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Trump's Media Takeover Isn't About Bias, It's About Silencing Dissent
The Trump administration is weaponizing psychological terminology to create a world where one pathetic old man can stifle all entertainment that forces him to confront his own obvious inadequacies and irrelevance.
Aug 02, 2025
It's remarkable how much happens that barely makes the news. While we scroll through memes and sensationalized soundbites, our attention monetized by oligarchs who profit from our stupor, democracy dies in broad daylight.
Many of us fastidiously tracking political events may have missed a chilling detail buried in the Paramount/CBS merger: a "bias monitor." The Trump administration installed this Orwellian position alongside the dismantling of diversity, equity, and inclusion at CBS and Paramount. According to Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Anna Gomez, the sole dissenting vote against the merger, this represents "just another part of this administration's campaign of censorship and control."
Commissioner Gomez explained the gravity of this so-called monitor: "What they're saying is that they are going to self-censor basically for ideological purity according to what this administration likes and to report only in the way this administration likes. Apparently, bias is anything this administration doesn't like. And that is what they're promising not to show anymore to their consumers."
This is not a threat. It is a promise being delivered.
When Satire Dies, Democracy Dies
Stephen Colbert's cancellation marks that promise in action. The highest-rated late-night host, Emmy-nominated, and like other effective comedians, someone who has pointed out the absurdities of our political system for decades. As Inae Oh of Mother Jones reported, "one could argue that [until now] Trump's attacks had yet to take down our actual culture. I'm talking about the literal content we consume—the television, art, movies, literature, music—no matter how much Trump complained. That it remained protected and free-willed, a rare area of control for a public that otherwise feels powerless to take action." The cancellation of Colbert changes this. We are witnessing the first successful assault on the cultural sphere itself.
They're not just coming for our votes or our institutions, they're coming for our imagination, our ability to envision a different world.
What does it mean to have a president who uses his enormous platform to pathetically attack performers and entertainers? Just in the last week of July, U.S. President Donald Trump personally attacked Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, Oprah, Bono, Taylor Swift, Trey Parker, Matt Stone, and Joy Behar. These attacks aren't just the desperate posturing of a has-been reality TV star president, they threaten to become official government-led investigations.
Of course, there's no credible evidence for any of his claims. But that hasn't prevented the capitulation of systems that could fight back. Recently, Brown, Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, University of California Los Angeles, Paramount, Disney, and Meta all paid multimillion dollar settlements ($221 million in the case of Columbia) to the Trump administration to avoid litigation. This litigation could have helped establish some balance of power in this country. Because of these capitulations, they are now all complicit in the dismantling of our democracy.
This Is Not About Bias
Let me be clear as a psychologist: This is not about bias. Bias is a tendency, often unconscious, that leads to preferences or disfavor of people, ideas, or beliefs, often in ways that are unfair. Real biases manifest as stereotypes, prejudices, and systematic preferences that shape how we perceive and interact with the world.
If we genuinely wanted a bias monitor at any corporation, it would require enormous funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion purposes. Actual bias monitoring would examine unconscious prejudices, systemic discrimination, and unfair treatment of marginalized groups. This is the opposite of what the Trump administration has been doing as all the policies being enacted reinforce white supremacy.
What we have instead is the Trump administration weaponizing psychological terminology to create a world where one pathetic old man can stifle all entertainment that forces him to confront his own obvious inadequacies and irrelevance.
This isn't about bias, it's about following the predictable playbook of authoritarians. This suppression of critical voices mirrors what happens in North Korea, where the government exerts near-total control over media and entertainment, allowing only content that glorifies the ruling family while strictly banning dissent or satire. There are no North Korean Stephen Colberts. Critical art is suppressed, and those attempting to create or access it face harsh punishment, including forced labor or execution.
The Revolutionary Power of Art
While this moment is dire, I believe in the revolutionary power of art. History shows us that authoritarian regimes fear artists above all else because art reveals truth in ways that propaganda cannot counter.
To all who continue to create—comedians, performers, writers, artists—don't stop. Keep faith in the transformative power of art because, in Toni Morrison's words, "Art takes us and makes us take a journey beyond price, beyond cost, into bearing witness to the world as it is and as it should be."
As we navigate this slide away from democracy, we need artists to continue creating more than ever. Every joke that punctures pomposity, every song that speaks truth to power, every story that humanizes the dehumanized is an act of resistance.
The Trump administration understands something we must remember: Culture shapes consciousness. They're not just coming for our votes or our institutions, they're coming for our imagination, our ability to envision a different world.
As usual, Trump doesn't get humanity and doesn't understand that art has always thrived under oppression. The most powerful voices often emerge from the margins, from the underground, from those who refuse to be silenced.
This "bias monitor" isn't monitoring bias, it's monitoring our humanity. And that's exactly why we must not let them win.
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'Capitulation Index' Tracks How US Media Companies Are Responding to Trump Bullying
"This capitulation is... a pervasive trend that applies to nearly all commercial media, including cable and telecommunications firms and online platforms," said Free Press.
Jul 30, 2025
Media advocacy organization Free Press on Tuesday unveiled an index that documents and rates major media organizations' reactions to the coercive demands being made by U.S. President Donald Trump.
As Free Press explained in a press release, its Media Capitulation Index tracks actions being taken by 35 major media conglomerates who are facing pressure from Trump and his allies to curb critical reporting and commentary on his administration.
"In this investigation, Free Press found that to varying degrees the owners of America's largest media firms are caving to pressure from an authoritarian-minded president and his captured federal agencies," the organization wrote. "This capitulation is not unique to owners of news outlets—like Paramount (which owns CBS), Disney (ABC) and Warner Bros. Discovery (CNN). Rather, it's a pervasive trend that applies to nearly all commercial media, including cable and telecommunications firms and online platforms."
Free Press argued that media companies have been bending to Trump's will through four major methods: Paying out lavish settlements in lawsuits brought by the president; rolling back their programs for enhancing diversity, equity, and inclusion; pressuring journalists and commentators to soften or even censor their criticisms of the president; and "attempting to curry favor with the president during inaugural ceremonies, private dinners at Mar-a-Lago, and meetings in the White House."
The index uses a scale to rate media organizations that range from "independent" on one end to "propaganda" on the other. Of all the media companies surveyed by Free Press, only two are rated as independent: Bloomberg Media Group and Netflix. The New York Times Company for now is the least compromised of any print media conglomerate outside of Bloomberg and is merely listed as "vulnerable," while Nant Capital, the owner of the Los Angeles Times, is the most compromised and is rated as "obeying" the Trump administration.
When it comes to broadcast media, no companies earned an "independent" ranking, and CBS owner Paramount was ranked as "obeying" the Trump administration in the wake of its decisions to give Trump a $16 million payout and then cancel the show of longtime Trump critic Stephen Colbert.
Former New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan, a longtime critic of the American media's response to Trump, praised Free Press on her Substack page for highlighting the major problems facing the American media in the second Trump term.
"Huge, diverse corporations own news companies, and independent journalism all too often takes a back seat to corporate profits, mergers, and other forms of consolidation," she said. "Meanwhile, public media has been defunded, local journalism lacks local ownership, and partisan propaganda has found an influential home on radio and cable news."
She also interviewed Tim Karr, who works as Free Press' senior director of strategy and communications, about why her former employer did not earn an "independent" rating on the index.
"There is a tendency to 'both-sides' reporting about the Trump administration,” Karr said of The New York Times' coverage, which he added seems to give "equal weight to the forces of democracy and the forces of authoritarianism."
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Media and University Bosses Are Silencing Their Employees for Fear of Trump’s Wrath
The silencing is happening across American media because Trump cannot stand criticism, because he’s vindictive as hell, and because he’s willing and able to use the federal government to punish media corporations.
Jul 26, 2025
The latest casualty of U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to silence media criticism is Eduardo Porter, one of the most thoughtful and intelligent critics of this heinous regime.
On Tuesday, Porter wrote his last column for The Washington Post. In it, he criticized Trump’s attempt to dismantle the global trading system.
Porter didn’t stop there. He also explained why he was leaving the Post:
Jeff Bezos and his new head of Opinion are taking the paper down a path I cannot follow, directed toward the relentless promotion of free markets and personal liberties… I have no idea to what extent this is driven by Mr. Bezos’ fear of what Donald Trump could do to his various business interests, most of which are more valuable to him than the Post.
Well, I do have an idea. Bezos stopped the Post from endorsing former Vice President Kamala Harris. He made a huge contribution to Trump’s inauguration. And he stood directly in front of Trump at Trump’s swearing in.
Why? Because Bezos owns a bunch of mega-corporations, including Amazon, that depend on Trump’s goodwill and could be in deep trouble if Trump decided to retaliate against Bezos.
It’s much the same story with Stephen Colbert, longtime host of CBS’ “The Late Show” and the top-rated late-night talk show host in the United States.
On July 14, Colbert openly criticized CBS’ parent company, Paramount, for its $16 million settlement with Trump of his frivolous lawsuit over the routine editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris that Trump claimed gave her an unfair advantage in the 2024 election.
Said Colbert in his opening monologue:
As someone who has always been a proud employee of this network, I am offended. And I don’t know if anything will ever repair my trust in this company… I believe this kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles. It’s big fat bribe. Because this all comes as Paramount's owners are trying to get the Trump administration to approve the sale of our network to a new owner, Skydance.
Three days later, on July 17, Paramount pulled the plug on Colbert’s show, eliciting from Trump a celebratory, “I absolutely love that Colbert was fired.”
(A few days later, Colbert came out swinging, telling Trump to “go fuck yourself,” and joking that it had always been his dream to have a sitting president celebrate the end of his career.)
Yesterday, one week after Colbert’s show was cancelled, Trump’s Federal Communications Commission approved Paramount’s sale to Skydance.
To cinch the deal, Skydance CEO David Ellison promised that he’d eliminate all U.S.-based Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs at Paramount and CBS and create a new ombudsman to field complaints of ideological bias in news coverage.
Trump says CBS also agreed to run $20 million worth of public service announcements consistent with his ideological beliefs.
Let’s be clear. Jeff Bezos has silenced any criticism of Trump on the editorial pages of The Washington Post because Bezos fears Trump’s wrath.
CBS and its parent corporation, Paramount, has silenced criticism of Trump on Colbert’s hugely popular “Late Show” because its top corporate brass fears Trump’s wrath.
The new owner of CBS has agreed to some federal interference in the content of what it produces because he fears Trump’s wrath.
The silencing is happening across American media because Trump cannot stand criticism, because he’s vindictive as hell, and because he’s willing and able to use every department and agency of the federal government to punish any media corporations that allow its writers or hosts to criticize him.
It’s the same with American universities, whose professors have often criticized Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional actions and whose research has often yielded conclusions that contradict Trump’s lies (such as that climate change is a “hoax”).
Columbia University, Dartmouth College, and a handful of others have gone out of their way to “cooperate” with the Trump regime in order to avoid Trump’s wrath.
What does “cooperation” entail? Silencing Trump’s potential critics.
Columbia has just agreed to allow the regime to review its admissions and hiring practices in order to receive the federal research grants that the regime had held back.
Friends, this is how democracy dies.
Shame on any media outlet or university that allows Trump to silence it.
Trump is a dangerous despot. America needs its Eduardo Porters, Stephen Colberts, and all others in the media and in academia who have helped the nation understand just how truly dangerous Trump is.
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