Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS, is currently in discussions with Donald Trump’s legal team about settling the president’s $10 billion lawsuit over a 60 Minutes interview that the network says is “completely without merit,” and legal experts have labeled “frivolous and dangerous.”
The possibility of a settlement, first reported by The New York Times, comes as Paramount looks to complete a merger with Skydance Media. This deal requires regulatory approval from the FCC, which is now led by Trump-appointed Brendan Carr. Carr, meanwhile, has already indicated that the 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris would be part of the agency’s review of the merger.
Any settlement would be seen as effectively bending the knee to the president, especially at a time when Trump and his allies have relished the opportunity to use the federal government to punish his media critics. Besides suggesting that CBS would be investigated over the interview, Carr recently ordered a probe into NPR and PBS regarding their financial sponsors.
Paramount settling with Trump would also come after ABC News’ parent company Disney decided to pay the president $15 million (along with $1 million to his lawyers) to settle his lawsuit against the network and anchor George Stephanopoulos, who said Trump had been found “liable of rape” in the E. Jean Carroll defamation trial. The jury had instead found the president liable for sexual abuse, though the judge noted there was no material difference between Trump’s actions and rape.
That settlement prompted First Amendment and press organizations to warn about the “chilling effect” Trump could have on the free press, adding that “there is concern that we are embarking on some scary times.”
Earlier this week, Facebook’s parent company Meta revealed that it agreed to pay Trump $25 million to settle his complaint over the social media platform banning him following the Jan. 6 insurrection. Trump’s account has since been restored, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been cozying up to Trump in recent months.
While there is no guarantee that Paramount will agree to a deal with Trump’s legal team, and it is unclear what a possible settlement would even entail, The New York Times reported that Paramount head Shari Redstone is fully behind settling. Redstone, whose father founded Paramount, would make billions of dollars off the merger with Skydance, which is backed by Trump-boosting billionaire Larry Ellison and run by his son David.
Paramount offering up a major concession to the president would also not be taken kindly by the newsroom at CBS, particularly because the network dismissed Trump’s complaint – which was filed just before the election – as “false” and “completely without merit” and that it intended to “vigorously defend” against the lawsuit.
In his Status News newsletter, Oliver Darcy reported that CBS News chief Wendy McMahon and 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens “have made it crystal clear that they oppose any settlement with the Trump team and do not wish to cave on this front.”
In his lawsuit, which was filed in Texas to test the state’s law on false advertising, Trump accused 60 Minutes of “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference” intended to “mislead the public and attempt to tip the scales” of the presidential election in Harris’s favor. The complaint centers on the network airing a preview of Harris’s interview with Bill Whitaker on Face the Nation that included a different answer to a question than the version aired on 60 Minutes.
“To paper over Kamala's ‘word salad’ weakness, CBS used its national platform on 60 Minutes to cross the line from the exercise of judgment in reporting to deceitful, deceptive manipulation of news,” Trump’s lawsuit alleged.
“The interview was not doctored,” the network said at the time. “60 Minutes did not hide any part of Vice President Kamala Harris's answer to the question at issue. 60 Minutes fairly presented the interview to inform the viewing audience, and not to mislead it.”
CBS has also argued that Trump has no standing in Texas to file the lawsuit and has filed motions to dismiss it. Meanwhile, legal and First Amendment experts have rejected the lawsuit as meritless and ridiculous.
“This is a frivolous and dangerous attempt by a politician to control the news media. The Supreme Court has made it crystal clear: the First Amendment leaves it to journalists – and not the courts, the government or candidates for office – to decide how to report the news,” attorney Charles Tobin of the law firm Ballard Spahr told CNN in October.
“The First Amendment was drafted to protect the press from just such litigation,” famed First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams said. “Mr. Trump may disagree with this or that coverage of him, but the First Amendment permits the press to decide how to cover elections, not the candidates seeking public office.”
In the end, though, it isn’t just Trump who has been highly critical of 60 Minutes – the show has also faced scrutiny from Redstone herself. After the Anti-Defamation League claimed a 60 Minutes story featuring former State Department employees expressing concern about the United States’ handling of the war between Israel and Hamas was “one-sided and biased,” Redstone complained to CBS News executives about the piece. A day later, former CBS News president Susan Zirinsky was hired as a temporary executive editor to address “perceived bias.”
Redstone’s interference came months after she made it clear that she had CBS Mornings’ co-anchor Tony Dokoupil’s back after he sparked internal backlash and admittedly violated the network’s standards and practices over his explosive interview with author Ta-Nehisi Coates.
