The announcement Tuesday from Paramount Global, CBS' parent company, that it had settled President Trump's private lawsuit over a 60 Minutes interview was welcome news for its controlling owner, Shari Redstone.
But it represented yet another bitter pill for independent journalism to swallow.
The CBS Eye blinked.
The Washington Post — a newspaper whose motto is "Democracy Dies in Darkness" — has pulled its editorial punches.
And The Los Angeles Times's owner has thrown in his lot with those who say the media — including his own paper — is too liberal.
What seemed possible — but hard to believe — before President Trump took office once more has now taken shape: A number of corporate and individual owners of media that promise to hold power to account have instead bowed to it. So too have the chiefs of two major social media platforms — among the richest people on the planet.
The $16 million settlement over an interview CBS' 60 Minutes conducted last fall with then-Vice President Kamala Harris smooths the path for Redstone and Paramount to secure the approval of the Federal Communications Commission to sell the company to Skydance Media, a deal bankrolled by Oracle founder Larry Ellison, a Trump ally. The FCC must sign off on the transfer of the broadcast licenses for CBS' local TV stations for the deal to go through.
Trump's legal team had alleged that CBS's decision last fall to air different parts of Harris's answer to a question about the Israel/Hamas conflict on 60 Minutes and Face The Nation constituted election interference. They said it had inflicted emotional harm on Trump. His pick to lead the FCC had initiated a formal review of complaints against CBS.
"With this record settlement, President Donald J. Trump delivers another win for the American people as he, once again, holds the Fake News media accountable for their wrongdoing and deceit," a spokesperson for Trump's legal team said on Wednesday. "CBS and Paramount Global realized the strength of this historic case and had no choice but to settle."
Outside legal experts, by and large, see it differently. They almost uniformly call Trump's claims spurious, saying CBS's editorial decisions are protected by the First Amendment.
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, a frequent Trump defender, publicly argued that the lawsuit was likely unfounded.
"The decision to settle a case with no legal merit obviously comes squarely from the corporate suite, not from anybody at CBS News," former CBS News president Andrew Heyward tells NPR. "To me, the critical issue is whether 60 Minutes can hold onto its tradition of fierce editorial integrity under new management."
Indeed, CBS chief and Paramount co-CEO George Cheeks focused on the company's larger financial interests at a Paramount shareholders' meeting on Wednesday. "Companies often settle litigation to avoid the high and somewhat unpredictable cost of legal defense, the risk of an adverse judgment that could result in significant financial, as well as reputational damage, and the disruption to business operations that prolonged legal battles can cause," Cheeks said. He noted that a legal settlement lets a company move on with its business.
Emotions ran high at a 60 Minutes staff meeting Wednesday morning. A person who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal company matters says people were more doleful than angry. The payout came as no surprise; corporate executives had telegraphed that there would certainly be a settlement. Some were relieved that Paramount had declined to issue what they saw as an unwarranted apology.
Trump speaks about free speech but lawsuits serve as warning signal
Paramount and CBS are following what is — by now — a well worn path of corporate deference to Trump.
The owners of the Washington Post and the L.A. Times — the billionaire entrepreneurs Jeff Bezos and Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong — separately killed editorials drafted to endorse Harris shortly before the election and completely overhauled their editorial pages to be less likely to criticize Trump. Both men have significant business dealings before the Trump administration.
The Walt Disney Co., parent of ABC, promised to pay Trump's presidential foundation $15 million and $1 million in legal fees over anchor George Stephanopoulos's mischaracterization of legal proceedings against Trump. It also issued a note of regret.
Meta paid even more — $25 million — to resolve a suit from Trump over his removal from Facebook after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Outside lawyers say it had an even stronger case than Disney.
Last year, as he campaigned for the White House, Trump promised to protect free speech and end censorship. In March, in a presidential address to Congress, Trump said he had done just that.
In recent days, by contrast, Trump has threatened to sue CNN and the New York Times over their disclosure of preliminary intelligence reports suggesting the strikes on Iran were not as debilitating to its nuclear weapons program as the administration said. Neither has retreated from its reporting. On Tuesday, the administration also suggested it might prosecute CNN for reporting on an app that would alert users to activity by immigration authorities. CNN noted that any iPhone user can download it through the App Store.
Meanwhile, the Des Moines Register's parent company, Gannett Co., is fighting litigation Trump brought in Iowa over a poll days before the election showing Harris with a lead in that state. Trump won handily. Even so, that does not make for a legal wrong, media lawyers and legal observers say.
"A cold wind just blew through every newsroom"
Free speech and press advocates blanketed Paramount with condemnation Wednesday for settling the 60 Minutes case.
"A cold wind just blew through every newsroom this morning," said Bob Corn-Revere, chief counsel for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. "Paramount may have closed this case, but it opened the door to the idea that the government should be the media's editor-in-chief."
Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said Paramount would have prevailed in any suit. He said the settlement marked a sad day for press freedoms.
"This was a frivolous lawsuit and the payment being described as a 'settlement' bears no relation to Paramount's actual legal exposure in the case, which was negligible," Jaffer said. "Now Trump's presidential library will be a permanent monument to Paramount's surrender, a continual reminder of its failure to defend freedoms that are essential to our democracy."
Some legal scholars have told NPR they consider the settlement a form of extortion, relying upon the president's powers and influence over the executive branch.
Several Democratic lawmakers have called for hearings or investigations. "Paramount just paid Trump a bribe for merger approval," Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden posted on X. "When Democrats retake power, I'll be first in line calling for federal charges. In the meantime, state prosecutors should make the corporate execs who sold out our democracy answer in court, today."
Convictions on bribery charges can be hard to secure and are often tossed out, says Charles Elson, the founding director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware. CBS simply had more to lose than Trump should the case have gone to court, he says, arguing that the legal discovery process could've turned up evidence that the media company would rather keep hidden.
"Every organization has someone within it that has said something that looks terrible to its reputation," he tells NPR.
Yet there is no reason to believe that legal settlements guarantee future peace with a president who has long identified "fake news" as the enemy.
Elon Musk's social media platform X, previously Twitter, agreed to pay $10 million to resolve its decision under prior ownership to kick Trump off after the January 2021 siege of the U.S. Capitol. The two men recently tangled over the president's budget proposals; now Trump has raised the prospect of having the budget-slashing initiative that Musk led turn its attention to federal contracts and subsidies currently benefiting Musk's ventures.
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