Has media freedom in the US collapsed?
The Take
Al Jazeera
4.7 • 748 Ratings
🗓️ 24 July 2025
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
US television network CBS seemingly handed President Donald Trump two major victories this week after announcing $16 million would settle his lawsuit against “60 Minutes” and cancelling the show of one of his fiercest critics, Stephen Colbert. But will this mark a turning point for media freedom in the US?
In this episode:
- Rusty Foster (@TodayinTabs), Writer, Today in Tabs
Episode credits:
This episode was produced by Diana Ferrero, Sarí el-Khalili, Tracie Hunte, and Tamara Khandaker, with Phillip Lanos, Spencer Cline, Melanie Marich, Kisaa Zehra, Marya Khan, and our guest host, Manuel Ràpalo. It was edited by Kylene Kiang.
Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editors are Hisham Abu Salah and Mohannad Al-Melhem. Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s head of audio.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Al Jazeera Podcasts. |
| 0:09.7 | Today, Stephen Colbert's late show cancellation and federal cuts to U.S. public media. |
| 0:18.1 | They clarified that the cancellation was purely a financial decision. But how could it |
| 0:23.9 | purely be a financial decision if the late show is number one in ratings? A lot of folks. |
| 0:31.0 | How are President Trump and a handful of billionaires changing the media? It's confusing. |
| 0:42.3 | I'm Manuel Rapalo, and this is the take. |
| 0:55.0 | My name's Rusty Foster. I'm a writer. I write a newsletter called Today in Tabs, which is about media, politics, |
| 1:00.8 | technology a little bit, and whatever else kind of catches my eye on the internet on a day-to-day basis. Rusty, welcome to the take. You've been covering U.S. media of all kinds for years, and last |
| 1:07.8 | week we saw some seismic events happen, major hits with the cancellation |
| 1:13.6 | of Stephen Colbert's Late Show by CBS Paramount. |
| 1:16.9 | Before we start the show, I want to let you know something that I found out just last |
| 1:21.3 | night. Next year will be our last season. The network will be ending the late show in May. |
| 1:29.3 | That's one. |
| 1:30.4 | Trump suing the Wall Street Journal. |
| 1:32.8 | That's two. |
| 1:33.5 | And Congress approving federal cuts to public broadcasting, like PBS and NPR. |
| 1:39.3 | President Trump saw all of this as a big win. |
| 1:41.7 | Can you walk us through what happened? I mean, it was a bad week in |
| 1:48.0 | media that has come at the end of years' worth of bad weeks in media. So, Paramount owns CBS. Paramount |
| 1:55.8 | is attempting to merge with a company called Skydance Media. Skydance Media is owned by Larry Ellison's son, David Ellison. |
| 2:03.6 | Larry Ellison, the multi-billionaire from Oracle, |
| 2:06.6 | gave his son David Ellison $8 billion and said, |
... |
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