CBS staff alarmed by reports of settlement talks with Trump over ‘60

CNN
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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 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…