So, I just want to put the cherry on top of the point here. The claim that television journalism has a strong liberal bias has always been an exaggeration and mostly a product of the origin story propaganda for Fox News. Yes, most polls of television reporters found them to be more likely to be Democrats than Republicans, but even when that was true, most of them were not Daniel Schore. They were center-left at most, and many were center right, and most of them were mostly centrist. They were outraged by lynchings, church bombings and white parents shouting violent racial epitaphs at young black children simply trying to go to school. Eventually, most of them who covered the Vietnam war clearly grew to believe that the war was A) unwinable and B) not worthy of American blood or treasure. Most of them were disgusted by the abuse of power and violations of the constitution and institutional practices by Richard Nixon. But that hardly made the majority of working TV reporters, flaming liberals. And while I would never claim that there was no impact of their private biases on the quality of their reporting, it was the exception rather than the rule that reporters personal beliefs significantly altered what was reported on the Network evening newscasts.
But the real reason the claim that television news was functioning as a shill for liberal political causes was bullshit Is that the companies that ran those networks In the 60s and 70s and 80s and 90s were controlled by at least center right if not far right corporate boardrooms. So the significance of Donald Trump being able to call his cronies at Paramount to get pet entertainment projects greenlit is not primarily that it’s going to add to the coarseness and low brow quotient of American movies. The significance is that what has always been a conservative leaning corporate control over television information and news has now become dominated by the most extreme and irrational versions of conservative ideology that we’ve ever seen. If Paramont acquires Warner Brothers (and no doubt, one reason they’re making RH4 is to grease the wheels on any potential marriage) its not clear what would happen to CNN, but it seems that both CBS and CNN will be under the control of corporate masters who are even more fanatically enthralled to extreme Trumpism than Fox News currently is. Of the traditional television journalistic outlets on cable or broadcast television that would leave NBC controlled by Comcast and ABC controlled by Disney. We have seen how responsive Disney is to pressure from the Trump administration, and while Comcast is a bit more equipped to stand up to them, their decision to spinoff MSNBC signals they have no stomach for that kind of a fight with the Trump regulators. Sent from Gmail Mobile On Wed, 26 Nov 2025 at 7:38 AM PGage <[email protected]> wrote: > Puck News’ Matt Belloni tweeted this morning confirmation of a story he > alluded to last night, which is that “Paramount WILL release Rush Hour 4 > after prodding from Trump on behalf of Brett Ratner. Distribution deal. > Producer Tarak Ben Ammar is lining up financing. Get ready for the dumbest > possible state-controlled media.” > > > https://x.com/mattbelloni/status/1993364494790410381?s=61&t=7j-z2lN7D2nG5CIVrGa4Yg > > I’ve been trying to remember if Trump had come some kind of lame cameo the > first Rush Hour, But this seems mostly a function of Trump‘s personal, > financial and political ties to the Ellisons (which, on the cusp of what > appears to be an attempt by Paramount to take over WBD does make the story > TV, not just NOTV) and his constant need to Try to stick it to the woke > community, And demonstrate his commitment to the proposition that Rich > White Male sexual predators need all the help they can get. > > > > > > > Sent from Gmail Mobile > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKGtkYLmeoxG0oDE%3D05MNRztC24namcVktyAFqMzz_gBpmS-oQ%40mail.gmail.com.
