Former CBS anchor slams Paramount settlement with Trump: ‘It was a sellout'
'It's a sad day for 60 Minutes and CBS News,' Rather, a veteran journalist who was a CBS News anchor for over 20 years, told Variety in an interview published on Wednesday. 'I hope people will read the details of this and understand what it was. It was distortion by the president and a kneeling down and saying, 'yes, sir,' by billionaire corporate owners.'
Last November, Trump sued CBS News, claiming that the network's interview with the Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, had been doctored to portray her in a favorable light – which he alleged amounted to 'election interference'.
Many legal experts had widely dismissed the lawsuit as 'meritless' and unlikely to hold up under the first amendment, but on Wednesday Paramount announced that it had agreed to pay Trump $16m to settle the case over the interview that was broadcast on the CBS News program 60 Minutes.
The settlement comes as Paramount is preparing for a $8bn merger with Skydance Media, which requires approval from the US Federal Communications Commission. Paramount has said that the lawsuit is separate from the company's merger.
A spokesperson for Trump's legal team said in a statement to the Guardian that '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.
'CBS and Paramount Global realized the strength of this historic case and had no choice but to settle,' the spokesperson added.
According to Wednesday's announcement, the settlement funds will not be paid to Trump directly, but instead would be allocated to Trump's future presidential library. The settlement did not include an apology.
Rather told Variety on Wednesday that in his opinion 'you settle a lawsuit when you've done something wrong' and '60 minutes did nothing wrong, it followed accepted journalistic practices'.
'Lawyers almost unanimously said the case wouldn't stand up in court,' he said.
Ultimately though, Rather said he was disappointed but not surprised by the settlement.
'Big billionaire businesspeople make decisions about money,' he said. 'We could always hope that they will make an exception when it comes to freedom of the press, but it wasn't to be.
'Trump knew if he put the pressure on and threatened and just held that they would fold, because there's too much money on the table,' Rather said. 'Trump is now forcing a whole news organization to pay millions of dollars for doing something protected by the constitution – which is, of course, free and independent reporting. Now, you take today's sellout. And that's what it was: It was a sellout to extortion by the president. Who can now say where all this ends?'
He continued: 'It has to do with not just journalism, but more importantly, with the country as a whole. What kind of country we're going to have, what kind of country we're going to be. If major news organizations continue to kneel before power and stop trying to hold the powerful accountable, then we all lose.'
In his more than 60 years in journalism, Rather told Variety he had never seen the profession face the kind of challenges as those it faces today.
'Journalism has had its trials and tribulations before, and it takes courage to just soldier on,' Rather said. 'Keep trying, keep fighting. It takes guts to do that. And I know the people at CBS News, and particularly those at 60 Minutes, they'll do their dead level best under these circumstances. But the question is what [is] this development and the message it sends to us. And that's what I'm trying to concentrate on.'
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