“Big Fat Bribe”: Stephen Colbert’s Show Canceled After He Slams Trump & Paramount/Skydance Merger

“Over a period of several decades, both Democratic and Republican administrations have placed our media and information system in the hands of giant media conglomerates who have only one value. It’s not freedom of press. It’s not free flow of information. It’s profit maximization.”

By Amy Goodman and Jeff Cohen, Democracy Now!

The top-ranked show on late-night television, CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, has been canceled, just days after Colbert skewered Paramount, the parent company of CBS, for settling a lawsuit brought by President Donald Trump. The lawsuit accused another CBS show, 60 Minutes, of biased editing in an interview with Kamala Harris during the 2024 election. Its settlement comes as Paramount works to finalize a lucrative merger with Skydance Media that must be approved by the Federal Communications Commission. On his show, Colbert called the settlement “a big fat bribe.”

“So many media conglomerates had already given thinly disguised bribes to Trump to settle lawsuits they could not possibly lose in court,” explains Jeff Cohen, co-founder of the online action group RootsAction and the media watch group FAIR, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. Cohen says he suspects Paramount agreed to cancel Colbert’s show — and will likely remove other programming critical of Trump — as part of a deal with the administration to win favorable conditions for its merger. But Cohen emphasizes that the erosion of a free press did not start under Trump. “Over a period of several decades, both Democratic and Republican administrations have placed our media and information system in the hands of giant media conglomerates who have only one value. It’s not freedom of press. It’s not free flow of information. It’s profit maximization.”