Or: Why The Office Is Empty, What We Did To Deserve It, And Why Today Of All Days We Are Back
The Post Meridiem Post has undergone a restructuring.
This is normal. This is fine. Everything is fine.
Today, at approximately 3:27 PM Eastern, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr threatened to revoke the broadcast licenses of American news networks because President Trump did not like their coverage of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran. Carr’s post on X read, and we are quoting directly because sometimes you do not need to add anything: “Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions — also known as the fake news — have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up. The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.” [CBS News]
He did not name specific networks. He did not cite specific stories. He did not define what “correct course” means. He didn’t need to. The message was the message.
In 2019, Brendan Carr said, “Should the government censor speech it doesn’t like? Of course not. The FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the ‘public interest.’” [Deadline]
He said that. Those are his words. They are now on record as the thing he used to believe before he became the guy threatening to pull licenses because the president’s tanker planes got hit and he didn’t enjoy the headlines.
We chose today to come back. We want you to understand why.
The War
The war started on February 28.
Operation Epic Fury began at 06:27 GMT, with U.S. and Israeli forces launching joint strikes on Iran. The opening salvo killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. [Encyclopedia Britannica] Within hours, Iran launched retaliatory missiles and drones across the region. Fourteen days later, at least 1,444 Iranian civilians are dead, with victims ranging in age from eight months to 88 years old. Eleven American soldiers have been killed. The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil passes, has been functionally shut down. [Al Jazeera]
The first hundred hours of Operation Epic Fury cost an estimated $3.7 billion. That’s $891 million a day, most of it unbudgeted. The weapons manufacturers have been asked to quadruple production. Trump has called for unconditional surrender.
None of your late-night hosts had a bit ready for this.
We noticed.
This publication spent its first few years as a satirical newsroom with invented reporters, a serialized fiction serial about prophetic walnuts, and a gossip columnist who interviewed furniture. We were charming. We were whimsical. The Library of Congress archived us, which we mention not to brag but because it remains genuinely confusing to everyone including us.
Then the world got less funny.
Then it got less funny again.
Then a U.S.-Israeli coalition launched a war in Iran that has killed over a thousand civilians in two weeks, the chairman of the FCC threatened to pull broadcast licenses over the coverage of it, and we decided that whimsy had run its course.
The Staff
Here is what happened to the staff.
Monty Blackwood, our Editor-in-Chief, has been let go. He has been given a desk plant. This is more than some editors get. Skip Rowland, our reporter, was told his services are no longer required. He took it with the grace of a man who had been watching the news and understood completely. Carmen Styles, our investigative reporter, has been reassured that her sources will remain confidential, primarily because we can no longer afford to pay her to call them. Veranda, our gossip correspondent, has been informed that her furniture sources have been repossessed. Dr. Thaddeus T. Stone, author of The Walnut Prophecy, has been told the prophecy remains unresolved.
He already knew.
They are gone. What remains is the columnist who was pulling the strings the whole time.
The CBS Deal
We should tell you about the CBS deal.
There was an offer on the table. We are not going to tell you what the number was.
What we will tell you is this: In October 2025, Paramount Skydance paid $150 million to acquire The Free Press and install its founder, Bari Weiss, as editor-in-chief of CBS News. [CNBC] Weiss, a former New York Times opinion writer whose publication critics describe as “unapologetically hawkish and anti-Palestinian,” [Wikipedia] was handed the keys to one of the oldest broadcast news operations in America. She had never worked a day in broadcast television.
Within weeks, she pulled a completed, lawyer-approved 60 Minutes segment about Venezuelan men deported to a brutal El Salvador prison, insisting Trump officials appear on camera even though the reporting team had made good-faith efforts to secure that response before filing. [Variety] The story ran anyway a month later, almost unchanged. Weiss later said she had not understood how the timing of her decision would throw the show into disarray.
One hundred and fifty million dollars.
In January, she held an all-staff meeting and told the CBS newsroom that Walter Cronkite had only two competitors. “We have two billion, give or take,” she said, and informed the assembled journalists that if they continued on their current path, “we’re toast.” [Washington Times]
Walter Cronkite looked into a camera in 1968 and told the American people the Vietnam War was a mistake. It changed the course of history. Bari Weiss would like you to know he only had two competitors, which she appears to believe is the relevant fact about him.
She also announced 18 new contributors. Among them was longevity expert Dr. Peter Attia, whose name appeared more than 1,700 times in the newly released Jeffrey Epstein files, including several personal, eyebrow-raising exchanges. Attia left the network he had just joined after less than a month. [WFMD-AM]
This was a hire that lasted approximately as long as it takes to type a name into Google.
A veteran producer who had been with CBS since the Walter Cronkite days wrote in a memo upon her departure: “We’ve been told to aim our reporting at a particular part of the political spectrum. Honestly, I don’t know how to do that.” [WFMD-AM]
She was not alone. A staffer at CBS Evening News described an atmosphere in which people are “afraid for their jobs and afraid to even speak for fear of retaliation. There has been a chilling effect within our newsroom. It feels like if we offer feedback, alternatives, or constructive criticism, we are asking for targets on our backs.” [Variety]
This was the offer on the table. We declined it. We have heard “fair and balanced” before. We know what it looks like from the inside.
Back to Brendan Carr
Carr announced that the equal-time rule would apply “across the board” to late night television and talk shows, which have historically been exempted as entertainment. He simultaneously announced the rule would not apply to talk radio, where over 90 percent of political programming leans conservative. [CNN]
This is not an oversight. This is the mechanism. Apply the rules to your opponents. Exempt your allies. Call it fairness. Wait to see who notices.
The FCC’s own website states that “the First Amendment and the Communications Act expressly prohibit the Commission from censoring broadcast matter.” [CBS News]
Carr chairs that commission.
Today he threatened to pull broadcast licenses because the president didn’t like the war coverage. California Governor Gavin Newsom called it “flagrantly unconstitutional.” Former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger called it “unacceptable and unamerican.” Ted Cruz said Carr went too far. Trump said Carr is doing “a great job.” [CBS News]
When Ted Cruz is the voice of restraint in the room, you have left the map entirely.
Where We Are
So here is where we are on March 14, 2026.
We are fourteen days into a war that has killed over 1,400 Iranian civilians, eleven American soldiers, and has shut down one of the most critical shipping lanes on earth. The president has demanded unconditional surrender. His FCC chairman has threatened to pull the licenses of any broadcaster who covers it in a way the president finds inconvenient. A woman who has never worked in broadcast journalism is running CBS News and just hired a longevity influencer who appears in the Epstein files. The Strait of Hormuz is functionally closed. Oil prices are up. Eggs are still nine dollars.
The office is empty.
The columnist is still here.
One voice. No owners. No advertisers. No FCC license to revoke. No desk plant.
The system is broken by design. The people breaking it are cowards and, in several documented cases, criminals. The least we can do is document it loudly before it finishes us off.
We are back.
George Wicks writes the only column at the Post Meridiem Post because everyone else has been let go. He is fine with this. You can reach him when he feels like it.
Photo by Museums Victoria via Unsplash