Last night, 60 Minutes’s Scott Pelley closed out the program in a brief segment that once upon a time was reserved for Andy Rooney’s crabby humorist essays. But that was back when we were confident we could trust reporting and so there was no need to end America’s most-trusted news program with a message of, “We’ve become Pravda and we cannot be trusted.”
I could say “Welcome to 2025” here, but when we say that we are lying to ourselves. It’s been like this for a decade, since Donald Trump became president the first time and news corporations’ trustworthiness began to tumble in succession like dominoes.
Regardless of governmental corruption, who knew that a majority, not a minority, of American journalists and news executives are so easily compromised, so easily bought, so devoid of courage?
Who knew that The Land of the Free™️ is little more than a marketing schtick? Well, many knew that.
But who knew The Home of the Brave™️ was? Not I.
Democracy Dies in Darkness? It sounded scary a decade ago and now, somehow, it’s good giggle.
“You can laugh,” Tori Amos sings in Me and a Gun, a song about an unthinkably traumatic assault, “it’s kind of funny, the things we think at times like this…”
One such thing is, Haha, that segment of Scott Pelley was sponsored by an ad for United Healthcare, the company whose CEO profited from choosing to let countless customers die so he could make millions more and his board would celebrate his ‘hard work,’ and then…well, you know. The irony. Don’t get me started on the preponderance of health insurance and pharmaceutical commercials that run during TV news and why those companies choose to sponsor the news and what impact that has on reporting and—oh, why did you get me started?
Anyway. As I watched Pelley talk about his honorable colleague, his boss who fell on the sword in the name of journalistic integrity, I had some kinda funny thoughts…
One, that Scott Pelley, who is still working for CBS News and 60 Minutes, will be lauded roundly for his ‘brave’ one-minute-long segment in which he says “we’re not happy” that his boss was fired. OK. Following orders with a grumble and a grumpyface is still following orders.
Two, we’ve seen this before. The Washington Post went through these same motions six months ago. Jeff Bezos did there what Shari Redstone and Wendy McMahon are doing right now at CBS News. They have chosen the Führer over truth, over journalistic ethics, over public service. One would expect no difference since 2015.
What took Pelley so long to admit it is one question.
The New York Times’s Executive Editor Joe Kahn, a multimillionaire heir to the Staples Office Supplies fortune (yes) chosen by Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger a couple of years ago, announced last year that the Times does not support democracy, and that he believed then (What does he believe now?) that Trump ‘is better on immigration and the economy.’ Horrific, but at least he was honest?
Meanwhile at the Post, Bezos wielded his power in the 11th Hour to publicly bow down and pledge fealty to Donald Trump. The world was rocked. Hundreds of thousands of us canceled our lifelong subscriptions. He didn’t care. He penned an op-ed that said things like “Lack of credibility isn’t unique to The Post.” (Um.) He wrote the op-ed as a defense of his having interfered with his editorial board, and in his defense he wrote “challenge you to find one instance in those 11 years where I have prevailed upon anyone at The Post in favor of my own interests. It hasn’t happened.” Pay no attention to the reality that the reason he wrote the op-ed was in defense of his havong done that very thing.
Of course, since then, Bezos has unofficially come out as Ivanka Trump’s and Jared Kushner’s BFF, being photographed together at mansions and parties in Aspen, DC, Beverly Hills, and Miami’s Billionaire Bunker Island (yes) where they are close neighbors. So Bezos’s best friends are the president’s billionaire daughter and son-in-law and Bezos turned his newspaper into propaganda for Trump. OK, nothing to see here.
Dominos are clicking and clacking as they fall into one another one by one. Post journalists have quit one by one as their “just doing my job” mentality changes to “I don’t want to be a Nazi.” I followed Jennifer Rubin here to Substack because she was one of the first to leave, loudly, in protest, and that is courageous and honorable.
Call me a crusty old gen-Xer, but selling out is something I don’t think is cool, whether it’s to record executives or to Nazi-bolstering media executives.
So, 60 Minutes aired a United Healthcare commercial and then Scott Pelley said that he and his coworkers are not happy that their boss was fired for having integrity and trying not to indoctrinate the public to be Nazis. OK, I am reading between the lines a bit.
Pelley said something interesting during that one minute. He said, “None of our stories has been blocked.”
He didn’t say none of their stories has been compromised.
So—celebrate his bold and brave commentary. And be careful who you trust, and learn to read between the lines.
If you think you can trust 60 Minutes following the firing or forced resignation of its boss, you’re primed for propaganda far more subtle than Fox News.
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