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(Washington) The new editor-in-chief of the American channel CBS blocked the broadcast this weekend of a report on the consequences of the brutal expulsions carried out by the Trump administration, an act of “censorship” and a “political decision”, according to its author cited by the press.
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This episode comes in a context of major takeover maneuvers in American media groups, all in the shadow of Donald Trump, close to the owners of the parent company of CBS.
The legendary investigative show 60 minutes was to broadcast on Sunday evening a long subject giving a voice to Venezuelans expelled by the American authorities in March, not to their country, but to the gigantic high security prison in El Salvador.
But a few hours before a broadcast on what is perhaps the most prestigious television program in American journalism, CBS announced that the report “will be broadcast on a future broadcast.”
It was Bari Weiss, a long-time critic of what she considers to be the intellectual conformism of progressive media, who made the decision to block its broadcast, says the journalist behind the report, Sharyn Alfonsi, in an internal email reported by the American press.
The subject “is factually correct. I believe that withdrawing it now, after all the rigorous checks carried out internally, does not correspond to an editorial decision, but to a political decision,” writes the reporter. By not broadcasting a report that has already been announced, “the general public will rightly see this as corporate censorship,” she adds.
The subject “needs more work,” CBS said in a statement cited by the New York Times.
Bari Weiss was named editor-in-chief of CBS News in October, less than three months after the takeover of Paramount, CBS’s parent company, by Skydance, owned by the Ellison family, close to Donald Trump.
Paramount-Skydance is currently seeking to buy Warner Bros Discovery in place of Netflix, a battle on which Donald Trump intends to influence, in particular via the competition regulator.
The American president, very virulent towards the media critical of him, managed this summer to get Paramount to agree to pay 16 million dollars to put an end to its procedure in which the Republican billionaire criticized 60 minutes for misleadingly altering an interview with his Democratic rival Kamala Harris.
