When news execs help fascists whitewash murder
Former CBS journalists detail pressure after federal agents killed Good and Pretti
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It matters who owns news organizations. It matters who runs them.
Corporate media have similar profit motives that may affect their willingness to tell the whole truth, but they’re not all the same. Some news executives let journalists do their jobs with little or no interference. Others, like CBS News, owned by the pro-Trump Ellison family, are in the tank for the fascist regime.
Last week, former “60 Minutes” correspondent Cecilia Vega provided new insight into how CBS management pressured its staff to twist reporting after federal agents murdered Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January.
According to Vega, CBS management asked her to include video of protesters attacking people they erroneously believed were undercover ICE agents. But Vega said her team found “no credible examples” of that.
She said she was urged to include a comment by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey supposedly calling on city police officers to fight ICE agents. But Vega said she and her colleagues watched “every frame” of a Frey news conference and “that never happened. We could not find any instance of the mayor saying something like that.”
Vega’s account bolstered the claims made by her former colleague Scott Pelley, who accused CBS executives of pressuring him “to inject falsehoods and bias” into his reporting. Pelley said CBS News boss Bari Weiss ordered his team to make protesters look more violent and to describe Good as driving toward an ICE agent when video clearly showed her steering away.
Let’s take stock of what happened here: CBS News executives tried to help the Trump regime whitewash public executions carried out by federal agents.
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Both Vega and Pelley refused to insert falsehoods into their reporting. They were later fired. But they’re not disgruntled employees settling scores. They’re seasoned journalists appalled by what they saw.
“I’ve gone head-to-head with editors for 25 years in this business,” Vega said. “But never in my career, until now, have I felt that those edits, that those suggestions, came from a place of misinformation or politics.”
It appears likely that CBS executives were passing on disinformation they received from the Trump regime, which had falsely labeled both Good and Pretti as domestic terrorists.
Corporate media are especially susceptible to political influence because their owners often operate businesses that have nothing to do with journalism but stand to be rewarded or punished by the people in power. The Ellisons’ friendliness toward Trump earned them the support of Trump’s Justice Department in their bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery.
A key test of a news outlet’s culture and ethics is whether its money people can keep their thumbs off the newsgathering process. Many don’t respect any boundaries. Another threat to journalists’ honest reporting is the desire of some news executives to avoid being confrontational toward politicians, either because they fear being seen as biased or because they’re addicted to access. But journalists have a duty to apply truth to power, even if some executives flinch at that.
I experienced this flinching firsthand when I was an editor at the Chicago Tribune.
In the early days of Trump’s first term, a top editor ordered me and my staff not to say in stories that Trump was lying, or even that he was wrong. We were instructed to convey what Trump said and then say what the facts were, hoping that readers would reach the correct conclusion all by themselves.
That timidity has been common throughout legacy media, and it’s part of the reason Trump is in a position now to destroy our democracy.
Of course, soft treatment toward politicians happens in both big and little ways. Sometimes it’s a slanted headline or corruption being downplayed as “a break from norms.”
But in the case of the Good and Pretti murders, CBS executives crossed a far darker line. They took the side of lying politicians trying to justify shooting Americans. And since then, ICE has killed more people.
This wasn’t “politics.” It was a test of whether a news outlet would prioritize basic human decency. CBS News failed that test.
This week’s media atrocity
It was disgusting to see the White House Correspondents’ Association hosting Trump as its guest of honor at its dinner Friday. NBC’s Kristen Welker was caught on video yukking it up with Stephen Miller, architect of ICE’s reign of terror against immigrants and the people who defend them. Members of the Washington press are supposed to be watchdogs, but too often they’re lapdogs. The dinner sent the message that they’re all in the same club, and you aren’t.
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I saw that clip of Welker and Miller. I wonder does she even realize that she is talking to someone who looks at her with disdain as a person of color AND as a working woman. That is the way he thinks about people of color and women working outside the home. I could never ever put myself in a casual conversation with someone who I know has that attitude about me. Maybe she needs to do more homework before engaging with these people. Thank you, Mark.
However, I think the instruction you received at the Tribune not to characterize Trump's many untrue statements as lies was correct. You'd have to get deep into someone's head to know whether an utterance is merely an error or a lie, which is an intentional deception.
In fact, I've noticed zero hesitation in media to label Trump as a serial liar (which he may well be). To me, this suggests a know-it-all type of elite arrogance too common in upper echelons of acceptable discourse. And I think it's part of the reason driving the widening gyre of disgust expressed by broad segments of the public toward our various expert/elite classes and their nearly 50-year neoliberal project of deindustrialization/financialization that has hollowed out so much of the country. (Please forgive the rant.)
Trump is certainly providing no answers and, in fact, is making things worse, both by keeping his promises and by breaking them -- spectacularly in the case of Iran. But the media don't help matters by appearing to take sides in both flagrant and subtle ways.