Paramount caved to Trump. Where does that leave press freedom?

The green light for the $8bn Skydance bid is more evidence of a president bent on shaping TV in his own image. At least South Park is nakedly holding out, writes Stephen Armstrong

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The story of the $8bn merger between Paramount Global, which made Top Gun and the Mission: Impossible films, and Skydance Media, which closes on 7 August after the US Federal Communications Commission approved the merger, is worthy of its own thriller.

First mooted in December 2023 by Skydance’s chief executive, David Ellison, the deal foundered repeatedly - most recently when the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) began investigating the CBS network, owned by Paramount. Dressed up as an assault on diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI), the real issue was President Trump’s fury over an innocuous edit by the flagship news programme 60 Minutes.

The channel clipped a quote from the show’s interview with Kamala Harris about US-Israel relations and showed it as a teaser on the CBS show Face the Nation the day before the full show aired. Trump claimed that this was deceptive editing designed to favour the Democrats, although few legal experts agreed.

Trump sued for $10bn, the FCC gummed up the sale and the Paramount owner Shari Redstone scrambled to ensure the deal went through. The show’s executive producer, Bill Owens - only the third in the 57-year-history of 60 Minutes - resigned in April, telling staff “it’s clear the company is done with me”.

The show’s noble history includes breaking news of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, revealing how the CIA planned to smuggle cocaine into America and interviews with Richard Nixon in 1977 and Bill and Hilary Clinton in 1992.

So what?