FCC demands CBS News turn over '60 Minutes' interview amid Trump lawsuit

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2025-01-31/fcc-
demands-cbs-news-turn-over-60-minutes-interview-amid-trump-lawsuit

CBS and its “60 Minutes” have long stood as shining beacons of broadcast 
news.

The Sunday night newsmagazine, with its ubiquitous ticking clock, earned a 
reputation for not backing down from a fight. For a half-century, the show 
established the standard for TV investigative reporting with its no-holds-
barred questioning of U.S. presidents and others in power.

But a different clock is ticking.

President Trump’s new Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan 
Carr, this week demanded CBS turn over the full, unedited transcript of 
its “60 Minutes” interview in October with former Vice President Kamala 
Harris, including film footage from the different camera angles.

That interview provoked the ire of Trump, who filed a lawsuit against CBS 
alleging the network was engaged in deceptive editing practices.

“We are working to comply with that inquiry as we are legally compelled to 
do,” Paramount Global-owned CBS said Friday in a statement.

The latest development comes as Paramount Global lawyers engage in 
preliminary talks to settle the lawsuit Trump filed last year over the “60 
Minutes” interview. Trump alleged the network “deceptively” edited the 
interview to present Harris more favorably in the closing weeks of the 
election.

Lawyers for Trump on Friday asked a Texas judge to extend a key deadline 
in the court case. Paramount’s lawyers went along with the request, which 
could give the two sides additional time to try to hammer out a truce.

The FCC inquiry raises the stakes in the dispute, which has stoked fears 
that Trump and his team are using levers of power to chill unflattering 
news coverage. Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, has 
been agitating for her team to settle Trump’s lawsuit to facilitate her 
family’s sale of Paramount to David Ellison’s Skydance Media, according to 
people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to comment.

Paramount needs FCC approval for the Skydance deal to advance. The 
agency’s signoff is required for the transfer of CBS television licenses 
to the Ellison family.

The company’s seeming willingness to placate Trump has roiled journalists, 
including within CBS News. First Amendment experts initially interpreted 
Trump’s “60 Minutes” lawsuit, which seeks $10 billion in damages, as a 
political stunt. They said settling the case with Trump would deliver a 
crushing blow to CBS News’ legacy.

“This is an act of pure cowardice for short-term gain that corrupts every 
journalistic value imaginable,” said USC Annenberg School for 
Communication and Journalism professor Gabriel Kahn.

“It is a sad day,” 1st Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams wrote Friday in an 
email to The Times. “It’s heart-breaking that CBS —say it again, CBS — 
seems ready to pay big bucks for its own editing decisions.”

The storied news division has maintained “60 Minutes” as the gold standard 
in television journalism for more than five decades. People inside the 
company, who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said they 
fear the move will not only tarnish the “60 Minutes” brand but also set a 
dangerous precedent that could weaken journalism institutions.

“You think in the next four years we’re not going to say something that’s 
going to get him riled up again and he’ll do this again?” said one veteran 
journalist in the division.

Trump filed the lawsuit on Oct. 31, accusing CBS of “partisan and unlawful 
acts of election and voter interference through malicious, deceptive and 
substantial news distortion calculated to ... tip the scales in favor of 
the Democratic Party,” according to his complaint.

He filed the lawsuit in Texas, ensuring that one of his judicial 
appointees would oversee the case.

In court filings last month, CBS attorneys argued that the Texas venue was 
not proper. Trump was a resident of Florida when the lawsuit was filed. 
Some legal experts dismissed the maneuver as “judge shopping.” CBS 
attorneys argued in court filings that the case should be dismissed or 
moved to New York, where CBS is based.

The “60 Minutes” broadcast was edited in New York, and the segment did not 
pertain to Texas or even Trump, the CBS lawyers wrote. Trump’s attorneys 
on Friday asked for a week-long extension to file their response.

“60 Minutes” producers denied Trump’s allegations that they doctored one 
of Harris’ answers to remove her more wordy response to a question. Harris 
was responding to a question from CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker 
about the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Gaza war.

Conservatives quickly seized on an apparent discrepancy in Harris’ remarks 
after CBS ran an excerpt of the interview during its public affairs show 
“Face the Nation,” which included Harris’ longer answer.

The following day, a special edition of “60 Minutes” aired with more of 
the Harris interview. That program used a different, and much shorter, 
part of Harris’ response.

Anger over a possible settlement runs so deep that CBS News could 
experience an exodus of journalists and even executives if the company 
caves, some said.

“This is essentially a crack in the foundations of our free press,” Kahn 
said.

George Cheeks, co-chief executive of Paramount Global, has been made aware 
of the news division’s concerns over how a settlement would be perceived 
in the industry and its broader impact on press freedom. Paramount Global 
board members also have received pleas from inside the news division to 
fight the Trump lawsuit, sources said.


Cheeks spent months trying to navigate choppy waters amid Redstone’s 
increasing unhappiness with CBS News and “60 Minutes” over its coverage of 
the war in Gaza.

Redstone has not publicly opined on the settlement talks. A Redstone 
spokesperson declined to comment.

The Redstone family is in the process of unwinding its Paramount holdings 
by selling its investment vehicle to the Ellison family for more than $2 
billion. The Skydance transaction would see the fractious Redstone family 
exiting Hollywood after four decades.

Shari Redstone has focused her philanthropic work on fighting 
antisemitism. She publicly backed CBS anchor Tony Dukoupil after the 
morning show co-host was called out by his bosses over an aggressive 
interview with author Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose most recent book compares 
Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank to the Jim Crow era of 
segregation in the U.S.

Redstone also was unhappy over a recent “60 Minutes” story about dissent 
in the State Department over the Biden administration’s handling of the 
war, according to two knowledgeable sources. After the segment aired, 
Cheeks named former CBS News president and veteran producer Susan Zirinsky 
as standards editor to oversee “highly complex, sensitive issues like the 
war in the Middle East,” according to a memo.

People close to the lawsuit describe the settlement talks in the Trump 
lawsuit as preliminary. Some executives privately suggested that settling 
the lawsuit was the price of doing business in Trump’s second 
administration. These people viewed a settlement as an efficient means to 
keep CBS out of court and expedite the completion of the Skydance deal.

Paramount and Skydance Media also declined to comment.

Carr’s FCC inquiry comes after his agency last week revived a complaint 
filed by the Center for American Rights, which also took issue with CBS 
producers’ edits of the Harris interview.

“There is a line between editorial discretion, which is protected, and 
news distortion or news manipulation, which is not,” Daniel Suhr, 
president of the nonprofit group, said in an interview earlier this week.

“When there are serious concerns raised, typically, the regulator 
investigates and resolves it based on what the investigation finds,” Suhr 
said. “That’s what we are hoping for here.”

FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez, a Democrat, objected to the agency’s move.

“This is a retaliatory move by the government against broadcasters whose 
content or coverage is perceived to be unfavorable,” Gomez said in a 
statement. “It is designed to instill fear in broadcast stations and 
influence a network’s editorial decisions.”

CBS News executives had discussed releasing a full transcript of the 
Harris interview before the FCC inquiry. But they saw that as a dangerous 
precedent because raw transcripts of edited interviews are typically 
released to address issues related to possible defamation. Trump’s lawsuit 
is not a defamation case.

“If I were CBS, I would not settle it,” said Jeff McCall, media studies 
professor at DePauw University. “I would fight it and just go totally down 
the path that this is editorial discretion. The free press has every right 
to make judgments as it sees fit, including if they want to take sides in 
an election.”

-- 
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.