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15 hours ago
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‘60 Minutes' Staff Almost Quit ‘En Masse' Over Trump Suit
Lesley Stahl revealed that she and her fellow 60 Minutes correspondents came close to quitting 'en masse' after their boss left the show with a dire warning about Donald Trump. The 33-year 60 Minutes veteran admitted she was 'angry' with Paramount head Shari Redstone on the Friday episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour. 'It is a frivolous lawsuit,' Stahl said of Trump's $20 billion legal action against CBS News. When host and New Yorker editor David Reminick asked Stahl whether she was 'angry' with Redstone, Stahl admitted, 'Yes, I think I am. I think I am.' Stahl also offered a theory for why Trump pursued the lawsuit against CBS News, in which he is accusing 60 Minutes of 'deceptively editing' Harris' interview to make her look better, in the first place. 'What is really behind it, in a nutshell, is to chill us,' Stahl said. 'There aren't any damages. He accused us of editing Kamala Harris in a way to help her win the election. But he won the election.' Settling the lawsuit would pave the way for Paramount's planned merger with Skydance Media, which would reportedly result in a $530 million personal payout for Redstone—and has to be approved by Trump's FCC officials. Paramount offered Trump $15 million to settle the lawsuit this week, but the president turned it down, citing 'mental anguish' over the Harris interview. He now wants $25 million and an apology to put his complaint to rest. The attempt to settle with Trump over the interview, which staffers have insisted was edited according to its usual standards and was not politically motivated, has caused internal tension at the network, culminating in the shock exits of 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens and CBS News President Wendy McMahon. Stahl said Owens' resignation 'was one of those punches where you almost can't breathe,' calling Owens and McMahon 'barriers' between 'us and the corporation.' Those barriers were tested even before Trump's lawsuit, Stahl recalled Friday. As for what 60 Minutes will be like once out of Redstone's hands at Paramount, Stahl said she's 'Pollyannaish' that Skydance will 'hold the freedom of the press up as a beacon, that they understand the importance of allowing us to be independent and do our jobs.' 'I'm expecting that. I'm hoping that, I want that, I'm praying for that,' Stahl said. 'And I have no reason to think that won't happen.' Reminick asked Stahl to consider what happens if it doesn't, and what it would take for her to follow Owens and McMahon out of the CBS News door. 'It depends,' she said. 'You ask me where my line is. I'm not sure. I don't think I can express what it is, but there is a line. Of course there is a line.' Stahl said that Owens resigning was one of those 'lines' and she and her fellow correspondents actually considering quitting 'en masse.' But their outgoing boss talked them out of it. 'It is hard' to 'have a news organization told by a corporation, 'Do this, do that with your story, change this, change that. Don't run that piece,'' Stahl explained, recounting what it was like to 'quietly resist' Redstone's complaints about 60 Minutes' Gaza coverage. 'The message came down through the line, through Wendy McMahon to Bill,' Stahl said, which she found 'very disconcerting.' 'It steps on the First Amendment. It steps on the freedom of the press. It makes me question whether any corporation should own a news operation,' she continued.
Yahoo
18 hours ago
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‘60 Minutes' Veteran Lesley Stahl Expects To Soon Be 'Mourning, Grieving' Paramount Settlement Of 'Frivolous' Trump Lawsuit
Long-tenured 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl is fully expecting a settlement of Donald Trump's 'frivolous' $20 billion lawsuit, but she dreads what will follow the resolution of the case. 'I'm already beginning to think about mourning, grieving,' Stahl said in a podcast interview with New Yorker editor David Remnick. 'I know there's going to be a settlement,' she added, and 'I know there's going to be some money exchanged' given that Shari Redstone, controlling shareholder of CBS parent Paramount Global, needs government approval for the pending merger with Skydance. (Deadline reported Wednesday that Paramount has made an eight-figure settlement offer, which has been rejected by Trump.) More from Deadline Paramount Offers Millions To Trump To End $20B '60 Minutes' Suit & Let Skydance Merger Go Through Trump 101: Why POTUS' Lawsuit Against CBS Over '60 Minutes' Is Seen As Dubious – Analysis Lester Holt Signs Off As 'NBC Nightly News' Anchor: "Facts Matter" After the settlement, Stahl speculated, 'We will hopefully still be around, turning a new page and finding out what that new page is going to look like.' Trump filed suit over a pre-election episode of 60 Minutes even after defeating Kamala Harris and winning re-election last November. He claims that CBS News wronged him by serving different edits of an interview with Harris to different CBS outlets in the course of promoting the segment, something that is standard practice in TV news. Legal experts universally agree there is no merit to the claim, but a number of news outlets have recently had their corporate parents pay settlements or otherwise capitulate to Trump after he applied pressure. Stahl's comments on The New Yorker Radio Hour come as uncertainty about the top-rated CBS newsmagazine continues to mount. Longtime executive producer Bill Owens departed in April, citing pressure from Redstone and other corporate executives concerned about the show's coverage of Trump. CBS News chief Wendy McMahon also exited recently. Stahl described the departure of Owens as 'a punch in the stomach …. one of those punches where you almost can't breathe.' Owens urged staffers not to quit and instead to keep advocating for tough coverage despite Trump's muzzling efforts. His pleas came as employees were openly discussing an 'en masse' exit from the program, according to Stahl. Asked if she would expect 60 Minutes to change 'radically' under Skydance's control, Stahl said she is hoping Skydance CEO David Ellison and his executive team 'hold the freedom of the press up as a beacon, that they understand the importance of allowing us to be independent and do our jobs. I'm expecting that, I'm hoping that, I want that, I'm praying for that.' Remnick inquired if there is 'a lot of optimism … at 60 Minutes that that will be the outcome,' and Stahl replied, 'No. But there's also not a lot of dark thinking, either.' Throughout the interview, Stahl lamented the steady decline of public trust in the media, which has been amplified by Trump's tactics. When she once asked him about his intensely combative stance with reporters, he told her that he operates that way so that when negative reports about him surface, 'nobody will believe you.' The explanation 'sent a chill through me because I thought, 'Wow, he has thought this through,'' she said. 'This isn't something that's a casual, angry' mood because ''the press said something yesterday about me.' It was thought out, it was a strategy.' Stahl described having a 'pain in my heart' about the state of her profession more than five decades after she joined CBS News to cover Watergate. (After joining CBS in 1972, she segued to 60 Minutes in 1991.) The average citizen 'does not appreciate the importance of a free and strong and tough press in our democracy,' she said. They don't grasp 'that we have a function to fulfill,' she added. 'The public doesn't seem to want what we do to be part of our public life.' Best of Deadline Sean 'Diddy' Combs Sex-Trafficking Trial Updates: Cassie Ventura's Testimony, $10M Hotel Settlement, Drugs, Violence, & The Feds 'Poker Face' Season 2 Guest Stars: From Katie Holmes To Simon Hellberg 2025-26 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Tonys, Emmys, Oscars & More
Yahoo
a day ago
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Trump Wants $25 Million To Settle His Meritless 60 Minutes Lawsuit (opinion)
President Donald Trump is currently suing one of the largest media companies in the country because one of its subsidiaries lightly edited an interview with his political opponent. This week, he apparently declined a settlement offer, even though the lawsuit itself is completely frivolous and arguably an abuse of his power as president. "Paramount Global in recent days has offered $15 million to settle," The Wall Street Journal reported this week. "Trump's team wants more than $25 million and is also seeking an apology from CBS News." The whole affair stems from an October 2024 interview that 60 Minutes conducted with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate for president. (Trump declined the chance to sit for a 60 Minutes interview of his own.) In the interview, correspondent Bill Whitaker asked about Israel's war in Gaza. CBS—the broadcast network owned by Paramount—aired separate portions of Harris' answer, one on the 60 Minutes broadcast and a longer snippet on its Sunday morning show Face the Nation. Trump seized on the different clips and accused CBS of doctoring Harris' answer to make her look better. "Her REAL ANSWER WAS CRAZY, OR DUMB, so they actually REPLACED it with another answer," he wrote on X. "They took the answer out in its entirety, threw it away, and they put another answer in," he later said at a campaign rally. "And I think it's the biggest scandal in broadcasting history." Trump sued CBS for $10 billion in "compensatory damages"—amended to $20 billion after he won the election and reassumed the presidency—under a Texas law against deceptive consumer practices. The lawsuit accused CBS of "unlawful acts of election and voter interference." The lawsuit was flawed from the start: Journalists editing interviewees' answers for time or clarity is both routine and protected by the First Amendment. And Harris' answer in either clip is not exactly Churchillian: "Harris did not come across as especially forthright, articulate, or intelligent in either version, although the one that 60 Minutes showed was a little more concise," Reason's Jacob Sullum observed. If CBS were trying to do her a favor by swapping out her answer, one imagines they could have done a better job. Besides, Trump won the election; it's hard to believe he suffered any damages, much less millions of dollars worth. But in a filing this week, Trump's lawyers argued the interview "led to widespread confusion and mental anguish of consumers, including [Trump]." CBS released the full unedited video and transcript of Whitaker's interview with Harris in February, conclusively demonstrating the scandal was bullshit all along: CBS aired one part of Harris' response on 60 Minutes and another part on Face the Nation. Despite Trump's insistence, nobody "replaced" any part of her answer with another, separate answer. But instead of defending its journalists by pressing on and letting a judge laugh the lawsuit out of court, Paramount has been negotiating a settlement. CBS News staffers opposed a settlement, fearing the precedent of a journalistic outlet caving to pressure from the powerful interests it covers. Since negotiations began last month, the producer of 60 Minutes and the executive in charge of CBS News each resigned. But Paramount is in the process of being acquired by Skydance Media, and the transaction requires approval from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Around the same time as Trump's lawsuit, the Center for American Rights, a conservative nonprofit, also filed an FCC complaint for "news distortion" over the interview. And FCC Chair Brendan Carr, whom Trump elevated to the job and who has demonstrated unabashed loyalty to the president, has indicated that approval depends upon the resolution of the complaint, which he is in no hurry to get through. "It would be entirely inappropriate to consider the complaint against the '60 Minutes' segment as part of a transaction review," FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez told the Los Angeles Times. Indeed, the lawsuit—especially when paired with the FCC merger approval—smacks of corruption, with Trump trying to cow a disfavored media outlet into silence. Trump's effort is so blatant that Paramount executives reportedly worried they could be prosecuted for bribery of a public official if they settled the lawsuit. Of course, this puts Paramount, CBS, and 60 Minutes in a perilous position: If Paramount—which has been struggling for years—hopes to save itself through a merger with Skydance, it must win over the FCC, whose current head apparently delights in being referred to as "Trump's media pit bull." Doing so will apparently require bending the knee and paying a fee for hurting Trump's feelings, even though by all accounts, 60 Minutes violated neither the law nor journalistic ethics. And if Paramount does cave and pay $25 million or more—worse still, if it apologizes for the sin of doing basic journalism—it will set a dangerous precedent that powerful people can openly and unabashedly bully the journalists who cover them into silence. The post Trump Wants $25 Million To Settle His Meritless 60 Minutes Lawsuit appeared first on
Yahoo
2 days ago
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Trump rejects Paramount's $15 million offer to settle CBS News lawsuit, demands apology
President Donald Trump and Paramount Global are still at an impasse as they attempt to resolve his $20 billion lawsuit against the company through mediation. Fox News Digital confirmed that Trump rejected a $15 million offer to settle his lawsuit, according to a source familiar with the matter. The president's legal team is also demanding at least $25 million and an apology from CBS News. Trump's attorneys even floated another lawsuit against the company. Trump's settlement rejection was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Trump's attorney did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. Paramount declined to comment. '60 Minutes' Staff Stand By Kamala Harris Interview At The Center Of Trump's Major Paramount Lawsuit Last October, Trump sued CBS News and Paramount for $10 billion over allegations of election interference involving the "60 Minutes" interview of then-Vice President Kamala Harris that aired weeks before the presidential election (the amount has since jumped to $20 billion). Read On The Fox News App The lawsuit alleges CBS News deceitfully edited an exchange Harris had with "60 Minutes" correspondent Bill Whitaker, who asked her why Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wasn't "listening" to the Biden administration. Harris was widely mocked for the "word salad" answer that aired in a preview clip of the interview on "Face the Nation." However, when the same question aired during a primetime special on the network, Harris had a different, more concise response. Critics at the time accused CBS News of deceitfully editing Harris' "word salad" answer to shield the Democratic nominee from further backlash leading up to Election Day. The raw transcript and footage released earlier this year by the FCC showed that both sets of Harris' comments came from the same response, but CBS News had aired only the first half of her response in the "Face the Nation" preview clip and aired the second half during the primetime special. CBS News has denied any wrongdoing and stands by the broadcast and its reporting. '60 Minutes' Producers Rail Against Trump's 'Bulls---' Lawsuit, Dread Prospects Of Paramount Making Settlement Shari Redstone, Paramount's controlling shareholder who recused herself from settlement discussions in February, made clear that she wanted to settle Trump's lawsuit in hopes of clearing the pathway for Paramount's multibillion-dollar planned merger with Skydance Media, which seeks approval from the Trump administration's FCC. However, there has been newsroom drama in recent months involving Redstone's efforts to "keep tabs" on the network's reporting of Trump, at least until the merger closes. That led to the abrupt resignation of "60 Minutes" executive producer Bill Owens, who claimed he could no longer maintain editorial independence. Also fueling settlement rumors was last week's ousting of CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon, who cited disagreement with the company behind her departure. Cbs News Staffers Rattled By Ceo's Abrupt Exit As Trump Lawsuit Looms Over Network CBS News journalists remain defiant, including "60 Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelley, who went viral with his commencement address at Wake Forest University repeatedly slamming Trump as well as his lawsuit. "Why attack universities? Why attack journalism? Because ignorance works for power," Pelley told Wake Forest graduates. "First, make the truth seekers live in fear, sue the journalists and their companies for nothing. Then, send masked agents to abduct a college student who wrote an editorial in her college paper defending Palestinian rights and send her to a prison in Louisiana charged with nothing. Then move to destroy the law firms that stand up for the rights of others." "With that done, power can rewrite history with grotesque false narratives. They can make criminals heroes and heroes criminals. Power can change the definition of the words we use to describe reality. Diversity is now described as illegal. Equity is to be shunned. Inclusion is a dirty word. This is an old playbook, my friends. There's nothing new in this," he article source: Trump rejects Paramount's $15 million offer to settle CBS News lawsuit, demands apology
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
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Trump now claims 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris caused him ‘mental anguish'
Donald Trump's legal team claims in a new court filing that the president suffered 'mental anguish' over the 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris at the center of his $20 billion lawsuit against CBS News, arguing that the network is wielding 'the First Amendment as a sword.' In a pair of objections filed in response to the network's motions to dismiss the defamation suit, which legal experts have described as 'frivolous,' the president's lawyers reiterate that Trump was caused personal financial harm by the editing of the interview, claiming that CBS' parent company, Paramount, and Trump Media – which owns Truth Social – are competitors. The latest development in this legal fracas comes after the Wall Street Journal reported Paramount had offered the president $15 million to settle the lawsuit, only for Trump to reportedly demand at least $25 million along with an apology over the interview. Trump also threatened to file another lawsuit accusing the network of biased news coverage, according to the Journal. Even though Paramount's legal team filed motions to dismiss the lawsuit in March, calling it an 'affront to the First Amendment without basis in law or fact,' the company has proposed settling the complaint as it needs the Trump administration's approval to complete an $8 billion merger with Skydance Media. The discussions around a settlement, which Paramount chair Shari Redstone has pushed for ahead of the merger, have resulted in tensions within the network. In recent weeks, 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens and CBS News chief Wendy McMahon, who had made it clear they would not apologize as part of any deal with Trump, abruptly announced their resignations. Meanwhile, mediation sessions between Paramount and Trump's team have stalled over the past month, though the two sides were scheduled to meet again on Thursday. Redstone, meanwhile, has recused herself from the negotiations. On the last day to file an objection, the president's lawyers opposed both of Paramount's motions to dismiss on Wednesday night. Regarding Paramount's efforts to get the lawsuit kicked out of court due to improper venue and lack of personal jurisdiction, the president's legal team rejected the notion that it was 'naked-forum shopping' by filing the case in the Northern District of Texas. Instead, they argued that Trump and his co-defendant Rep. Ronny Jackson (D-TX) have 'sufficient minimum contacts' in the state, and their complaints arise from that. 'The fact that such commercial speech was issued by a news organization does not insulate Defendants from liability under the First Amendment,' the objection states. 'The First Amendment is no shield to news distortion.' As for the motion to dismiss based on failure to state a claim, Trump's lawyers stated that the interview – which the president has asserted was deceitfully edited to make Harris look good and therefore interfere with the election – caused personal damage to both Trump and viewers. 'This led to widespread confusion and mental anguish of consumers, including Plaintiffs, regarding a household name of the legacy media apparently deceptively distorting its broadcasts, and then resisting attempts to clear the public record,' the opposition motion declares. Additionally, the president's team claimed that Paramount and CBS 'seek to wield the First Amendment as a sword, arguing that they cannot be held responsible for illegal conduct, intended to mislead the masses and undertaken in the pursuit of profit, because such conduct was the result of 'editorial judgment.'' 'No matter how many times they claim the conduct at issue was editorial speech, that ipse dixit does not make it so,' the objection adds. While Paramount appears to want to settle the complaint that CBS News has said is 'completely without merit' sooner rather than later, it is also getting its ducks in a row in case the deal with Skydance falls through. According to the Journal, the company is expected to nominate three new directors to the board in the coming weeks to bring the total to seven. Additionally, a current director is expected to step down soon and will also need to be replaced. Though the media conglomerate seems desperate to settle with the president, some executives have expressed concerns that paying the president to make the lawsuit go away could open them up to liability or even criminal charges for bribery. In fact, several Democratic senators have already warned Redstone and Paramount that they could face investigation for violating anti-bribery laws if a settlement with Trump is reached. Furthermore, the Freedom of the Press Foundation has said it intends to sue Paramount if the company settles with the president. Due to those concerns, the board is hoping to keep the settlement amount in the range of other media companies that have recently reached deals with Trump, in hopes that this would minimize any liability. The $15 million that Paramount is reportedly offering Trump, for instance, is the same amount that Disney paid to end his defamation suit against ABC News and anchor George Stephanopoulos over an interview that saw Stephanopoulos claiming that Trump was found civilly liable for rape rather than sexual abuse.
