Paramount agrees to pay $16 million to settle Trump ’60 Minutes’ lawsuit
Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS News and one of the largest media conglomerates in the United States, has agreed to settle a high-profile lawsuit brought by President Trump over a “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris that aired last fall.
The settlement comes after months of legal sparring and tension between the two sides, including the forced exit of the network’s president by Paramount brass and threats by Trump to revoke CBS’s broadcast license.
The agreement is worth a reported $16 million and will be paid to the president’s future presidential library and not Trump himself.
As part of the agreement, Paramount said “60 Minutes” will release transcripts of future interviews with eligible U.S. presidential candidates after they air, subject to redactions as required for legal or national security concerns.
The settlement does not include a statement of apology or regret.
Paramount’s decision to pay the president to avoid a trial, an outcome that had been speculated about for weeks, is being widely seen as a major capitulation to Trump’s executive power by one of the largest providers of news, sports and entertainment in the world.
Paramount is currently working to complete a mega merger with fellow Hollywood giant Skydance, a deal worth an estimated $28 billion that will need approval from Trump administration regulators to clear.
Shari Redstone, Paramount’s longtime and outgoing chairwoman who inherited her father’s sprawling media empire after his death, stands to make more than $500 million upon the deal’s completion.
Trump sued CBS News and “60 Minutes” last fall over an interview the program aired with Harris just days before the November election.
In the suit, the president’s attorneys argued producers for the program intentionally edited portions of the interview to cast Harris in a more positive light.
“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,” the lawsuit, which sought $10 billion in damages and was filed in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Texas, read.
After Trump and his allies repeatedly attacked the network over the edit, “60 Minutes” released a transcript of the interview and conceded the full version of an answer Harris gave to a question on the war in Gaza did not appear during the broadcast but instead online.
“In reporting the news, journalists regularly edit interviews – for time, space or clarity,” the program said as it released the transcript. “In making these edits, 60 Minutes is always guided by the truth and what we believe will be most informative to the viewing public – all while working within the constraints of broadcast television.”
But Trump and his allies weren’t satisfied.
The president accused the network in social media posts of “election interference” while his Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr indicated he saw the interview with Harris as grounds for a legitimate news distortion complaint.
Legal experts and first amendment advocates, meanwhile, argued that the lawsuit was on shaky ground and amounted to a shakedown of a political adversary.
Paramount indicated for months it intended to fight Trump’s suit in court, issuing a statement in January saying the president’s claim “is completely without merit and we will vigorously defend against it.”
In March the company filed a pair of motions asking the Texas judge overseeing the case to dismiss the suit, calling it an “affront to the First Amendment” that is “without basis in law or fact.”
But behind the scenes as the president’s attacks against the broadcaster intensified, the company started to nudge toward settling.
After The New York Times reported lawyers for the two sides had begun mediation talks, Trump railed against the newspaper, accusing them of having “TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, possibly to the point where the Times’ interjection makes them liable for tortious interference, including in Elections, which we are intently studying.”
Staffers at CBS News have been roiled for months by rumors of a potential settlement, with the Times reporting some fear Redstone was interfering with the network’s coverage of the administration.
Bill Owens, longtime “60 Minutes” executive producer, resigned in April saying he could no longer preside over the program objectively, alluding to strife between Paramount and Trump’s lawyers.
In an extraordinary move the following Sunday, “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley called out Paramount over Owens ouster, and praised his former boss for resigning saying it was because, “Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways.”
Days later, Wendy McMahon, the network’s president, informed staff she was leaving the network, citing differences with Paramount leadership.
The company’s settlement with Trump is likely to spark concern among press freedom groups about what some say is a trend of mainstream media companies bending under threat of punishment or trying to curry favor with his administration.
In December, ABC News agreed to pay $15 million and issued an apology for a broadcast months earlier during which anchor George Stephanopoulos falsely claimed that Trump had been convicted of sexual assault against author E. Jean Carroll in the New York case.
Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of the Washington Post, has taken flak across the media and political world for his killing of an editorial endorsing Harris around the same time the “60 Minutes” interview aired.
Trump has routinely threatened NBC, NPR and other major news providers he says do not cover him fairly and this week members of his administration threatened to “prosecute” CNN over its reporting on his immigration agenda.
But during the first few months of his second term, the case against CBS stayed one of Trump’s top priorities as part of an ongoing hostility campaign toward the press.
“CBS is out of control, at levels never seen before,” the president wrote of the network as part of a Truth Social post in late April. “And they should pay a big price for this.”
Updated at 8:20 a.m. EDT