman demonstrates how the network already had a very rich history of coddling U.S. wealth and power.

It’s further demonstration that commercial mass media and public interest journalism are generally incompatible. There’s a reason that authoritarians like Donald Trump and Brendan Carr are ramping up attacks on public broadcasting, paving the way for greater media consolidation, and trying to censor late-night comedians, and it’s because they’re afraid of the truth.

This is, as you might be noticing, a lot harder than billionaires tend to think. It’s very likely that the Ellison effort to dominate media simply drives people away from CBS and toward more ethical, interesting alternatives. There’s really no indication that this weird assortment of nepobabies and contrarian trolls have any idea what they’re doing. They’re not even good at agitprop.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous. If successful, Ellison could still turn CBS, TikTok, and potentially CNN into an even worse version of Fox News, which is arguably the last thing American media needs.

Ethical folks who care about an informed electorate should fund trustworthy independent and worker-owned media (like Techdirt) whenever possible in the new year.