Paramount, the parent company of CBS News, has reached an out-of-court settlement with Donald Trump, and will pay $16 million to a charity of his choice. The settlement was agreed yesterday, and Paramount noted that it did not include an admission of liability: “The settlement does not include a statement of apology or regret.” Trump sued CBS in 2024 — shortly before he won that year’s US presidential election — following an interview with former vice president Kamala Harris on the flagship 60 Minutes programme.
Trump had been seeking $20 billion in damages. The amount was completely unrealistic, but the entire case was equally dubious: his complaint was simply that CBS showed different portions of one of Harris’s answers in two different broadcasts. It’s common practice for TV networks to edit extended interviews for reasons of timing, using different clips and soundbites for various platforms or shows, yet Paramount has decided not to fight the case in court. It’s likely that the company wanted to avoid any rancour while the Trump administration is assessing its proposed merger with Skydance.
Harris was interviewed by CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker, and clips from the interview were aired on Face the Nation on 5th October 2024. A longer version of the interview was broadcast on 60 Minutes on the following day. Harris was asked about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the lawsuit notes that “Kamala replies to Whitaker with her typical word salad” in the Face the Nation clip, while she “appears to reply to Whitaker with a completely different, more succinct answer” on 60 Minutes.
The Face the Nation clip shows Harris answering the question by saying: “Well, Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by or a result of many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region.” In the 60 Minutes segment, her answer is: “We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”
The lawsuit argued that the 60 Minutes interview was edited to make Harris appear more coherent. With his characteristic hyperbole, at a rally on 23rd October 2024 Trump said: “I think it’s the biggest scandal in broadcasting history.” CBS released a full transcript of the interview — something that Trump’s lawsuit had called for — which revealed that the Face the Nation clip was the first half of her answer to the question, and the 60 Minutes version was the second half of her answer to the same question.
Paramount’s settlement is another example of an American media company avoiding antagonising Trump in his second term. Similarly, ABC News settled a Trump defamation lawsuit in December last year, despite having a strong legal case.
Trump had been seeking $20 billion in damages. The amount was completely unrealistic, but the entire case was equally dubious: his complaint was simply that CBS showed different portions of one of Harris’s answers in two different broadcasts. It’s common practice for TV networks to edit extended interviews for reasons of timing, using different clips and soundbites for various platforms or shows, yet Paramount has decided not to fight the case in court. It’s likely that the company wanted to avoid any rancour while the Trump administration is assessing its proposed merger with Skydance.
Harris was interviewed by CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker, and clips from the interview were aired on Face the Nation on 5th October 2024. A longer version of the interview was broadcast on 60 Minutes on the following day. Harris was asked about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the lawsuit notes that “Kamala replies to Whitaker with her typical word salad” in the Face the Nation clip, while she “appears to reply to Whitaker with a completely different, more succinct answer” on 60 Minutes.
The Face the Nation clip shows Harris answering the question by saying: “Well, Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by or a result of many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region.” In the 60 Minutes segment, her answer is: “We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”
The lawsuit argued that the 60 Minutes interview was edited to make Harris appear more coherent. With his characteristic hyperbole, at a rally on 23rd October 2024 Trump said: “I think it’s the biggest scandal in broadcasting history.” CBS released a full transcript of the interview — something that Trump’s lawsuit had called for — which revealed that the Face the Nation clip was the first half of her answer to the question, and the 60 Minutes version was the second half of her answer to the same question.
Paramount’s settlement is another example of an American media company avoiding antagonising Trump in his second term. Similarly, ABC News settled a Trump defamation lawsuit in December last year, despite having a strong legal case.
