Latest news with #FreedomOfThePressFoundation
Globe and Mail
3 days ago
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Paramount Stock (NASDAQ:PARA) Notches Up Despite Dueling Lawsuits
The news only got worse for entertainment giant Paramount (PARA), as not only was its big new movie Mission: Impossible: The Final Reckoning dethroned by an adorable blue furball from Disney (DIS), but news also hit that, should it actually settle its lawsuit with President Trump, it would likely find another one waiting in the wings. This proved less than bothersome for investors, though, as shares notched up fractionally in the closing minutes of Tuesday's trading. Confident Investing Starts Here: Word from the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), which is also a Paramount shareholder, noted much the same thing that a group of senators suggested: settling a lawsuit with President Trump 'could amount to a bribe,' as they would provide this settlement in exchange 'for their approving and not impeding' the merger between Paramount and Skydance. Legal experts, however, have already suggested that this notion is ' a nothing burger ' and largely irrelevant. But the word of those legal experts cut little ice with the FPF, as it planned to '…file a shareholder derivative lawsuit on behalf of Paramount in the event of a settlement by Paramount.' This particular lawsuit would apparently target Shari Redstone, primary shareholder, and the FPF expected '…that other long-term shareholders will join the suit.' Jon Stewart is Concerned Meanwhile, one of the biggest figures of Paramount television, Comedy Central's Jon Stewart of The Daily Show fame, is concerned that the show might face a serious hit as part of any settlement with President Trump. Stewart, in occasionally profane fashion, expressed concerns about the fate of the show citing what happened to 60 Minutes and CBS News. Stewart also cited what happened to a slew of other media properties, before pointing out one other serious sticking point: 'Part of the deal is they have to apologize. And in that moment, these people who have built careers on their excellence and their integrity have to look and go, alright, I hope I've done well enough that I can weather this, but there is no…way that I am going to apologize for doing my job the way it's supposed to be done just because this one guy is offended by it.' Is Paramount Stock a Good Buy Right Now? Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Hold consensus rating on PARA stock based on two Buys, seven Holds and four Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 0.33% loss in its share price over the past year, the average PARA price target of $12.20 per share implies 1.5% upside potential. See more PARA analyst ratings Disclosure Disclaimer & Disclosure Report an Issue
WIRED
23-05-2025
- Business
- WIRED
Freedom of the Press Foundation Threatens Legal Action if Paramount Settles With Trump Over '60 Minutes' Interview
May 23, 2025 6:07 PM As Paramount considers settling a lawsuit with Donald Trump, the Freedom of the Press Foundation warns that it will sue over a deal that allegedly 'could amount to a bribe.' A general view of the Paramount Global West Coast headquarters, home of Paramount+, at Columbia Square in Hollywood, California. Photograph: Getty Images Media advocacy group Freedom of the Press Foundation has sent a warning letter to Paramount mogul Shari Redstone, outlining plans to file a lawsuit if the media company settles a suit brought by President Donald Trump against its subsidiary, CBS. 'Corporations that own news outlets should not be in the business of settling baseless lawsuits that clearly violate the First Amendment,' Freedom of the Press Foundation director of advocacy Seth Stern said in a statement. Stern issued the warning by asking for a litigation hold on Friday afternoon, demanding that Paramount preserve any documents relating to a potential Trump deal and urging the company not to settle. The nonprofit is able to seek damages because it owns shares of Paramount. It plans to act on behalf of itself and other shareholders, alleging that the settlement would amount to the company's executives 'breaching their fiduciary duties and wasting corporate assets by engaging in conduct that US senators and others believe could amount to unlawful bribery that falls outside the scope of the business judgment rule.' The White House and Paramount did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Last October, President Trump sued Paramount subsidiaries CBS Broadcasting and CBS Interactive, alleging that an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris that aired on longstanding CBS News program 60 Minutes was deceptively edited, in a manner that constituted election interference. Initially seeking $10 billion in damages, Trump amended the lawsuit in February to ask for $20 billion. Paramount Global has a market cap of roughly $8.5 billion. Although Paramount previously called the lawsuit 'an affront to the First Amendment' in legal filings to dismiss this March, it has reportedly sought to settle; the company has a potentially lucrative merger pending with Hollywood studio Skydance that would require the Trump administration's signoff. Last week, Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Ron Wyden sent a letter to Redstone seeking information about any potential settlement, raising concerns that it would amount to bribery. 'If Paramount officials make these concessions in a quid pro quo arrangement to influence President Trump or other Administration officials,' they wrote, 'they may be breaking the law.' Talks of a potential settlement had roiled CBS for months. Longtime 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens abruptly resigned in April, and CBS News president and CEO Wendy McMahon resigned earlier this month. 'It's become clear the company and I do not agree on a path forward,' she wrote in a memo to staff at the time. Trump's lawsuit against Paramount isn't an isolated attack on the media. He sued ABC News, owned by the Walt Disney Company, for defamation in March 2024 over comments from anchor George Stephanopoulos portraying the president as 'liable for rape.' (A federal jury found President Trump liable for sexual assault in a 2023 civil case, but not rape.) The company settled the case in December. In late April, Trump posted comments on his social platform Truth Social that appeared to threaten The New York Times with the possibility of legal action in the future. The type of lawsuit the Freedom of the Press Foundation plans to file, known as a shareholder derivative lawsuit, allows people and organizations who own shares of a publicly traded company to recover damages when executives harm the company. This is the same type of legal action that Tesla shareholders took to successfully fight CEO Elon Musk's hefty $56 million compensation package, which Musk is now appealing. (Tesla also changed its corporate bylaws this month to make it harder for investors to pursue this type of lawsuit.) Best known for its free speech advocacy for media organizations, the Freedom of the Press Foundation sees this action—which is unlike any legal challenge it's mounted before—as an extension of that mission, even though it targets a media organization. If the Freedom of the Press Foundation does seek legal action and successfully sues Paramount over a proposed settlement, the damages would go to Paramount rather than the nonprofit itself. 'You don't expect, as advocates for press freedom, to have to file lawsuits against executives of media publishers,' says Stern. 'We're a press freedom organization trying to recover money for a media outlet from rogue executives.'
New York Times
06-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Trump Live Updates: Canada's New Leader Will Make High-Stakes Visit to White House
A newly declassified memo released on Monday confirms that U.S. intelligence agencies rejected a key claim President Trump put forth to justify invoking a wartime statute to summarily deport Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador. The memo, dovetailing with intelligence findings first reported by The New York Times in March, states that spy agencies do not believe that the administration of Venezuela's president, Nicolás Maduro, controls a criminal gang, Tren de Aragua. That determination contradicts what Mr. Trump asserted when he invoked the deportation law, the Alien Enemies Act. 'While Venezuela's permissive environment enables TDA to operate, the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States,' the memo said. The memo's release further undercuts the Trump administration's rationale for using the Alien Enemies Act and calls into question its forceful criticism of the ensuing coverage. After The Times published its article, the Justice Department opened a criminal investigation and portrayed the reporting as misleading and harmful. The administration doubled down a month later after similar coverage in The Washington Post, citing the disclosures in both articles as a reason to relax limits on leak investigations. The document, known as a 'sense of the community' memo, was released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Freedom of the Press Foundation. The foundation provided a copy to The Times. Lauren Harper, the Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy for the foundation, said the memo was at odds with the administration's portrayal of its contents as a dire threat to public safety. The government 'almost immediately declassified the same information in response to a FOIA request,' she said. Ms. Harper continued: 'The declassification proves that the material should have been public from the start — not used as an excuse to suppress sharing information with the press.' But administration officials continued to defend Mr. Trump's policy. 'It is outrageous that as President Trump and his administration work hard every day to make America safe by deporting these violent criminals, some in the media remain intent on twisting and manipulating intelligence assessments to undermine the president's agenda to keep the American people safe,' Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, said in a statement. The White House and the Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment. Until Mr. Trump invoked it in mid-March, the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century law, had been used only three times in American history, all during declared wars. It says the government may summarily remove citizens of a country that is at war with the United States or otherwise engaged in an invasion of or predatory incursion into U.S. territory. Immediately afterward, the administration sent planeloads of Venezuelans to a notorious high-security prison in El Salvador with no due process. Courts have since blocked further transfers under the proclamation. Citing evidence that some of the men sent there were likely not gang members, the American Civil Liberties Union has asked a judge to order the Trump administration to bring back the Venezuelans for normal immigration hearings. On its face, the Alien Enemies Act appears to require a link to a foreign government. Mr. Trump declared that Tren de Aragua had committed crimes to destabilize the United States 'at the direction, clandestine or otherwise, of the Maduro regime in Venezuela.' But The Times reported days later that the intelligence community had circulated findings on Feb. 26 that reached the opposite conclusion. The shared assessment was that Venezuela's government and the gang were adversaries, even though some corrupt Venezuelan officials had ties to some gang members. It also said the gang lacked centralized command-and-control and was too disorganized to carry out any instructions. The Times also reported that only the F.B.I. partly dissented and thought there was some kind of link, but it was based on information the other agencies — like the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. — thought was not credible. The Trump administration asked the National Intelligence Council, made up of senior analysts and national security policy experts who report to Ms. Gabbard, to take another look at the available evidence. On April 7, it produced the memo released on Monday. The Washington Post reported on the memo, which remained classified, later that month, further angering the administration. Now in public view, the memo said the intelligence community based its conclusion on a series of factors. Venezuelan security forces have arrested Tren de Aragua members and have 'periodically engaged in armed confrontations with TDA, resulting in the killing of some TDA members,' the memo said, showing that the government treats the gang as a threat. While there is evidence that some 'mid- to low-level Venezuelan officials probably profit from TDA's illicit activities,' the memo said, the gang's decentralized makeup would make it 'logistically challenging' for the organization as a whole to act at the behest of the government. The memo also shed additional light on the F.B.I.'s partial dissent. It said that while F.B.I. analysts agreed with the other agencies' overall assessment, they also thought that 'some Venezuelan government officials facilitate TDA members' migration from Venezuela to the United States and use members as proxies in Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and the United States to advance what they see as the Maduro regime's goal of destabilizing governments and undermining public safety in these countries.' The F.B.I. based its view on 'people detained for involvement in criminal activity in the United States or for entering the country illegally.' But 'most' of the intelligence community 'judges that intelligence indicating that regime leaders are directing or enabling TDA migration to the United States is not credible,' the memo said. In examining the available evidence, the National Intelligence Council evaluated whether detainees 'could credibly have access to the information reported' and whether they had offered details that could be corroborated about support the Maduro government had purportedly provided the gang in exchange for following its directions. While portions of this section were redacted, the memo signaled skepticism. The detainees' legal troubles, it said, could 'motivate them to make false allegations about their ties to the Venezuelan regime in an effort to deflect responsibility for their crimes and to lessen any punishment by providing exculpatory or otherwise 'valuable' information to U.S. prosecutors.' In late March, the memo noted, Chilean officials told the International Criminal Court that they suspected that the murder of a Venezuelan man in Chile last year was carried out by 'a cell or group linked to the Tren de Aragua that was politically motivated' and originated from an order by Venezuela's government. The Maduro administration denied that accusation. But the memo also said other parts of the intelligence community had not observed or collected evidence of communications or funding flows showing government officials providing directions to leaders of the gang, even though such a relationship would likely require 'extensive' such interactions. Judges so far have stayed away from second-guessing the truth of Mr. Trump's factual claims in deploying the Alien Enemies Act. The day after the initial Times article, Todd Blanche, a former defense lawyer for Mr. Trump who is now deputy attorney general, announced that the Justice Department had opened a criminal leak investigation. In a statement, he criticized the article, saying the information in it was classified but also 'inaccurate.' But the declassified memo supports The Times's reporting. In an interview on Megyn Kelly's podcast last week, Ms. Gabbard said that the reporting on the intelligence community's conclusions was 'being investigated.' Leakers had 'selectively and intentionally left out the most important thing,' she added, pointing to the F.B.I.'s belief that the Maduro government was supporting the gang's activities in the United States. But the articles in both The Times and The Post discussed the F.B.I.'s contrary view. Last month, Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote in a memo that she would roll back protections for press freedoms in leak investigations, citing the Times and Post articles as damaging examples of leaks of classified information. In an Espionage Act case, prosecutors must prove that someone knowingly made an unauthorized disclosure of defense-related information that could harm the United States or aid a foreign adversary. The government's declassification of the memo raises questions about any case that could be brought over the Times and Post articles.
