There is no rule of life that requires that there be three broadcast networks in the United States. It will be a shame to lose the Columbia Broadcasting System, but it was a for-profit company and a business decision was made that in order for Sumner Redstone to complete the $8 billion sale of Paramount to Skydance, certain concessions had to be made. Pay off a frivolous lawsuit? Fire Colbert? Allow the government’s “bias monitor” to dictate what will be deemed news?

It might not be what Bill Paley had in mind, and Mike Wallace wouldn’t be likely to take it in stride for a paycheck, but they’re both dead and gone. The question that remains is whether the CBS on air today was the same as what it was before Dan Rather took the helm, when Walter Cronkite came into our homes most evenings. This is not to argue that Cronkite was perfect, without bias (who is?) or invariably accurate, but that he was deeply trusted by the American people to bring us the news such that we not only shared a reality, but that it was about as close to reality as could be mustered.

There were questions that the news was supposed to answer in order to tell us what was happening in the world. Who, what, where, when and why. As flawed as the media was, it tried to fulfill its mission by providing answers to these questions. For the most part, it did its job, and because of this, we believed what we were told. Right or wrong, it served us well as a nation.

When I first learned of the phrase “moral clarity,” it was obvious to me that it would prove disastrous for myriad reasons. First, what sort of hubris would make “journalists” confuse themselves with priests charged with deciding the morality of a society? Morals are great, but who are you to tell me, or anyone else, what is and what is not “moral”? You are entitled to believe whatever you like about morality, but you do not get to decide morality for me.

Secondly, it was tantamount to lying. When you only tell one side of a story, the side you favor, and fail to either provide all the facts, including those that do not support your view, or twist the story to distort it to favor your view, you are lying. You may believe that you’re lying for a good reason, for the sake of society, but you’re still lying. You can lie by omission or commission, but you’re still a liar. Wrapping your lie in “moral clarity” doesn’t make it smell any sweeter.

Third, moral clarity carried certain baggage with it, as is the nature of those claiming the moral high ground. It meant that those who dispute your view, your facts, your lies, were immoral. Whether that immorality was called racist, sexist, or something-phobic, the point was clear. You were good and they were evil, and the thing about evil is that it must be eradicated because, well, it’s evil. Usually, the phrase “by any means necessary” was tagged onto the end, because what religion doesn’t wallow in its own righteousness?

Not only did this mean that society would be denied the truth, an honest recitation of the facts provided without fear or favor, that included those facts that contradicted what journalists preferred people to believe, but that they would be intentionally fed lies designed to manipulate their beliefs such that they would conform to what those who fed us our news wanted us to believe.

Having lived long enough to realize that pendulums swing back and forth, I was certain that the excess of pseudo-morality would bring about a backlash. One could argue that it started in 1996 with Fox News’ marketing pitch of “fair and balanced” to present right wing biased news because the mainstream media was too fair and too balanced. Or maybe with Rush Limbaugh in 1988, when he took to the airwaves to spew nonsense that only the terminally stupid would believe. But that occupied its own parallel niche, and people who paid it heed were still outliers, extremists. They didn’t dream of taking over the mainstream media. Not then, at least.

Trump’s FCC chair, Brendan Carr, loves free speech and press, as long as he and his overlord control it. Requiring a bias monitor to approve a media deal is about as flagrant as government control of the media gets.

“Americans no longer trust the legacy national news media to report fully, accurately and fairly,” Mr. Carr said in the statement. “It is time for a change. That is why I welcome Skydance’s commitment to make significant changes at the once storied CBS broadcast network.”

The problem is not that what Carr is doing will be a disaster for the First Amendment and American society, but that he was given the crack of “moral clarity” to exploit when he claims “Americans no longer trust the legacy national news media.” The irony, of course, is that his scheme is to make it even less trustworthy and more biased toward his tribe to counteract the bias that infiltrated the media when it leaned the other way.

We need a trustworthy news media so that we can live in a world where we all agree upon the facts, after which we can argue over what to do about them. Will we ever have that media again? Once trust is lost, it’s hard, if not impossible to regain. And that’s the way it is.