Stop the press!

Speaker 1 I can finally speak unvarnished truth to power and say what I really think about Donald Trump, starting right now.

Speaker 5 Everyone's wondering why CBS canceled the late show with Stephen Colbert. Stephen Colbert is wondering.

Speaker 1 How could it purely be a financial decision if the late show is number one in ratings?

Speaker 2 A lot of folks.

Speaker 5 Jon Stewart is wondering.

Speaker 2 The fact that CBS didn't try to save their number one rated network late night franchise that's been on the air for over three decades is part of what's making everybody wonder: was this

Speaker 9 purely financial?

Speaker 5 Jimmy Fallon wondering.

Speaker 10 I don't like it. I don't like what's going on one bit.
These are crazy times.

Speaker 5 Elizabeth Warren is asking questions. Sean won't stop sending links.
On Today Explained, we may never really know whether CBS canceled Colbert because politics or because his show was losing money.

Speaker 5 But President Trump is hitting at the media in so many ways that it's been hard to keep track of them all. We're going to make it easier coming up.

Speaker 12 Every story you love,

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Speaker 13 every idea you wished was yours,

Speaker 13 all began as nothing.

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Speaker 13 Asking a simple question:

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Speaker 5 I'm Noelle King. David Folkenflick is with me now.
David is NPR's longtime media correspondent, and he wrote a book called Murdoch World about the man who owns the Wall Street Journal.

Speaker 5 All right, so let's go back to last Thursday night. President Trump supporters have been demanding the release of the Epstein files.
Everyone's on edge or in Reddit looking for proof of something.

Speaker 5 And then

Speaker 17 the Wall Street Journal breaks a story that does not show any criminal wrongdoing by Trump, but it certainly shows a coziness between Trump and perhaps the most notorious

Speaker 17 convicted sex offender in the nation's recent history, Jeffrey Epstein, by relaying a description of a doodle, it's kind of obscene doodle, and a note that the president is said to have sent two decades ago on the occasion of Epstein's 50th birthday.

Speaker 18 Now, according to the journal, also, the letter contains, quote, several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker.

Speaker 8 A pair of small arcs denotes the woman's breasts, and the future president's signature is a squiggly Donald below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.

Speaker 8 The letter concludes: Happy birthday, and may every day be another wonderful secret.

Speaker 17 Trump had then posted, you know, essentially that he had told Rupert Burdock this wasn't true.

Speaker 16 Truth social.

Speaker 19 The Wall Street Journal printed a fake letter supposedly to Epstein. These are not my words, not the way I talk.
Also, I don't draw pictures.

Speaker 19 I told Rupert Murdoch it was a scam and that he should not print this fake story.

Speaker 19 But he did. And now I'm going to sue his ass off and that of his third-rate newspaper.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Speaker 17 The president's press press secretary said much the same publicly on Friday, and Trump delivered on his promise.

Speaker 17 He's suing the Wall Street Journal, he's suing Rupert Murdoch, which is an extraordinary turn of affairs for these two powerful figures, two titanic figures on the American landscape, particularly of the right, who have been allied for a decade and now are, you know, at least legally at loggerheads.

Speaker 5 You wrote a very well-regarded book about Rupert Murdoch. Let me ask you something on behalf of the skeptics.
Donald Trump says that birthday letter is not real. That is not my writing.

Speaker 5 Could it ever be true that the Wall Street Journal would claim this exists if it doesn't?

Speaker 17 Is there any potential? You know, I want to remain agnostic on all kinds of things until we've seen it. We have not, for example, seen a replica of the doodle or the note itself.

Speaker 17 And that's, you know, I think something a lot of people are looking for.

Speaker 17 On the other hand, I would say the Wall Street Journal has decades-long tradition preceding Rupert Murdoch, but including the proprietorship and owner of Rupert Murdoch since he bought the paper in 2007,

Speaker 17 of doing incredible work and having amazing lawyers. And amazing lawyers do two things.

Speaker 17 They can fight ferociously in court, but they also review things from what's been described to me by editors and reporters I've talked to over the years

Speaker 17 with a very careful degree of scrutiny. I don't think you publish something like this without feeling that you are confident that this is accurate and that this is fair.

Speaker 5 Do you have any insight into why the Wall Street Journal wouldn't just show a picture of it, of the letter, of the doodle?

Speaker 17 It's one of the great questions of the day that the journal has not so far answered publicly.

Speaker 17 And one would imagine that either they have it and will produce it or that they will get it and produce it. But there are worlds in which there could be some watermark on it.

Speaker 17 It could be part of some legal proceeding that we don't know about.

Speaker 17 It could have come from some source where to reproduce it would somehow reveal either the source or a small pool of people from whom it could have come.

Speaker 5 All right, so what does President Trump want to get out of a lawsuit against the journal and Rupert Murdoch? What's the aim?

Speaker 17 Well, the aim aim is probably multifold.

Speaker 17 The aim is to exact vengeance against news organizations that dare to report troubling things about him in this second term when he has

Speaker 17 really fully blossomed the idea that he is the executive, the executive is all-powerful, and he is all-powerful, and people should not fall on the wrong side of him.

Speaker 17 What this does on the outset is saying to his supporters, you don't have to pay attention to this. This is bullshit.

Speaker 17 What it does is that it, I think, expands the universe of the press that he's essentially designating as not trustworthy.

Speaker 3 CNN is scum, and so is MS, DNC.

Speaker 17 They're all.

Speaker 3 And frankly, the networks aren't much better. It's all fake news, but.

Speaker 17 It's very consistent with what he said to Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes many years ago when he was first running for president, which is like, why do you do this? Why do you call us the fake news?

Speaker 17 Why do you attack us preemptively?

Speaker 22 And he said, you know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all. So when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.

Speaker 17 And I think it serves as a warning for other news organizations, particularly ones that might be more sympathetic or more political in nature,

Speaker 17 in his favor, not to do things that might discomfit him because even the great Rupert Murdoch can come under his thumb.

Speaker 5 David, in addition to the lawsuits, Trump has also barred the Wall Street Journal from the press pool on a trip that he's taking to Scotland.

Speaker 5 For people who are not reporters, what's the significance of that?

Speaker 17 Well, it's essentially saying, I get to dictate who gets to cover me on behalf of the American people. And it's intended to be a warning, as he did for the Associated Press.
Let's remember that.

Speaker 17 It was, you know, what, 60 years and just a few months ago that the president said to the Associated Press, you can't cover me in Oval Office events and smaller settings because...

Speaker 12 The Associated Press just refuses to go with what the law is and what is taking place. It's called the Gulf of America now.
It's not called the Gulf of Mexico any longer.

Speaker 17 And so he punished the Associated Press. And although judge ruled mostly against him, basically Trump is able to prevail.
It's his White House and certain smaller settings.

Speaker 17 You know, they can't force the AP inside. And Trump's saying, I don't care who you're owned by.
I'm willing to do this to any of you.

Speaker 12 And they're doing us no favors. And I guess I'm not doing them any favors.
That's the way life works.

Speaker 5 What other media organizations has the president punished in the last, I don't know, 18 months? And how?

Speaker 17 So look, the president, as a private citizen, before taking office in January, he sued ABC and CBS. And without having to go through all the details, he got their parent companies to pay up

Speaker 17 $15 million, $16 million

Speaker 17 each

Speaker 17 toward his future presidential library on cases that were seen by legal scholars as certainly winnable in the case of CBS, just, you know, somewhat farcical.

Speaker 23 He alleged in an interview last year that his former rival Kamala Harris, she did this interview on CBS's 60 Minutes and that it was deceptively edited in a way that helped her and hurt him.

Speaker 12 She gave an answer that was so bad that they changed it.

Speaker 24 The outlet maintains they edited the interview for clarity and length.

Speaker 17 He also won significant money from Meta and from Twitter, from X.

Speaker 25 President Trump has signed an agreement with Meta to settle a lawsuit that he filed against the company and its CEO for suspending his account after the January 6th attack on the Capitol.

Speaker 24 Twitter cited the risk of Trump inciting further violence as part of an effort to remain in the White House. Trump claimed Twitter violated his First Amendment right to free speech.

Speaker 17 He's gone to the courts.

Speaker 17 His regulator, Brendan Carr, elevated to be the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has opened formal inquiries or investigations of every single major network in the country except the Fox Broadcast Network, which is owned, of course, by Rupert Murdoch, who has been, at least until now, a major ally of the president on the political right.

Speaker 17 He has gone after PBS and NPR.

Speaker 4 The order directs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and other federal agencies to stop funding national public radio and PBS.

Speaker 24 It's to stop what Trump is calling biased and partisan news coverage.

Speaker 17 God, the list goes on and on.

Speaker 17 strikes me that you can't really interpret this without viewing this as an effort to control almost any source of independent or outside information that could allow people to draw their own conclusions that run in a contrary decision than the president.

Speaker 17 I've been turned, I don't know about how you feel, but I've been turned in basically a full-time legal reporter. You know, almost every, you know, I cover the media.

Speaker 16 I've covered the media since 2000.

Speaker 17 And never have I found myself reading court records more.

Speaker 17 Never have I found myself in more courts in different, you know, courtrooms, federal, state, and different parts, you know, New York and Washington, having to, you know, follow stuff in Florida, like there has just been a lot.

Speaker 17 And it's part of where we're at right now. And Trump is like, you know what, I'm going to lead the charge on that.
I'm going to, not only that, I'm going to model how you can go after the press.

Speaker 5 David Fulkenflick is NPR's media correspondent coming up with the Colbert Report.

Speaker 12 Every story you love,

Speaker 13 every invention that moves you,

Speaker 13 every idea you wished was yours, all began as nothing.

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Speaker 13 Asking a simple question,

Speaker 14 what do you see?

Speaker 12 Great ideas start on Mac.

Speaker 13 Find out more on apple.com slash Mac.

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Speaker 5 We're back with Matt Bellany. Matt is a founding partner of Puck and he's host of The Town podcast.

Speaker 5 Recently, owing to drama, Matt has been writing quite a bit about CBS's CB mess, starting with the president suing over that interview with Kamala Harris that he claimed was deceptively edited.

Speaker 32 That lawsuit ended with a $16 million settlement by CBS and no admission of guilt or apology, but the message in that settlement was that Trump can bring what most observers believed was a frivolous lawsuit against a media company and extract a pretty big settlement if that company needs something out of the federal government.

Speaker 26 And in this case, CBS very much needs the FCC to approve the transfer of its license to Skydance to close that $8 billion transaction.

Speaker 11 Here at CBS, our parent company, Paramount Global, has agreed to a multi-billion dollar deal to merge with the production company, Skydance Media.

Speaker 36 Now, these are the things that we make Skydance founder David Ellison a new Hollywood power player.

Speaker 36 But it also lands him with a host of challenges.

Speaker 5 And there was a lot of speculation, as you just said, that this was the reason CBS settled. What do you think? Is that right?

Speaker 32 Yeah, I think CBS 100% settled the Trump litigation rather than taking it to trial because they need this transaction to close.

Speaker 32 And the Trump administration made it pretty clear that closing this transaction was

Speaker 32 helped along by paying the settlement money to the president.

Speaker 5 CBS News is a pretty old-school, straight-arrow news organization. What was the response from that newsroom when their parent company Paramount settled?

Speaker 20 The response at CBS News has been pretty alarmed, I would say, both internally and in the public sphere.

Speaker 33 We've seen the two executives at CBS News quit over this issue. We've seen big CBS News talent like Leslie Stahl and Steve Croft go public with criticisms of the deal.

Speaker 40 Sherry Redstone, who is the head of Paramount.

Speaker 27 She's the owner of

Speaker 40 it. Yes.
She has a couple of billion dollars.

Speaker 2 They've got like an $8 billion deal on the table.

Speaker 40 Yes, and $2 billion she's going to get.

Speaker 40 So she wanted the sale to go through.

Speaker 38 It's been a very traumatic time for CBS News through this whole process, and it doesn't look like it's over yet.

Speaker 37 That deal has still not been approved.

Speaker 5 Why has it not been approved yet?

Speaker 29 The FCC has the power to review the transfer of broadcast licenses.

Speaker 41 It has pretty broad discretion over the reasons for not approving it.

Speaker 39 If they determine that the broadcaster is not acting in the public interest, then they can hold up this deal pretty much indefinitely.

Speaker 35 There's no appeals process.

Speaker 39 There's nothing that someone can do if the FCC FCC decides to sit on a broadcast transfer.

Speaker 32 So Brendan Carr, the chair of the FCC, he has made it very clear that he's not a fan of DEI programs.

Speaker 25 The Biden administration has pressed the FCC to break hard left, and it has.

Speaker 25 The Biden administration has put ideology over smart policy.

Speaker 39 He believes that CBS News has a bias against conservatives.

Speaker 43 There's a lot of people in this country right now on the radical left that are upset about this investigation into CBS and the work that I'm doing on broadcasters.

Speaker 32 And he has been quizzing the powers that be at both Skydance and Paramount about those policies and about the news direction.

Speaker 39 And he wants some kinds of concessions in order to approve this deal.

Speaker 5 On top of that, President Trump likes to punish people. So I hear you saying there's a chance here that Paramount, that Sherry Redstone still does not get what she wants.

Speaker 39 There is a small chance.

Speaker 39 I think what has been happening over the past few months and the fact that Sherry Redstone is also a Republican donor and a friend of President Trump, I think all of those facts are going to coalesce around this deal getting approved, but not before Trump has exacted his pound of flesh, so to speak.

Speaker 5 All right, so you have the CBS newsroom pushing back,

Speaker 5 people resigning, retiring, and then a prominent public critic of Trump's gets his show canceled on CBS.

Speaker 27 Oh, hey, everybody.

Speaker 5 When did you learn they were taking Stephen Colbert's late show off the air?

Speaker 32 I learned when everyone else did. Yeah.

Speaker 33 It was a total surprise.

Speaker 4 Before we start the show, I want to let you know something that I found out just last night. Next year will be our last season.
The network will be ending the late show in May.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 37 it's an odd thing because CBS has been discussing the future of its late night properties for a long time.

Speaker 32 And the economics of late night are pretty bad.

Speaker 20 The late show was losing tens of millions of dollars a year.

Speaker 29 It still is.

Speaker 28 The 1230 show,

Speaker 21 James Corden.

Speaker 29 Are you ready? That was canceled when Corden left the show.

Speaker 31 It was replaced by a show that was about half as expensive to produce.

Speaker 31 Taylor Tomlinson, and welcome to the last episode of After Midnight.

Speaker 31 And then show went away when the host decided that she didn't want to do it. Colbert has been under the microscope for a long time.

Speaker 31 Late Show was the leader in the category, but it was only averaging about 2.5 million viewers a night, down significantly from what we all remember as the heyday of Late Night.

Speaker 14 It's the Late Show with David Letterman.

Speaker 45 It's the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

Speaker 14 It's late night with COVID O'Brien.

Speaker 37 And Colbert has particular challenges as the CBS host.

Speaker 20 Both Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel have big digital footprints.

Speaker 30 Their bits and stunts and monologues, those travel online a lot further than the Colbert monologue does because they have tried and really emphasized those platforms.

Speaker 20 So you have Stephen Colbert with about 10 million YouTube followers, subscribers.

Speaker 32 Jimmy Fallon has triple that. Jimmy Kimmel has double that.

Speaker 28 The average age of a Stephen Colbert viewer is 68 years old.

Speaker 16 Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 31 But all of linear television is getting older, older, older, and Colbert was at the tip of that spear.

Speaker 5 So it is possible

Speaker 5 that politics did not have anything to do with this.

Speaker 28 I wouldn't say it had nothing to do with this.

Speaker 17 Okay.

Speaker 31 I think the cloud that has been hovering hovering over CBS certainly informed the climate in which this decision was made.

Speaker 31 But I don't think the primary motivator for canceling a big franchise like this was the momentary politics.

Speaker 29 I do think the economics played a large factor, an overwhelming factor in this decision.

Speaker 5 How has Stephen Colbert handled this? What is he saying?

Speaker 35 Colbert has been very classy about this.

Speaker 31 No surprise there.

Speaker 4 I do want to say that the folks at CBS have been great partners.

Speaker 33 He addressed his staff backstage.

Speaker 31 He has been very matter-of-fact. He's been talking about how great of a run it's been.

Speaker 4 And I've had the pleasure and the responsibility of sharing what we do every day with you in front of this camera for the last 10 years. And let me tell you, it is a fantastic job.

Speaker 20 He also has been given 10 months.

Speaker 37 to stay on the show.

Speaker 32 This cancellation is not immediate.

Speaker 20 It's only at the end of this season.

Speaker 26 And I think we're going to see what he he really thinks during that time.

Speaker 1 I can finally speak unvarnished truth to power and say what I really think about Donald Trump starting right now.

Speaker 1 I don't care for him.

Speaker 25 Doesn't seem to have like the skill set.

Speaker 1 Doesn't have the skill set to be president. You know, just not a good fit.
That's all.

Speaker 5 I saw Julia Louis Dreyfus today on Instagram, I think it was, saying, you know, I stand with Stephen Colbert. What's been the reaction the famous people community?

Speaker 5 What are other celebrities and late night hosts saying?

Speaker 37 I think there's disappointment on two levels.

Speaker 35 One, Colbert has just been a class act throughout his career.

Speaker 29 People love him.

Speaker 28 People love doing the show.

Speaker 29 It's been very helpful to people in promoting their projects and going on the show.

Speaker 30 So I think there's a real disappointment and anger over this cancellation.

Speaker 29 Secondly, I think there's a real fear going on right now, regardless of what actually happened.

Speaker 28 The optics are so bad here that it really feels like the criticism of people in power is being scrutinized right now like never before.

Speaker 45 Canceling Colbert is an obvious move to appease Donald Trump. And I need to tell y'all something.
If you don't think we are under a regime with an authoritarian strategy, then you are bugging.

Speaker 45 This is textbook authoritarian rule.

Speaker 2 So here's the point.

Speaker 2 If you're trying to figure out why Stevens' show is ending, I don't think the answer can be found in some smoking gun email or phone call from Trump to CBS executives or in CBS's QuickBook spreadsheets on the financial health of late night.

Speaker 2 I think the answer is in the fear and pre-compliance that is gripping all of America's institutions at this very moment.

Speaker 2 Institutions that have chosen not to fight the vengeful and vindictive actions of our pubic hair doodling commander-in-chief.

Speaker 33 I think there's a real fear around Hollywood that you say something that the president doesn't approve of and all of a sudden you've got a target on your back.

Speaker 5 My guess is that Colbert is going to be fine. He'll do a podcast or something.
Stephen, call me.

Speaker 5 But I do, I do, as a journalist, I do worry a lot about news and whether news organizations should be beholden to these corporate interests, to a person like Sherry Redstone, who has, you know, her own, her own motives.

Speaker 5 Is this a complaint I should have lodged 40 years ago? Like, how worried are you about all of this?

Speaker 38 Well, there's always been a push-pull in the news business between the corporate interests of the owners and the job that the news organization is doing for the viewers.

Speaker 20 In part, that's the reason why the FCC has these public interest goals in mind at the federal level.

Speaker 32 The thing that's changed here is that the Trump administration has been using this public interest,

Speaker 21 essentially regulation over the news business to try to shape it in its own image and to get the kind of coverage that it wants to get and that it thinks its supporters want to get.

Speaker 39 And that to me is new and potentially very dangerous because you have very powerful people using the levers of government to change the news.

Speaker 39 Throughout all the pressure during this deal and the sale to Skydance, none of the 60 Minutes stories actually changed. So, will that be the same under David Ellison and the new Skydance regime?

Speaker 32 We don't know. We'll see.

Speaker 5 Puck's Matt Bellany. He's host of the Town Podcast.
Today's show was produced by Avishai Artsy and edited by Jolie Myers, Laura Bullard, check the facts. And Patrick Boyd is the only engineer.

Speaker 5 I'm Noelle King. This is Today Explained.

Speaker 1 So that's it.

Speaker 7 I'm gone.

Speaker 1 Just like

Speaker 7 in May.

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