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Hi John,

No amount of corporate PR can hide the truth: CBS News, now under the direction of anti-woke opinion journalist Bari Weiss, spiked an important, heavily researched 60 Minutes story about the Salvadoran gulag to which Donald Trump deported Venezuelan nationals to be tortured. 

Plenty of news outlets will tell you that this happened, and lament the corruption of establishment media. At the Prospect we tell you why it happened. 

Here’s why: CBS’s corporate parent Paramount, owned by billionaire scion David Ellison, wants to buy Warner Brothers Discovery, parent company of CNN, and consolidate a big chunk of news and information (including TikTok) under a MAGA-friendly oligarch family. Netflix is also trying to buy Warner Brothers, and Ellison needs the Trump administration’s approval for their offer to win out. But things were going poorly: Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner withdrew financing for the deal, Netflix just hired the most influential MAGA lobbyist to work for their bid, and even Trump himself had lashed out at supposed “unfair” treatment from CBS in recent weeks.

Ellison needed something big, a loud show of allegiance to Trump that could give Paramount an edge over Netflix. Amending the offer with a personal funding guarantee from his dad might sway investors, but spiking an unflattering story by CBS’s flagship newsmagazine demonstrated the necessary loyalty to the king.

This kind of analysis is why, when CNN reported about the 60 Minutes controversy, they quoted… me.

The “60 Minutes” crew came under tremendous pressure last season as the old Paramount owners were trying to get a deal done with Ellison. That same staff now perceives it’s happening again with the new owners.

And outside media observers notice, too. “It’s hard to ignore that this happened just as Paramount’s hostile bid for Warner Bros. was slipping away, with Kushner pulling out of the financing and Trump bad-mouthing CBS,” wrote The American Prospect’s executive editor David Dayen. “Time to please the king again.”

One thing you don’t have to worry about with the Prospect is us sandbagging our independent journalism to please government officials or preserve our corporate merger. What you’ll get from us is reporting on who has power, what they’re doing with it, and why it matters to you. That’s why we need your help with our end-of-the-year fundraising campaign: we don’t have a billionaire paying for our work and compromising our integrity.

For this final week, all donations will be matched, doubling your impact. All of the work that we do depends on the support and generosity of readers like you.

The scandal at 60 Minutes shows how important it is to have a free press untainted by big money, willing to tell the truth and challenge power. With your help, we can make this a reality at the Prospect.

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