'CBS rolled over'
Instead of saying no on First Amendment grounds – or at least putting up a fight before handing over the tapes – CBS is saying it is "legally compelled" to comply. Some experts dispute that. "They have no obligation to turn those materials over," said Christopher Terry, associate professor of media law at the University of Minnesota, who has been studying the FCC for years.
"There's no question CBS rolled over," Terry told me. "The question is why, and the answer seems obvious: They're going for a big merger later this year and they're doing everything they can to play nice."
A CBS spokesperson declined to comment. But Copps, who I quoted above, said "it's difficult to see purity of motivations here," since CBS parent Paramount Global needs the Trump administration to sign off on its deal with Skydance since CBS holds local TV station licenses.
Of course, as Schwartzman pointed out, if FCC chair Carr "has problems with current management, he should be happy to have the licenses go to someone else."
Here's the unanswerable question I posed several people over the weekend: If the Trump administration's media regulator receives raw news gathering material from CBS, what else will it request?
"During my over three decades in senior management at CBS television stations we aggressively protected outtakes and raw video," veteran TV exec Jay Newman told me Sunday. "The strong feeling was these were considered 'work product' – akin to a reporter's notes. The precedent set by releasing these to a government agency is abhorrent. The FCC should stick to its core mission and not being in the business of regulating content through intimidation!"
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