TGIF. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting's budget has been zeroed out, Skydance's takeover of Paramount has been approved, and James Carville has a "new hero" named Rupert Murdoch. Let's get to it... |
The Paramount-Skydance saga "reeks of Orbanism."
That's the assessment of Gábor Scheiring, who experienced Viktor Orbán's autocratic power plays in Hungary firsthand as a member of the Hungarian parliament.
Scheiring is now an assistant professor at Georgetown University Qatar, and he happens to be a Stephen Colbert fan. Like so many others, he was shocked by last week's cancellation of "The Late Show."
When the FCC approved Skydance's takeover last night, I emailed Scheiring for his take because he described, in an essay for Politico Mag last fall, how Orbán "consolidated media control through centralized propaganda, market pressure and loyal billionaires."
President Trump certainly wants more control over the free press in the US. Is he getting it? As I noted on "The Source with Kaitlan Collins" last night, America is a very different country than Hungary, but the democratic backsliding in Hungary was partly achieved through media capture and control of culture.
Consider some of this week's media stories: Trump is saying he has a secret side deal with incoming Paramount owner David Ellison. Not content just to celebrate Colbert's cancellation, Trump is hoping other late-night shows hosted by his critics will be axed, too. His aides are following his lead, as demonstrated by this Fox headline: "White House warns 'The View' could be canceled next after Joy Behar's anti-Trump rant." Meanwhile, Trump is suing the Wall Street Journal, and he is still pursuing numerous other suits against news outlets.
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This morning the NYT home page features a story headlined "Did Columbia's Deal Save Its Stature or Sacrifice It?" The same headline construction could apply to CBS, given all the concessions it made (or at least appeared to make) to win Trump admin approval of the Skydance deal.
You can get caught up on the approval news through our CNN.com story here. FCC chair Brendan Carr told me he was satisfied by Skydance's commitments, including its promise to hire an ombudsman at CBS. The FCC's sole Democrat, Anna Gomez, was also the sole dissenting vote. She warned that "the Paramount payout and this reckless approval have emboldened those who believe the government can — and should — abuse its power to extract financial and ideological concessions, demand favored treatment, and secure positive media coverage."
Senator Elizabeth Warren brought up the word "bribe" again:
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Paramount-Skydance may be a politically fraught new playbook for corporate America. And that's why "Orbanism" should be a part of the public conversation in the US.
David Pressman, the most recent US ambassador to Hungary, wrote in a NYT guest essay earlier this week that "here, too, powerful people are responding to authoritarian advances just as their Hungarian counterparts have — not with defiance, but with capitulation, convinced that they can maintain their independence and stay above the fray."
I found Pressman's essay somewhat frustrating because he didn't name many names. But he said corporations are clinging to an "illusion that they can preserve their independence and integrity while making deals with a strongman, just as Hungary's elite believed they, too, could emerge unscathed."
"President Trump, like Mr. Orban, no doubt believes that everyone can be bought. America's elites are proving him right," Pressman wrote. "There is a Hungarian phrase I heard often: 'Van az a penz' — 'There's always a price.'" Here's the rest of the argument.
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'Autocratic carrots and sticks' |
So let's circle back to Scheiring and his observations from Hungary's recent history. "Most of Orban's tactical weapons to take over the media resemble the moves that led to Colbert's cancellation," Scheiring told me. "The legal warfare, the lawsuit against CBS, the regulatory capture and threats, the financial pressures, the sale of the parent company, and the new owner's apparent friendliness to Trump."
In Hungary, he said, Orbán weakened public broadcasting, muzzled independent media through "autocratic carrots and sticks," and incentivized owners to fall in line. "A key underlying story is that media owners, both foreign and domestic, largely capitulated individually rather than mounting collective resistance, which enabled Orbán's systematic capture strategy," he said.
I could go on, but there is still more Paramount-related news to cover...
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'South Park' measuring contest |
"South Park" and the president are in a... measuring contest.
One of the "South Park" season premiere's many jabs at Trump was about the size of his genitalia. The Trump White House hit back yesterday by deriding the size of the show's audience. WH spokesman Taylor Rogers said the "fourth-rate" show "hasn't been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention."
CNN's Harry Enten offered this reality check: "Trump hates South Park, but Google searches for it are up 670%! It was the most searched topic with Trump this afternoon. And unlike what Trump said, South Park's still popular. It's a top 20 streaming show!"
>> Via Variety: In an appearance at Comic-Con last night, Trey Parker and Matt Stone said "the episode’s animated tiny Trump penis" was the subject of some pre-premiere debate with Comedy Central...
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Welcome sign of stability at '60 Minutes' |
Yesterday "60 Minutes" correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi voiced what I heard from others at CBS: Some comfort from the fact that newsmag veteran Tanya Simon has been elevated to exec producer, providing "60" with some much-needed stability.
"People keep asking me what’s next for ’60 Minutes.’ The truth is, we don't know," Alfonsi wrote on Instagram. "But I am certain that if @TanyaSimon is running the show….we're in good hands."
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Sounding alarm about 'threat of starvation' in Gaza |
"Some of the world's biggest news outlets" have "joined forces to voice concern over the desperate plight of journalists in Gaza, warning they are 'increasingly unable to feed themselves and their families,'" The Guardian's Michael Savage reports.
>> The AP, AFP, Reuters and BBC News said in a joint statement, "Journalists endure many deprivations and hardships in war zones. We are deeply alarmed that the threat of starvation is now one of them. We once again urge the Israeli authorities to allow journalists in and out of Gaza. It is essential that adequate food supplies reach the people there."
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Remember who's not going to Scotland |
As Trump files to Scotland today, let's not forget who is missing from the trip: The Wall Street Journal reporter who was slated to be in the press pool. Tarini Parti was planning to be part of the trip until the White House decided to punish the Journal for its groundbreaking reporting about Trump's old friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.
Meanwhile, VP JD Vance offered a new justification for Trump's WSJ lawsuit overnight. After the NYT published new details about the Epstein birthday book in question, Vance said he wants the WSJ to provide the raw materials.
"We all know what's going to happen," he wrote on X. "They're going to dribble little details out for days or weeks in an effort to assassinate the president's character. They won't show us this book or allow us to refute it until they've wrung every bit of fake news out of the story. And everyone will just move on from the fact that the WSJ is acting like a Democrat SuperPAC. It's disgraceful, and it's why the president sued."
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'Rupert Murdoch, he's my new hero' |
Last night "longtime Democratic strategist James Carville called out Fox News while on the network over its lack of Jeffrey Epstein coverage," Mediaite's Michael Luciano writes. He also worked in a reference to Fox's patriarch not backing down despite Trump's WSJ lawsuit. "Rupert Murdoch, he’s my new hero. Man, this guy’s got more guts than the entire Democratic Party put together," Carville said. "Go Rupert. Go, cat, go."
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Meta's latest response to EU regs |
This morning Meta said that "starting in October it will no longer accept political, election or social issue ads in the European Union, in response to new regulation that it says will cause 'significant operational challenges and legal uncertainties,'" Sara Fischer reports for Axios. "Google already said it would pull ads in the EU for the same reason..."
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The public media $$ cut is now law |
Trump has signed his rescissions into law (without any of the pomp or circumstance I was expecting). The Corporation for Public Broadcasting now has zero funding starting in October. During a somber board meeting yesterday, CPB CEO Patricia Harrison said that the organization is preparing to wind down its operations, while still lobbying for a restoration of funding in the next federal budget. "It's very difficult — hope on the one side, and sort of acceptance on the other," Harrison said.
>> As the NYT's Ben Mullin reports here, donations to NPR and PBS stations are "surging," but the individual support is not nearly enough to make up for the federal funding loss.
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'Who said broadcast news is dying?' |
That's the headline on this Alex Griffing piece for Mediaite. He notes that ABC's "World News Tonight with David Muir" notched "ten straight weeks as the most-watched show on TV last week, bucking industry-wide trends that have seen linear programming decline." The "NBC Nightly News," with new anchor Tom Llamas, remains in second place.
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The end of an E! era (again) |
As CNN's Elizabeth Wagmeister wrote, "for all of us entertainment journalists who grew up on E! News, this is the end of an era in entertainment news." E! says the famed franchise's final TV episode will be September 25, though E! News will live on as a digital brand. In some ways it's remarkable that the TV version lasted for so long. (It was first cancelled in 2020, then brought back in 2022 as a late-night broadcast, Variety noted here.)
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Weekend box office preview |
Movie audiences are waking up from "superhero fatigue," Deadline says, "as Marvel Studios' The Fantastic Four: First Steps is looking to do between $190 million-$210 million around the world" this weekend. "This comes in the wake of DC Studios’ success with James Gunn's Superman, which is soaring beyond $409 million worldwide..."
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Terry Bollea a/k/a Hulk Hogan, a larger-than-life Reagan-era superhero who turned pro-wrestling into a cultural behemoth, died yesterday at age 71. In the ensuing news coverage, he is being remembered as a deeply complicated person.
"One of the most heartbreaking things about growing up and becoming an adult is realizing that your infallible role models are just as human and as flawed as everyone else — sometimes more so in the slightly unhinged world of professional wrestling," CNN's Kyle Feldscher wrote here.
"Hulk Hogan lived long enough to become the villain, become a hero again, and become a villain again too. He expanded the narrative arc of the modern hero and the modern celebrity," writes David Shoemaker at The Ringer. He changed the way we see our idols. He changed the way we make myths."
Some writers will understandably never forgive him for bankrupting Gawker through a sex tape lawsuit a decade ago. As I noted in this CNN TikTok video, Hogan and Peter Thiel's tag-team against Gawker foreshadowed this current era of blockbuster A-lister lawsuits against media outlets.
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