The US federal government forced Paramount to take Colbert off the air. Seems that people in the US don’t actually value these things.
> What values specifically are you optimizing for here?
Probably not being fascist.
Not really; the Ellisons are quite close to Trump. Nobody was forced to do anything. Had the FCC actually revoked their license, and had Paramount actually been willing to fight, they could have sued. It's not easy to force anyone that rich to do anything; the state works on behalf of capital. It seems like europe is more aware of the meaningless bluster than the actual crimes being committed
There are much better things to point to to illustrate the deterioration of the rule of law, like blatantly illegal deportation of citizens without due process. Or raping children in concentration camps under the guise of cracking down on crime. We may never even know who was seized and what happened to them and there's little incentive for our very pro-corporate media to report on it.
But sure, paramount is the real victim here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merger_of_Skydance_Media_and_P...
Read that timeline and then see if you're still convinced that they didn't at least seem to have done a thing or 2 to appease the federal government
Yes, companies do have to do things in order to appease regulators. But typically that's where a regulator says what they need them to do and then they oblige. Those requests usually involve market power and such, and splitting off part of the company. They don't involve the actual content/product of said company