CBS staff alarmed by reports of settlement talks with Trump over '60 Minutes' Harris interview

https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/31/media/cbs-trump-settlement-60-
minutes/index.html

Journalists, including some at CBS News, are expressing alarm at reports 
that CBS parent company Paramount Global is trying to settle a legally 
dubious lawsuit lodged by President Donald Trump last fall.

Trump sued CBS after an October “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice 
President Kamala Harris – Trump’s opponent in the presidential campaign – 
included an edit that Trump said was unfairly favorable to Harris. Despite 
legal experts’ widespread assertion that CBS’ editorial judgment was 
protected by the First Amendment, The New York Times Thursday night 
reported that a settlement was in the works.

That sparked outage in CBS’ newsroom.

“Trump’s lawsuit was a joke, but if we settle, we become the 
laughingstock,” a CBS correspondent said on condition of anonymity.

CBS in October called the suit meritless and said at the time “we will 
vigorously defend against it.” A Paramount spokesperson on Friday declined 
to comment. A lawyer for Trump, Edward Paltzik, did not immediately 
respond to a request for comment, but he told The Times that “real 
accountability for CBS and Paramount will ensure that the president is 
compensated for the harm done to him.”

The Times noted that “a settlement would be an extraordinary concession by 
a major U.S. media company to a sitting president, especially in a case in 
which there is no evidence that the network got facts wrong or damaged the 
plaintiff’s reputation.”

Indeed, a settlement by Paramount could look like a payoff. Specifically, 
it would look like a big check to Trump (or his presidential library, 
following in ABC and Meta’s footsteps) in exchange for regulatory approval 
of Paramount’s pending deal with Skydance Media.

“That’s called a bribe,” Richard Painter, a former White House ethics 
lawyer for President George W. Bush, commented on X.

Is it the cost of doing business in the Trump era? Some business leaders 
appear to believe so. But settling with Trump would also cost CBS some of 
its hard-won credibility.

The interview that got CBS sued
The suit stemmed from “60 Minutes” correspondent Bill Whitaker’s sit-down 
last October with Harris.

Observers noticed that CBS aired two different answers from Harris to a 
single question about why Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was 
“not listening” to the United States. The answer Harris gave in a preview 
clip differed from the answer she gave on the actual “60 Minutes” 
broadcast.

Trump and his allies claimed that CBS had manipulated the interview to 
make the vice president look better. As criticism mounted and Trump 
threatened to sue, CBS said there was nothing nefarious about the editing; 
“the interview was not doctored,” and the newsmagazine “did not hide any 
part of the Vice President’s answer to the question at issue,” CBS News 
senior VP for legal affairs Gayle C. Sproul said.

Sproul also cited case law that defends editing and news judgments, noting 
that “editing is a necessity for all broadcasters to enable them to 
present the news in the time available, and that is what ’60 Minutes’ did 
here, as it does with its other reports.”

Trump sued anyway. His lawyers filed a complaint in US District Court in 
the Northern District of Texas, alleging CBS violated the Texas Deceptive 
Trade Practices Act, a consumer protection law.

Legal experts contacted by CNN at the time called the suit “frivolous;” 
“ridiculous junk;” and laughable on its face. From the alleged damages 
($10 billion!) to the decision to give Fox News the scoop about the suit, 
it had all the hallmarks of a political PR stunt.

Seeking Trump’s approval
But a few days after the suit was filed, Trump won the election. All of a 
sudden, the suit posed a serious threat to the news division’s parent 
company, Paramount Global, according to a person involved in the matter.

That’s because the merger requires the blessing of the Trump 
administration, in part because CBS owns local stations that are licensed 
by the Federal Communications Commission, known as the FCC.

Outside analysts, citing Trump’s transactional nature, predicted that 
Paramount may have a hard time getting the necessary federal approvals. 
Brendan Carr, who Trump promoted to chair the FCC, recently revived a pro-
Trump group’s complaint about the “60 Minutes” interview. Back in 
November, he said the complaint would probably factor into the agency’s 
review of the Paramount-Skydance deal.

On Friday, CBS confirmed that the FCC sent the company a “letter of 
inquiry” asking the network to hand over the unedited transcript and tapes 
of the Harris interview.

“We are working to comply with that inquiry as we are legally compelled to 
do,” a CBS spokesperson told CNN.

As an FCC license-holder, CBS is obliged to respond to reasonable requests 
from the government agency. But those requests are typically about 
technicalities like broadcast transmission signals, not the raw materials 
of a news program like “60 Minutes.”

The notion of Paramount caving to Trump has sparked condemnation. After 
the Wall Street Journal two weeks ago reported that settlement talks were 
a possibility, Sen. Bernie Sanders urged CBS to “stand tall.”

Sanders wrote on X, “CBS may be reaching a legal settlement with Trump 
because he didn’t like how a campaign interview with Kamala was edited. 
Really? If CBS caves, the belief that we have an independent media 
protected by the First Amendment is undermined.”

Trump’s history of bullying media companies suggests that a payout by 
Paramount won’t stop his pressure campaigns.

In the weeks before his inauguration, ABC agreed to donate $15 million to 
Trump’s future presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit against 
the network. Earlier this week Meta agreed to a $22 million payout over 
another Trump lawsuit.


-- 
November 5, 2024 - Congratulations President Donald Trump.  We look 
forward to America being great again.

The disease known as Kamala Harris has been effectively treated and 
eradicated.

We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that 
stupid people won't be offended.

Durham Report: The FBI has an integrity problem.  It has none.

Thank you for cleaning up the disaster of the 2008-2017 Obama / Biden 
fiasco, President Trump.  

Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the 
The World According To Garp.  Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood 
queer liberal democrat donors.