Trump's trick to kill an inconvenient story

The appointment of Bari Weiss as director of CBS News raised a number of skeptical eyebrows. With no television experience and having primarily written opinion pieces, it was suspected that she had been hired more for her anti-progressive activism than for strictly journalistic merits. Now that her decision to shelve a report that was inconvenient for Trump has come to light, the predictions are confirmed: Weiss has come to steer this media giant toward MAGA interests. The director says the report wasn't finished yet, as it still needed to include Trump's version of events regarding the Salvadoran prison to which Venezuelans arbitrarily deemed by the White House are being sent—without any due process. But the authors have explained that they have contacted the president repeatedly and that he refuses to give any explanation.

If the piece is indeed shelved here, Trump will have been handed the ultimate tool to kill any story he doesn't like. It will suffice for him not to respond. Journalists have an obligation to gather the opinions of all parties, it is said. But I would qualify that: they have an obligation to try to gather them. And if someone doesn't want to speak, it's indicated that they have declined to comment, and that's that. It's common sense. The piece had been reviewed by the legal team and by the journalists at CBS News who uphold journalistic standards: no one saw a problem, and in fact, it was already being publicized. Weiss has made it clear that he bows to the interests of the oligarchy that, piece by piece, is transforming the United States into an autarky. The recent vetoes on granting visas to European politicians who work on monitoring social media and combating hate speech are another example of this disturbing isolation. Land of the free? Less and less.