In a widely expected but still stunning decision, Paramount Global has agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit from President Trump, who sued over an October interview that 60 Minutes conducted with Kamala Harris.
Under the deal, announced Tuesday evening, the money will go to Trump’s presidential library. It involves an agreement from Paramount, will not apologize as part of the settlement, to release 60 Minutes transcripts of interviews with presidential candidates after they’ve aired, according to a statement from the company.
By most legal observers’ thinking, the lawsuit was destined for dismissal because of industry-wide norms related to editing interviews. But the deal provides a pathway to regulatory approval of Paramount’s sink-or-swim merger with Skydance.
Trump’s suit, filed in October, alleged that there was “deceptive doctoring” in the interview, with clips of Harris being asked a question but delivering different answers in a preview clip and the final version, as well as the inclusion of a longer section of her response to a question about the conflict in the Middle East. CBS, consistent with practices in other newsrooms, maintained that it merely edited down Harris’ reply for the final broadcast, and that she was answering the same question in both cases.
According to sources, Paramount believes that the suit posed a threat to Skydance’s deal to acquire the company, which requires regulatory approval, including the transfer of FCC licenses. FCC chairman Brendan Carr has said that the 60 Minutes interview would come up in the Commission’s review of the deal. The FCC has since requested the full transcript and unedited footage of the interview.
And clearly executives believe that the settlement boosts the chances of the government greenlighting the merger, though it’s always possible that the FCC still takes a close look.
Inside CBS News, rumors of the settlement sparked anger and resignation, given how common it is in the news business to edit down long interviews for time constraints. On April 22, longtime 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens abruptly announced his resignation, citing an inability to “make independent decisions based on what was right” for the show.
“Our parent company, Paramount, is trying to complete a merger,” said correspondent Scott Pelley in the first episode of the newsmagazine after Owens’ exit. “The Trump administration must approve it. Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways. None of our stories has been blocked, but Bill felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires.”
And on May 19, CBS News and Stations chief Wendy McMahon also resigned, telling staff that “the company and I do not agree on a path forward.”
The decisions from Owens and McMahon sent shock waves throughout CBS News amid industry-wide concerns of the government’s campaign against media over accusations of liberal bias. In December, ABC News settled for $16 million a defamation lawsuit brought by Trump in what was viewed as a major concession for the network.
60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl told David Remnick on The New Yorker Radio Hour that the team of correspondents is already thinking about what comes next.
“I’m already beginning to think about mourning, grieving. But I’m holding out hope,” Stahl said. “I know there’s going to be a settlement. I know there’s going to be some money exchanged. I know that. And then we will hopefully still be around, turning a new page, and finding out what that new page is gonna look like.”
Stahl and her colleagues have already asked CBS leadership to make Tanya Simon Owen’s successor, though no formal decision has been made as of now.
The arguments outlined in Trump’s lawsuit, which didn’t allege defamation and also named Rep. Ronny Jackson as a plaintiff, marked a new roadmap for the president and his legal team to chill free speech by weaponizing the courts. The complaint advanced a claim over an alleged violation of Texas’ consumer protection law covering deceptive advertising grounded in the premise that the network’s segment with Harris misled the public. It’s a way to bypass the legal barriers to asserting defamation. He brought a similar claim in December in a lawsuit against pollster J. Ann Selzer, the Des Moines Register and Gannett, the newspaper’s parent company for “brazen election interference” over releasing a poll showing Harris leading in Iowa, which Trump won.
CBS argued that its editorial judgments are “non-commercial speech that lies wholly outside the scope” of Texas consumer protection laws. It also said that Trump should’ve brought the lawsuit in a federal court in New York and not Texas, where judges are more receptive to conservative legal causes.
Trump’s picks at various regulatory agencies have emerged as another tool in his arsenal to steer networks away from coverage critical of him and his administration. Carr has threatened to revoke broadcast licenses for stations owned by networks that’ve drawn Trump’s ire under the agency’s authority to ensure that public airwaves operate in the public interest. It’s a longshot considering there aren’t any TV station licenses up for renewal until 2028 — and pulling one in the middle of a term is essentially unheard of — but long term incentives to stay out of Trump’s crosshairs by toning down adversarial coverage persist.
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