It’s all about the money according to CBS. It just looks like censorship. Or craven pandering to the president.

Which I can’t quite buy. If CBS wanted to curry favor with Donald Trump they would have taken Stephen Colbert off the air immediately and not announced that his show would end in 2026.

Still, is is a remarkable coincidence that days after the announcement the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates these things, approved the sale of CBS’s parent company in a multi-billion dollar deal that had been stalled for months. A cynic might suggest they are related.

( I’m not sure how a talk show loses $40 million a year as CBS is claiming. Are the writers being paid that much? Don’t the guests appear for the free publicity? Someone show me the numbers.)

Also unrelated to the FCC approval was CBS capitulating to Trump and settling a lawsuit out of court for $16 million. I understand that $16 million is pocket change to those who run the network, but to me that is perhaps more concerning than canceling a comedian who made fun of the president.

Silencing Colbert is censorship. Paying Trump is endorsing his lies. They could reinstate Colbert’s show now that the sale is approved. But any corporate or personal dignity or integrity has vanished.

The lawsuit, over editing of an interview with Kamala Harris during the last election, was groundless. There was no evidence that CBS did anything wrong. But Trump doesn’t like it when journalists are fair and objective. He feels it makes him look bad. So he sues.

Americans who value a free and independent press should be concerned about Trump’s war on the media. But they don’t seem to be paying much attention. It is an esoteric concept that most people don’t think much about, no matter how much they should. One a free press gives up its freedom rebuilding trust can take decades.

In the same fashion Trump is attacking American universities, because academics are the ones most likely to point out the idiocy of some of his policies and speak truth to power. Lawsuits and the withdrawal of government funding will bring them into line., just as they did some of the larger law firms who represented people Trump doesn’t like. It seems Trump is at war with a large chunk of American society, and he is winning. Not because he is right, but because he is loud and obnoxious and apparently no-one is willing to stand up to him. Those closest to him should call him on his lies. Instead they enable him.

It has been said by some that Stephen Colbert is the canary in the American coal mine. But no-one is paying attention to the canary at this point.

I’m wondering if it is already too late.