It is long past time for everyone in tech to take a long hard look at the current situation and stop doing anything that financially benefits Musk, Ellison, or Thiel.
It goes back even further, just see the 1941 FCC “Mayflower Decision” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayflower_doctrine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
He's describing the same administration in two different terms. Mark has no problems lying to people that Biden administration sued Meta (it was Trump's [1]) and individuals like Joe Rogan have no problems not calling him out on it.
Trump was president in 2019, 2020. Covid starts in 2019. It's his administration that the twitter files is talking about when they mention censorship. It's his administration that started the big tech lawsuits.
You're right, thanks. If I could edit I would
They evidently also don't apply this rule to talk radio, which is overwhelmingly conservative. Talk about putting your thumb on the scale.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/21/james-talarico-miri...
You are talking about Texas, an also ran mess that has a lot of work to do. Lets put aside the fact that they love their unique flavors of voter suppression. At best, for now all we can hope is whichever nobody gets elected does not cause trouble for the party like Fetterman.
And lets be real, they will be gone once the heat dies down post Trump and the state flips back to Republican.
All states seem to be going towards an enlightenment towards the left but at wildy different rates. Progressives focusing on the coasts + the rust belt make sense as those states have a history of economic populism (and are swing states) whereas Texas might come around a long time from now once the oil companies decline enough and the modern company towns made by people like Musk fall apart like they always historically have. You need a trigger of extreme economic pain for the people to finally bite the bullet and try something new. Texas is not there yet. They have better cost of living and enough industry but they are definitely on the road to disaster in many areas.
Do you realize people can read what you post?
https://www.npr.org/2025/09/12/nx-s1-5537152/cbs-news-elliso...
- Once print newspapers were no longer a thing, even local news outlets are struggling to stay alive, and are resulting to sensationalism and entertainment as news - Corporate sponsors retain a huge influence in mainstream news (or have outright purchased it and use it for partisan politics). - "Social" media resides in (you guessed it) corporate-owned walled gardens. - Even those willing to speak out are being targeted by federal agencies
Wondering where others are finding great places to learn what's going on, what's actually relevant to me, and what I can actually do about it.
Follow trusted journalists that have a history of superb journalism. You have to decide what is good for yourself. Also industry specific journalists for deeper insight into industry you care about. Many of the greats realize that all the news companies are sinking ships and are trying to establish their own thing before things completely collapse.
Focus on what each journalist specializes in and don't read too much into it when they report on topics that are not their forte (like Breaking points talking about AI). Many journalists stay in their lane but the groups covering all the news don't. I wish all journalists would stay in their lane but this is not the world we live in anymore.
For everything else that you are not willing to invest the time in, just accept you are not going to get great coverage.
My (typically far left) biases are comfortable with the following (these are not all far left)
Zeteo + dropsite for foreign middle east leaning coverage
Breaking points for daily news
Ken Klippenstein, Glenn greenwald for national security state/us government news. Klippenstein is more fun (when he gets an FBI email asking for info but also politely asking to not release it, he goes ahead and provides a download link). Greenwald feels a bit more dry.
Industry specific: autoline (youtube+website) for automotive, semianalysis for semi.
Again this is just my opinion, please decide for yourself.
Is this what kids mean when they tell people to touch grass? My generation would accuse you of having lost the plot.
Maybe a cynic will say "this was the plan", but if it was, its not a very good plan? If anything, tech executives benefited enormously from their opponents being overly attached to legacy media communication strategies. When Bezos kills the Post or Ellison kills CBS, the talent doesnt magically disappear.
You are not allowed to say anything bad about the current administration and Israel. Little country pulling the strings here.
I know the timing makes this seem cravenly partisan, but revoking an exemption like this could be motivated by a desire to ensure fairn-
> while the FCC chair was targeting late-night talk shows, he had made clear that right-wing talk radio would not be subject to the equal time notice.
Ah, well.
[0]: https://www.fox7austin.com/news/fcc-opening-probe-the-view-a...
Separately, currently elected politicians are pretty much always considered to be bona fides interview subjects, even if they happen to be running for reelection, because e.g. the Governor of Pennsylvania expressing opinions is news.
If CBS lawyers wanted to fight and bring Talarico on, they would probably win- the letter is not actually changing the rule, and the FCC would have to defend the rule change in court and would probably lose. But the point is that CBS has determined to be working towards the Fuehrer, and wants to do so, and so they are doing what they are doing.
...??
Both current Texas Senators are Republicans. Talarico (a Democrat) is running for Cornyn's seat
[1] https://latenighter.com/news/jon-ossoffs-colbert-fcc-equal-t...
CBS self censoring is basically the same thing.
The Chinese government can then say "What censorship?" or "It's rare" and now the FCC can do the same.
Playing whack-a-mole is not a good strategy for censorship. The chilling effect of self censorship is the winning strategy.
i know this is a contrivance but nevertheless: we don't consult the entire hospital how to treat my heart condition yet we accept on face value that obeying the vagaries of the hoi polloi is the best way to decide who controls the levers of power in civil society.
"Unaccountable elites" are enabled by know-nothings in corporate management, software engineering teams, accounting, HR "just following orders".
The lack of muscle memory to be self sufficient keeps people in their lane and unable to look away, fix their own stuff, make their own stuff.
When labor knows nothing but just following orders leadership is empowered to build and fill gulags; what are the people going to do? Resist en masse? Not when they are addicted to GrubHub delivery of Subway.
And yes, Larry Ellison is a hardcore Trump supporter, but even if he weren't, this is how every network is behaving. Disney's Bob Iger is a Democrat and ABC still paid Trump and suspended Kimmel. When the government holds regulatory leverage over your business, "obeying in advance" isn't cowardice you can blame on the network, it's the intended mechanism of state pressure.
But then you have to trust the government that manages the regulatory agency to act in a socially-beneficial; and only at most half the US population does at any given time.
No, there is no reason to absolve the agency of anybody with power (eg money and platform). The ownership class is kowtowing to Trump because they think regardless of whatever happens, they personally will be relatively fine as long as they go along. And they are probably right, even as Trump leads our country off a cliff. But that doesn't mean they get to escape judgement for being cowards.
As for the corpos.. Cancelled Disney and Hulu when Kimmel was taken off. Maybe it's time to cancel Paramount+ too.
Yes.
And the most surprising thing about this particular story to me is that a lot of people (here in the comments) seem surprised about it.
I don't mean to normalize this, because it isn't normal, but anyone surprised by this hasn't been paying attention over the past year+, this didn't arrive out of the blue.
If an opposing candidate sees this, they can then request equal air time from that broadcaster.
The rule is in place so that one party or viewpoint can't dominate broadcast media. That's a good thing right?
The rule change here is that traditionally "bona fide" news programs have been, by default, issued an exception to the rule. That has spawned a bunch of "pseudo-news" shows that have also been claiming this exception. Here, the FCC is now saying "hey, you don't just automatically get granted an exception to the rule and get to call yourself a bona fide news program if you're not actually one"". That seems completely reasonable to me.
Broadcast media is held to this FCC standard because they are granted a monopoly for a broadcast spectrum, and it isn't physically possible for a competitor to broadcast on the same spectrum. Streaming etc... doesn't need to follow these rules.
I do think it's wrong that talk radio doesn't seem to be held to the same standard, though.
When they come for YOU.
Seriously this is why people use to take every government transgression and overreach so seriously. Now multiple times a day it's something that would have been a straight SCANDAL in the past.
It's happening right now y'all because it was always happening and will always happen without constant push back.
Don't wait!
CBS and its parent company are greedy cowards. If they won't defend free speech they're the ones causing its downfall.
Governments rule only with the consent of the people.
If you lay down and give away your freedoms you aren't the victim, you're the perpetrator.
Greedy for trying to stay in business.
If you didn’t fight hard enough it’s your fault?
You let the government of the hook to easily.
By your logic you‘re a perpetrator too because he don’t blame the real bad guy
If CBS were headed by someone with gumption and less willingness to kowtow to the government, they could resist this pressure and still be fine. Worst case scenario, a merger would get rejected and they would be targeted by some spurious lawsuits. Going out of business is not a realistic risk.
What is a risk, however, is non-optimal shareholder value. We live in a world where the stock price is more important than anything else, including doing the right thing.
Precisely. See also: TACO
But it seems this is just business between billionaire buddies
That is victim blaming. Heard the same from judges about rape victims.
> CBS is controlled by Ellison, which makes this look a lot like collaboration.
That changes this completely. That isn’t being a coward, that’s just good old quid pro quo from billionaire buddies.
Were the leaders of Vichy France victims? No, they were collaborators.
I'm blaming victims.
If you're suffering from government oppression and you go home and cry instead of stand up for your rights, I'm blaming you for your oppression.
You're only a victim if you die with your boots on, so to speak.
It’s not on you to decide they have to die with you.
But the fact that Trump buddy Ellison owns CBS takes that in a completely new direction.
Beside this case I guess you never where responsible for hundreds of peoples lives.
Or maybe talk to some mothers and fathers what they endure to protect their families what you would call appeasement.
Because that's somehow a more parsimonious explanation than the clear pattern of Brendan Carr's statements and actions using the FCC to accomplish the political goals of the administration.
> On the morning of July 27, 1943, I was told that, according to radio reports, fascism had collapsed and Mussolini was under arrest. When my mother sent me out to buy the newspaper, I saw that the papers at the nearest newsstand had different titles. Moreover, after seeing the headlines, I realized that each newspaper said different things. I bought one of them, blindly, and read a message on the first page signed by five or six political parties — among them the Democrazia Cristiana, the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, the Partito d’Azione, and the Liberal Party.
> Until then, I had believed that there was a single party in every country and that in Italy it was the Partito Nazionale Fascista. Now I was discovering that in my country several parties could exist at the same time. Since I was a clever boy, I immediately realized that so many parties could not have been born overnight, and they must have existed for some time as clandestine organizations.
What I think is fascinating here in this case isn't just the suppression of any old free speech, it's trying to hide the presence of political options.
Note that newspapers are an older technology than radio, and they function in exactly the same way that the internet does, and there's never been a question of whether they are secretly "broadcast media".
Given that, I believe the higher ups at CBS wanted this to happen, but are colluding with the executive branch or misrepresenting the situation to shift responsibility.
The segment was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices. Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi wrote internally that "pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one."
Alfonsi's team had requested comment from the White House, State Department, and DHS. They refused. Weiss then used that silence to kill the story, saying they needed "the principals on the record and on camera." As Alfonsi put it, "Government silence is a statement, not a veto."
Weiss's other objections included demanding the men be called "illegal immigrants" instead of "Venezuelan migrants" (many had applied for asylum and were not here illegally), and pushing for a Stephen Miller interview, which the administration had already declined. Under Bari Weiss' standard, the administration has a pocket veto over any story simply by not responding. Again, not how any of this has worked, ever!
The bulk of their staff objected to it, either on or off the record.
Support for such measures (welfare, healthcare, unionization, high taxes etc) is usually low among Americans.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/10/welfare-cuts...
People think that's crazy talk, even though it's happening right in front of their faces since Obama, we're cooked.
Think about it: A bernie Sanders type candidate not taking corporate PAC money is currently in the running for the White House! We saw with Mamdani they will throw everything at her. Will she falter? Hope not but feeling better than I have felt in a while.
You can do a lot when you have a mandate and you are determined to get things done. How to determine if a candidate is like this? After many cycles of election in my experience there is only one reliable barometer. The only determining factor seems to be money in politics. If your candidate has corporate contributions, you can pretty much guarantee that nothing is going to get done. On the other side, we've seen non‑corporate‑backed candidates actually try, at the very least.
Now, talking about the actual specifics of how you get past a gridlocked Congress and a hostile Supreme Court: with the advantage of being at the top of the party, you have the ability to whip your party into falling in line. We saw this with FDR. He wasn't pulling any punches. If someone got in his way, including the Supreme Court, he made their lives miserable. One of the reasons bernie people feel fond of him.
A lot of these politicians are only there for the corporate donations and in hopes of a job afterwards. So a very low‑hanging fruit is to go after the corporations that are donating to the politician who is holding things up. Make the public aware that this SOB is the one holding up plans that are very popular. Do what Trump did: go into that person's district and get his voters to realize that this is the person that's holding everything up.
For example, paid family‑leave polls show ~71% overall support, including Republicans, Independents, and Democrats. Yet when Biden campaigned on it and then immediately dropped it at the first sign, it showed that he didn't even try.
A lot can be done if the candidate actually tries.
I think part of the problem is capitalism itself. Most US companies are run like tiny little fascist dictatorships, which is a great training ground for the real thing. It doesn't socialize people to cooperate. Contrast eg Norway, where businesses operate inside a formal 3-way agreement (Trepartssamarbeidet) between the government, employers associations, and trade unions.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cbs-tv-stations-affiliates/
Better yet, call their advertisers:
https://stopmediabiasnow.com/cbs-advertisers/
Watch/like/comment/share the YouTube upload:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiTJ7Pz_59A
More indirectly, you can support the Talarico campaign (fueling a financial Streisand effect could help discourage similar moves in the future):
Change the administration.
CBS is complicit. The Ellisons bought it and installed Bari Weiss for this very purpose of being a (very) lightly camouflaged state media.
That said, their day will come. Just like in Russia, after the low-hanging fruit is cut, the state will come for The Bulwark and Steve Jobs's widow, because The Atlantic is going be get increasingly annoying.
But they're still on the right, and crucially in writing in because sometimes people don't actually know that. Do read/listen! But please be aware. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bulwark_(website)
(In case it's not obvious Liberal Currents is quite left.)
Reputational damage is a less useful tool today, when so many of the people in power at CBS have personal reasons for wanting to curry favor with the administration. So, loss of business: simply boycotting or changing the channel can help.
Jan 21. Shapiro appeared Jan 26.
[1] https://thedesk.net/2026/01/fcc-chairman-comments-equal-time...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-agency-investigating-if-...
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47050290
[4] https://latenighter.com/news/jon-ossoffs-colbert-fcc-equal-t...
We shouldn't do that, but we could.
A strong piece of evidence against the FSA theory is that the posts are pretty ham-handed and unsubtle. But maybe that's part of the plan.
Heck, if CBS hadn't shown itself to be in Trump's pocket, I would say this is malicious compliance to draw attention to the FCC's skullduggery.
Not always the case with Section 315, and late night and talk shows have been exempted in the past. The problem here is that this is on a case-by-case basis, and we have a particularly politically-charged executive agency.
They also cite that they have elected to not enforce the rule against conservative radio hosts.
I'll give you "fear" is the wrong word for a company openly courting the administration, but if the equal time clause applies here because CBS is over-the-air using "a public good", it feels like we're long past a time where it should apply to _at least_ cable stations. Ideally, the whole thing would be put back in place how it was before the Regan or Rush Limbaugh era decimation of it (IIRC), but with the net and podcasts and youtube, et al, this is just me getting old and seeing some weird value in locking the splinters of the barn door.
His final show is coming in May, and I'm sure that they can expect Colbert to continue to embarrass them (as the spineless sycophants they are) every week until then. It's a tremendous self own.
Many people in or related to the current administration have spoken in favor of free speech, which feels quite ironic.
Indeed. Our government, like most governments across the world in 2026, has moved way beyond the naive notion of "free speech." Talking about it now is either nostalgia, or lies
I use cat litter that is "99% dust free". I'll give you one guess what that remaining 1% by weight is.
She famously left the NY Times after defending the publication of a contrarian op-ed by (Republican) Sen. Tom Cotton.
https://www.npr.org/2025/10/06/nx-s1-5563786/bari-weiss-cbs-...
Although apparently not a fan of Jimmy Kimmel as a comedian, her Free Press objected to his suspension. "... the FCC’s coercion undermines our most fundamental values"
https://www.thefp.com/p/jawboning-and-jimmy-kimmel-free-spee...
And on the same topic, the FP editors wrote: "At last, something we can all agree on: Pam Bondi has no idea what she's talking about."
https://www.thefp.com/p/pam-bondi-vs-the-first-amendment-fre...
For president, she has voted for Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden.
It's fair to call her a centrist.
That's not fair. She left the Wall Street Journal because they didn't want her to write anti-Trump op-eds.
https://reason.com/2018/01/28/bari-weiss-it-was-heartbreakin...
Trump, while an objectively horrible person who belongs in prison for many distinct types of crime, is primarily a minstrel for people to hate on. While he is (unfortunately) a good first-pass litmus test for an individual's politics/intelligence, criticizing him is not really the same as critiquing all of the entrenched interests that installed and continue to enable him.
What? I thought she was associated with & supported by Republicans.
It isn't. CBS is owned by the Ellisons, who are big Trump supporters. They are absolutely complicit in attempts to quash dissenting voices.
You're right that the Streisand effect is in play here, but it's not 4D chess. It's garden-variety incompetence, because the policy makers in the government are too old to see anything other than broadcast TV as the most valuable medium.
> "Let's just call this what it is: Donald Trump's administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV because all Trump does is watch TV," Colbert joked.
I see that it's become harder to track because the White House doesn't disclose what he's doing as much, but yeah, lots of golf still.
But also, the few times I've been unfortunate enough to have to go to mega golf venues, the clubhouses generally have prominent TVs all over the place. So there is quite the demographic overlap.
That is, this interview has been seen by fewer people than it would have, had it been on television.
That means exactly what I thought it meant. It's still just as bad.