MARK HEMINGWAY: The Downfall Of 60 Minutes And The Biggest Media Scandal You’ve Never Heard Of.

According to the Times, “Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, is eager to secure the Trump administration’s approval for a multibillion-dollar sale of her company to Skydance, a company run by the son of the tech billionaire Larry Ellison.”

Supposedly, Redstone has also expressed a desire to settle Donald Trump’s case against 60 Minutes over allegations they deceptively edited their interview with Kamala Harris last fall. Though the Times is loathe to discuss it, there’s also lots of speculation that Redstone, an observant Jew, was less than thrilled when 60 Minutes recently ran an offensively stupid segment where veteran reporter Leslie Stahl asked a freed Israeli hostage if his Hamas captors starved him unintentionally because Hamas ran out of food. It’s well established that Hamas steals and hoards all the food and aid coming into Gaza, and it beggars belief that anyone, let alone someone who gets paid millions by a news network, would think a terrorist organization deserves the benefit of the doubt. And further, that layers of producers and editors would put this on the air.

There may be some truth to any or all of these accusations about what’s motivating Paramount and Redstone, but if Paramount is attempting to politicize 60 Minutes‘ reporting, at least they’re trying to make a buck out of it. Bill Owens spent 26 years at 60 Minutes, eventually presiding over a news operation that has willfully corrupted itself to the point where its bias has turned the show into a laughingstock. In at least one instance that I am familiar with, Owens played a pivotal role in a gross journalistic failing at 60 Minutes that ultimately helped a Democratic presidential candidate evade responsibility for an international incident that got Americans killed.

Read the whole thing.