Introduction
Introduction Statistics Contact Development Disclaimer Help
.-') _ .-') _
( OO ) ) ( OO ) )
.-----. ,--./ ,--,' ,--./ ,--,'
' .--./ | \ | |\ | \ | |\
| |('-. | \| | )| \| | )
/_) |OO )| . |/ | . |/
|| |`-'| | |\ | | |\ |
(_' '--'\ | | \ | | | \ |
`-----' `--' `--' `--' `--'
lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
•
6 min read
Paramount settles Trump’s ‘60 Minutes’ lawsuit with $16 million
payout and no apology
By Brian Stelter and Liam Reilly, CNN
Updated:
11:16 AM EDT, Wed July 2, 2025
Source: CNN
CBS News parent Paramount Global has agreed to pay $16 million to
resolve an extraordinary lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump over a
“60 Minutes” news report last fall.
The long-gestating and highly controversial settlement payment was
announced by Paramount late Tuesday night.
Paramount said the $16 million sum “includes plaintiffs’ fees and
costs,” and will not be paid to Trump directly, but instead will be
allocated to Trump’s future presidential library — mirroring that
Disney’s ABC struck with Trump last December.
“The settlement does not include a statement of apology or regret,”
Paramount specified.
But it is still an embarrassing episode for CBS, because legal experts
maintained that Trump’s suit was frivolous and that CBS was on solid
ground to fight and win the case in court.
“This is a very sad moment for ’60 Minutes,’ CBS News and
journalism,” a CBS News staffer told CNN on condition of anonymity.
Other employees also described widespread outrage and disgust about the
payment to Trump. But there is also “a slight sense of relief that we
can start to put this behind us,” the staffer added.
A spokesman for Trump’s legal team, meanwhile, celebrated the deal as
a victory, even though Trump had claimed billions of dollars in
damages, and wound up settling for a tiny fraction as much.
“With this record settlement, President Donald J. Trump delivers
another win for the American people as he, once again, holds the Fake
News media accountable for their wrongdoing and deceit,” the
spokesman said. “CBS and Paramount Global realized the strength of
this historic case and had no choice but to settle.”
Outside analysts have framed it very differently – as an instance of
corporate priorities trumping journalistic principles.
Paramount has been trying for months to complete a lucrative merger
with Skydance Media, and the deal requires approval from the Trump
administration, in part because CBS owns local stations that are
licensed by the government.
This gave Trump a form of leverage over Paramount — and may have put
more pressure on the company to pay up.
The Writers Guild of America East, which represents writers at “60
Minutes” and across the news division, said the settlement was a
“transparent attempt to curry favors with an administration in the
hopes it will allow Paramount Global and Skydance Media merger to be
cleared for approval.”
Paramount said Tuesday night that “this lawsuit is completely
separate from, and unrelated to, the Skydance transaction and the FCC
approval process. We will abide by the legal process to defend our
case.”
FCC chair Brendan Carr has also repeatedly said that his merger review
process is separate. But before being promoted to chairman, the Trump
appointee said complaints over the “60 Minutes” edit would be
“likely to arise” as part of the FCC’s merger review.
Carr did not respond to a CNN request for comment about the status of
the review on Wednesday.
Press advocacy groups, meanwhile, blasted Paramount for deciding to
settle.
“Paramount’s spineless decision to settle Trump’s patently
unconstitutional lawsuit is an insult to the First Amendment and to the
journalists and viewers of ’60 Minutes,’” the Freedom of the
Press Foundation said. The group has vowed to file a shareholder’s
derivative lawsuit over the settlement, meaning the litigation over the
matter is not over yet.
‘Frivolous and dangerous’
The settlement deal included a promise from CBS that “in the future,
‘60 Minutes’ will release transcripts of interviews with eligible
U.S. presidential candidates after such interviews have aired, subject
to redactions as required for legal or national security concerns.”
This is notable because the lawsuit at issue is all about a contested
transcript.
Trump’s complaint was about a single question and answer in a lengthy
“60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. He
claimed without evidence that the Harris exchange was deliberately
edited to benefit the Democratic candidate and hurt him.
Conservative media watchdogs had that CBS aired two different
soundbites from Harris in response to correspondent Bill Whitaker’s
question about the Biden administration’s relationship with Israel
amid the war in Gaza. One clip aired on “Face the Nation” and
another clip aired on “60 Minutes,” which generated confusion on
the part of the viewing public.
As criticism mounted and Trump threatened to sue, CBS said it merely
edited the vice president’s answer for time, in accordance with
television news standards, and it declined to release the full
transcript.
Trump went on the warpath, claiming “election interference” and
calling it “the biggest scandal in broadcast history.” He accused
CBS News of violating a Texas consumer protection law and demanded $10
billion in damages. His lawyers later raised the total to $20 billion.
Legal experts slammed the suit as “,” and CBS defended “60
Minutes” on First Amendment grounds.
Under pressure from the FCC last winter, CBS released the tapes and
transcript of the interview, and the raw materials confirmed that it
engaged in normal editing, not any nefarious activity like Trump
alleged.
Nevertheless, the lawsuit posed a serious problem for Paramount,
especially its controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, who stands to
make hundreds of millions of dollars through the Skydance deal.
So once Trump took office for a second term, Paramount executives
sought to make the lawsuit disappear. Critics of the settlement effort,
inside and outside CBS, used words like payoff and bribe to describe
the proposed settlement.
At “60 Minutes,” “everyone thinks this lawsuit is an act of
extortion, everyone,” a network correspondent earlier this year.
Several Democratic lawmakers even raised concerns that a settlement
might run afoul of anti-bribery laws. The media company may be guarding
against those warnings by paying the same amount as Disney.
Paramount co-CEO George Cheeks, speaking at an annual shareholder
meeting on Wednesday, observed that companies settle litigation all the
time for all sorts of reasons.
“Companies often settle litigation to avoid the high and somewhat
unpredictable cost of legal defense, the risk of an adverse judgment
that could result in significant financial, as well as reputational
damage, and the disruption to business operations that prolonged legal
battles can cause. Settlement offers a negotiated resolution that
allows companies to focus on their core objectives rather than being
mired in uncertainty and distraction.”
Normally, however, the beneficiary of the settlement is not a sitting
president.
Trump’s multiple media lawsuits
Trump’s CBS lawsuit was part of his larger and ongoing effort to
attack major media organizations he deemed unfavorable to him. He and
pollster J. Ann Selzer last December over a pre-election survey that
showed Harris leading Trump in Iowa, which he ultimately won by double
digits. Trump claimed the poll violated consumer fraud protections; the
Register is currently fighting the suit in court.
He also , alleging that anchor George Stephanopoulos defamed him, and
the network that case, creating a blueprint of sorts for the Paramount
agreement.
In recent months, the CBS newsroom has been consumed by Trump’s
pressure, the prospect of a settlement and the corporate maneuvering
aimed at securing the merger’s approval.
That internal strife spilled out into the public view in late April
when “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens resigned, . Days
later, “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley , revealing that
executives “began to supervise our content in new ways” amid the
pending merger. “No one here is happy about it,” he said.
A month later, Wendy McMahon, the executive in charge of CBS News, also
. She alluded to a “challenging” past few months in her farewell
memo to employees, adding that “It’s become clear that the company
and I do not agree on the path forward.”
All the while, “60 Minutes” kept producing substantive
investigations about Trump and other subjects, including a probe of he
dislikes.
On the news division’s daily editorial conference call Wednesday
morning, CBS News president Tom Cibrowski thanked staffers for
“blocking out the noise” of the past few months and said it is
important to “lock arms” and move forward reporting the news.
<- back to index
You are viewing proxied material from codevoid.de. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.