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CBS staffers dread Trump settlement

Feb 2, 2025, 9:34pm EST
media
Screenshot of CBS interview with Kamala Harris
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The Scoop

CBS News staff are bracing for an all-but-inevitable concession by the network’s parent company to President Donald Trump over a broadcast that virtually no one at the network actually believes was flawed.

Last week, The New York Times reported that Paramount is in discussions with Trump’s legal team to settle its consumer fraud lawsuit over an interview on 60 Minutes that Trump said was deceptively edited to make Kamala Harris, by then the Democratic nominee, look good. The settlement talks are part of Paramount’s effort to clear the path to close its ongoing merger with entertainment company Skydance. New Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr said that conservative complaints of bias against CBS could be a factor in the agency’s review of the merger.

CBS has fought to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the interview cut was not misleading — but also that the First Amendment protects its editing decisions. The network said the case should be thrown out because the consumer fraud law does not apply to news broadcasts, and that Trump could not be a plaintiff anyway because he was not actually confused by the contents of Harris’ answers in the interview. The network has also attempted to move the case, which Trump brought in Texas, back to New York, where CBS is headquartered. Legal experts have described the lawsuit as both a frivolous longshot and an attempt to undermine the First Amendment.

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The reports that Paramount executives are even weighing a settlement has highlighted a deepening divide between CBS News staff and its parent company. Network staff Semafor spoke with last week are almost universally against settling the lawsuit, particularly if the settlement comes with a mandated apology.

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Know More

While Paramount clearly believes settling with Trump will help get the merger done and allow owner Shari Redstone to cash out, Skydance’s view of the situation is less clear. Skydance has been limited in its public comments about the merger and has declined requests for comment on the lawsuit and FCC probe into the 60 Minutes interview.

The settlement talks also put the buyer, Skydance founder David Ellison, in a challenging position. Ellison has no formal role in the discussions, which are being held between Paramount and Trump’s legal team. If the network does not settle and Trump and the FCC use the 60 Minutes interview as a pretense to hold up the merger, Ellison could lose precious time to competitors, all of whom are working frantically to build a life raft beyond linear television to the digital future now dominated by the likes of Netflix, YouTube, and TikTok.

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But if Paramount chooses to settle, Ellison could also inherit a news organization bleeding the journalistic talent it has left. News networks have had a habit in recent years of siphoning precious time away from executives who would otherwise be concerned with more pressing business matters. As much as they have tried to avoid it, media moguls like Redstone, David Zaslav, and Brian Roberts have not been able escape the turmoil within their news organizations over coverage of the war in Gaza and Trump.

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Max’s view

Paramount’s likely settlement with Trump is another ominous sign for a broadcast news industry fearful that the new administration will use its regulatory apparatus against its political enemies.

The settlement idea is also based on a false premise: that conceding to Trump will satiate his administration’s appetite and make it easier for Paramount to merge with Skydance. Plenty of evidence suggests the opposite is true. As Puck’s Dylan Byers pointed out on Friday, just weeks after ABC shelled out $15 million to Trump to settle a superficially unrelated defamation suit against George Stephanopoulos, the FCC reopened its investigation into ABC News’ moderation of Harris’ debate with Trump.

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Just last week, the agency announced it was investigating NPR and PBS, alleging that they may be violating federal rules around broadcasting underwriting announcements, and arguing that Congress could (and maybe should) cut funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Carr also sent a letter to CBS asking it to hand over the unedited footage of the 60 Minutes interview that is at the heart of Trump’s lawsuit.

The recent aggressiveness by the FCC and Trump’s allies also exposes an asymmetry between the political parties when it comes to how much the media matters as part of each party’s governing agenda.

Last year, I first broke the news about jitters within NPR’s ranks around the seriousness of Republicans’ attempts to cut off funding for the CPB, which has successfully fended off similar attempts for years. Within hours of making inquiries to congressional Republicans to ask about their renewed efforts to cut off federal grants that fund NPR and PBS, multiple Republican House and Senate offices made lawmakers available to speak enthusiastically on record and on background about their efforts.

By contrast, over the weekend, I reached out to every Democratic senator on the Senate Commerce Committee. Of the 13 on the committee, only one, newly-sworn in New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim, got back to me with a statement on the FCC’s recent actions (Sen. Ed Markey’s office flagged several of his recent tweets about the FCC.)

“The FCC doesn’t exist to be a hitman for Donald Trump’s personal vendettas or to make it easier for his corporate donors to reap profits,” a spokesperson for Kim’s office told Semafor. “It’s this kind of corruption that the American people are sick and tired of. It’s not appropriate or worthwhile.”

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