Margaret Sullivan’s February column connects a handful of incidents at CBS that read, separately, as normal churn — and together as something else. Anderson Cooper walked away from 60 Minutes. Stephen Colbert took his interview with a rising Democratic Texas lawmaker to YouTube instead of his own late-night show. The CBS Evening News anchor presented a misleading version of the network’s own exclusive reporting on ICE arrests. And a news producer, Alicia Hastey, left with a farewell note to colleagues blaming the loss of editorial independence.

The incidents, and what sits underneath them:

  • Cooper: publicly says he wants to spend more time with his children, but is reportedly unhappy with the direction of 60 Minutes under CBS News editor Bari Weiss, who reports directly to David Ellison.
  • Colbert: called the network’s settlement of Trump’s lawsuit a “big, fat bribe” on air. Soon after, CBS declined to offer him another contract. This month the network put internal roadblocks in front of his interview with the Texas lawmaker, so he published it on YouTube.
  • The evening news: anchor Tony Dokoupil inverted the network’s own findings on immigrants arrested by ICE, emphasising the crimes rather than how few were violent — DUIs far outpaced homicides and sexual assaults, contrary to how Trump has portrayed ICE arrestees.
  • The departing producer: stories, Hastey wrote, are increasingly “evaluated not just on their journalistic merits but on whether they conform to a shifting set of ideological expectations.”

The underlying factor is a deal. CBS’s parent, Paramount Skydance — run by David Ellison, son of Larry Ellison — is trying to buy Warner Bros Discovery, which owns CNN, one of Trump’s favourite punching bags and a network he would like to see turn rightward too. Warner Bros Discovery’s board favours a competing all-cash offer from Netflix, and any deal may need FCC approval — from a commission chaired by Brendan Carr, who Sullivan describes as a political animal rather than an impartial regulator. So the back-of-the-hand treatment of Colbert and the news division’s rightward drift double as signals that the Ellisons are willing to serve Trump’s interests. If Paramount Skydance ends up owning CNN, trouble may follow Cooper there too.

This is the mechanism, in Parker Molloy’s formulation: “The government doesn’t have to formally censor anyone. It just has to make enough threats that corporations start censoring themselves.” Sullivan names it with the same term we used for Pickard’s analysis — media capture — and closes on the franker register: “I’ve heard fascism described as the dangerous combination of state power and corporate power. And here we are.”

Her remedies are the unglamorous ones: strict limits on media consolidation, support for independent local journalism, and a truly nonpartisan FCC — none of which is coming from the current Congress, since reform has to be driven by people who understand journalism is meant to serve the public rather than help the rich buy their next yachts.