I first started using the term Protection Racket Media almost three years ago. It came up in an Amiable Skeptics VIP podcast with my friend (and yours), Adam Baldwin, when discussing the corruption around Joe Biden and the media's refusal to take it seriously. At the time, the revelation of nearly two dozen LLCs in the Biden family laundering foreign money from the House Oversight Committee had generated nearly no coverage at all from the same American media archipelago that breathlessly reported on the danger of having diplomats stay in Trump-owned hotels a few years earlier.
I blurbed the podcast at the time:
“CNN wasn’t there, NBC wasn’t there, ABC, CBS — even C-SPAN wasn’t there,” I point out. “C-SPAN has three channels, and they couldn’t spare a channel,” I continue, “for a presentation of how the president’s family, while he was vice-president, was creating [that] sort of money-laundering operation.” ...
“Ed, Ed, Ed,” Adam sighs, “there you go again, expecting the media to behave ethically.” We both take a few shots at the Pulitzers, and Adam returns to the futility of expecting the media to live up to its vaunted ‘principles’. The Bidens and the media “are going to get away with it,” Adam predicts, “unless Comer and his group can write legislation” to prohibit this kind of corruption. “Unless and until there’s a Republican in the White House,” Adam concludes, “the Bidens will get away with it.”
The podcast is still available for our VIP members (and we have a special running this holiday season for new and upgrading members!), so check out the entire conversation. The point of the term is that the media isn't just biased in the sense that Bernard Goldberg wrote in his 2000 book Bias, from a blind spot created by shared ideology. It has transformed since then into a deliberate mission to promote and amplify an ideological agenda and to tear down anything that opposes it. As Adam wisely concluded, ethics have little to do with it. They exist to protect the Left and to help impose its radical agenda through propaganda and outright lies.
That serves as a springboard to discuss the struggles at CBS News and the challenges that Bari Weiss will face in attempting to turn it into a legitimate news organization. However, former CBS News reporter Catherine Herridge brought the receipts over the last 24 hours in explaining why independent journalism will dominate 2026. We have already seen this momentum from Nick Shirley, who easily exposed massive fraud in federal childcare funding in Minnesota and elsewhere – and then found himself the target of Protection Racket Media outlets attempting to discredit him rather than report the news of large-scale fraud.
Herridge's Straight To The Point podcast explained her decision to bet big on independent journalism, and to tell her subscribers why she left CBS News. The full podcast tells the whole story, but Herridge also broke out the highlights on Twitter:
Straight to the Point:
— Catherine Herridge (@C__Herridge) January 1, 2026
When Corporate Media Bias Is Baked In
In the fall of 2023, I brought CBS News a proposed interview opportunity with Elon Musk.
CBS Executives said the interview couldn’t be done live, rather it had to be pre-recorded so they had the ability to edit Musk… pic.twitter.com/nuS3A4cDsL
CBS Executives said the interview couldn’t be done live, rather it had to be pre-recorded so they had the ability to edit Musk and it had to be on a CBS platform.
“We don't know what [@ElonMusk] is going to say!”
I could not believe what the CBS News executives were saying. Isn't that the point of journalism? You don't know what the person's going to say?
At that time, @cbsnews was under different management and did not respond to our questions seeking comment.
My first thought was that this was the flip side of the infamous Bill O'Reilly clip, in which he roared in frustration, "F*** it, we'll do it live!" But this is hardly the worst of the issues Herridge faced. CBS News actively impeded Herridge's attempts to report on the Hunter Biden story, and the larger stories about Biden Inc corruption. Herridge had to go to court after she was laid off to get her files back on that story, as she notes, and makes a very good point about editorial bias:
Straight to the Point: When Corporate Media Attacks Confidential Sources
— Catherine Herridge (@C__Herridge) January 1, 2026
“I had calls from sources I had worked with for years who wanted to know whether the seizure of my records by @CBSNews was going to put their identities in jeopardy.”
“I can tell you that source… https://t.co/tum3UUKj85 pic.twitter.com/ni9zMRMKyt
“I can tell you that source protection, the First Amendment, a free press, these are my North Star.”
NOTE: CBS returned my reporting files (below) after public and congressional pressure.
Straight to the Point: Independent Journalism Will Dominate 2026
— Catherine Herridge (@C__Herridge) January 2, 2026
When I obtained the same data provided to the FBI from the Hunter Biden laptop, it wasn't enough for some @CBSNews executives and anchors.
They just kept moving the reporting goal posts. Many of them are still… https://t.co/r0t2r7KO7n pic.twitter.com/cn5VKcMu2X
They just kept moving the reporting goal posts. Many of them are still at CBS News.
You can tell a lot about a newsroom by the stories it doesn't broadcast.
Indeed. In fact, that's a point that Weiss' critics claim about her decision to postpone a story about Donald Trump's immigration policies on 60 Minutes two weeks ago, without any sense of irony. CBS News not only refused to report on the Biden Inc corruption, but they also steadfastly refused to address Joe Biden's cognitive decline despite a wealth of evidence from public appearances and the Robert Hur investigation. This comes up as well in Herridge's podcast, and more.
Herridge announced a new partnership for her platform in the podcast, which is good news for her as well as for the momentum behind independent journalism in general. It's worth watching the entire podcast. Herridge has always been an excellent reporter, especially in the national-security arena, and she has retooled to launch her own efforts. This is not just a good explanation for why no one trusts the Protection Racket Media, but also how difficult reform will be, even with an owner and an editor-in-chief who commit themselves to it.
Editor's Note: The mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie about President Trump, his administration, and conservatives.
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