Paramount Global, the parent company of the CBS television network, agreed on Tuesday to settle President Donald Trump’s lawsuit for $16 million.
The lawsuit stems from a 2024 interview of then Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris on CBS’s popular news program 60 Minutes, which Trump alleged was deceptively edited. By making Harris appear more eloquent in the interview than she actually was, the lawsuit claimed, CBS’s editing choices amounted to “news distortion” and election interference.
The $16 million settlement by Paramount will go toward covering Trump’s legal fees and help fund his planned presidential library. No money will be paid to Trump directly or indirectly, according to Paramount.
A spokesperson for the president’s legal team said that Trump delivered “another win for the American people” with this settlement, “as he, once again, holds the Fake News media accountable for their wrongdoing and deceit.” The spokesperson added, “CBS and Paramount Global realized the strength of this historic case and had no choice but to settle.”
Trump’s lawsuit, filed last October, initially sought damages of $10 billion from Paramount as well as an injunction against “CBS’s ongoing false, misleading, and deceptive acts.” In a subsequent amended complaint, Trump’s team doubled that demand to $20 billion. In response, CBS denied any wrongdoing and filed two motions in March to dismiss the amended filing.
The legal battle over the Harris interview has coincided with Paramount’s attempt to merge with Skydance Media in a deal valued at $8 billion. Because the merger would require the transfer of local broadcast rights, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), an independent regulatory agency of the executive branch, holds jurisdiction over whether to approve the deal. The FCC has typically ruled to approve such transactions involving broadcast licenses, especially under Republican administrations.
Under the Trump administration, however, the proposed merger between Paramount and Skydance has stalled as regulators have not yet issued a decision on whether to approve it. At the same time, FCC Chairman Brandon Carr, who was appointed by Trump in January to lead the agency, announced a probe of CBS’s flagship television station over the same 60 Minutes Harris interview at issue in Trump’s lawsuits. Claiming that the interview may have violated FCC rules against “news distortion,” the probe requested that the network provide unedited transcripts of the interview. CBS complied with this request.
As the FCC review and Trump’s lawsuit occurred simultaneously, press freedom advocates and Democratic lawmakers voiced alarm that any settlement by Paramount could be construed as a bribe that would clear the way for its merger to be approved.
Freedom of the Press Foundation, a non-profit First Amendment organization, has threatened to sue Paramount on behalf of its shareholders if the company decided to settle Trump’s lawsuit. The foundation also denounced the lawsuit against Paramount as a “clear First Amendment violation and threatens the basic press freedom rights of other news outlets.”
Paramount’s case is not the first time that Trump has sued a media company over its coverage of him, nor is it the first time an outlet has chosen to settle such a lawsuit. In December, ABC News agreed to pay $15 million toward Trump’s presidential library to settle his 2024 lawsuit against the company for defamation over one of its anchors, George Stephanopoulos, inaccurately claiming on air that Trump had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll. In reality, Trump had been found liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll, not raping her. In addition to the payment for his library, ABC agreed to issue an apology to Trump and cover $1 million of his legal fees.
Following the 2024 presidential election, Trump also sued the Des Moines Register and its well-known pollster, Ann Selzer, for publishing a poll days before the election that showed him trailing Kamala Harris by three points in Iowa. After winning the state by more than 13 points, Trump alleged that the Register had committed election interference and defrauded its readers, thereby violating one of Iowa’s consumer protection laws, by publishing a false poll. Originally filed in federal court, Trump filed a motion to drop the lawsuit days ago only to immediately refile it in state court. Selzer’s team argues that her poll was protected by the First Amendment and that the president does not understand the legal concept of “fraud.”
Over the past few months, two CBS executives departed the company in connection to the network’s handling of Trump’s battle against its parent company. In April, the executive producer of 60 Minutes who worked at CBS for 37 years, Bill Owens, exited the show claiming that he had lost the ability to exercise independence over its direction under the second Trump administration. Owens said in a statement, “Over the past months, it has also become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it. To make independent decisions based on what was right for 60 Minutes, right for the audience.”
Less than a month later, the president and CEO of CBS News, Wendy McMahon, was forced out of the network after making clear that she opposed Paramount settling Trump’s lawsuit. In contrast, the chair and controlling shareholder of Paramount, Shari Redstone, had by then told the company’s board that she favored pursuing a settlement. The New York Times reported that Redstone wanted to avoid “a protracted legal war with the president that could cost hundreds of millions of dollars and jeopardize other divisions that have business before the government,” seemingly in reference to the FCC’s review of Paramount’s planned $8 billion merger.
John R. Puri is a summer editorial intern at National Review. He is an undergraduate from Des Moines, Iowa, studying politics and history at Stanford University.
Reprinted with Permission from The National Review – By John R. Puri
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
Read the full article here