Paramount, CBS Bow to Trump: Agree to Hefty Payout, New Editorial Rules
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and eight other senators, sent a letter to … Paramount Global’s board urging them to not to settle the lawsuit.” … They claimed that a settlement would be a “grave mistake” and “a blatant attempt to intimidate the media and those who speak out against him.”
Paramount Global and CBS News reached a settlement with President Donald Trump in his $20 billion election interference lawsuit on Tuesday. Trump is set to receive an initial payment of $16 million, according to Fox News. But “there is an anticipation” that a second payment “well in excess of $15 million” could follow.
Fox News reported:
[The first payment of $16 million] will cover legal fees, costs of the case, and contributions to his future presidential library or charitable causes, to be determined at Trump’s discretion.
There is an anticipation that there will be another allocation in the mid-eight figures set aside for advertisements, public service announcements, or other similar transmissions, in support of conservative causes by the network in the future, Fox News Digital has learned. With these considerations, CBS would pay well in excess of the $15 million ABC paid Trump to settle a defamation lawsuit last year. Current Paramount management disputes the additional allocation.
Equally significant, sources told Fox that CBS has committed to changing its editorial policies, implementing a new mandatory measure that requires the prompt release of full, unedited transcripts for all future presidential candidate interviews. Individuals involved in the settlement have dubbed this the “Trump Rule.”
In a statement to Fox, a spokesman for Trump’s legal team wrote:
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. President Trump will always ensure that no one gets away with lying to the American People as he continues on his singular mission to Make America Great Again.
He will indeed.
Paramount issued a statement that read: “The settlement will include a release of all claims regarding any CBS reporting through the date of the settlement, including the Texas action and the threatened defamation action.”
Although CBS “is not acknowledging any journalistic wrongdoing,” those who watched the interview noticed a significant discrepancy between Harris’s actual remarks and how the network presented them.
During an October 7 interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Bill Whitaker, then-Vice President Kamala Harris delivered one of her signature “word salads.”
At that point in the race, Harris’s momentum from a strong debate performance the previous month had begun to stall. Support for Trump in the critical swing states was ticking up and early voting was already underway.
Desperate to shield Harris from another embarrassing moment, CBS apparently thought a little stealth editing was in order. Harris’s actual response was featured in a preview clip of the interview on CBS’ Face the Nation. But, during the primetime airing of the interview, “Harris had a different, more concise response.”
The difference was glaring, undeniable, and dishonest. Unfortunately for the network, their presentation of the interview became the bigger story.
Holy. Shit.
60 Minutes cut Kamala’s nonsense answer on Israel and replaced it with a completely seperate sentence she said earlier in the interview…
Mixing and matching questions and answers. This isn’t journalism. It’s fraud.pic.twitter.com/onXli46xL6
— Geiger Capital (@Geiger_Capital) October 8, 2024
Several weeks later, Trump sued the network for “deceptively editing” Harris’s reply.
For months, despite numerous requests from Trump’s legal team, CBS refused to provide the unedited transcript from the interview. But, earlier this year, FCC Chair Brendan Carr ordered the company to hand it over, according to Fox.
Once that happened, all bets were off.
In May, when a settlement appeared imminent, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and eight other senators sent a letter to controlling shareholder Shari Redstone and Paramount Global’s board urging them not to settle the lawsuit. They referred to Trump’s action as an “attack on the First Amendment.” The senators claimed that a settlement would be a “grave mistake” and “a blatant attempt to intimidate the media and those who speak out against him, President Trump.” Settling with Trump would “capitulate to this dangerous move to authoritarianism.” Finally, they wrote, “presidents do not get to punish or censor the media for criticizing them.”
Many CBS insiders adamantly opposed a settlement with Trump. In April, CBS News and 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens resigned from his post over the lawsuit. And in May, CBS News President and CEO Wendy McMahon announced her resignation.
As I see it, once Trump’s legal team obtained the unedited transcript, there was no way for the network to avoid a settlement. It was game over.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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Comments
If Redstone didn’t have hot drawers to sell the company, there would have been no settlement, and unfortunately, in this sewer of a legal system Trump would have lost.
There is a narrative that paramont settled in order to get the fcc (?) to approve the merger.
While that may be valid ( emphasis on maybe), they did highly edit the broadcast pre discovery.
Several other media settlements have been made pre-discovery which highlights the long history of dishonesty in the media
Nobody doubts that for an instant. But, if it went to trial the SOB lawyers and judges would frame it as a chilling first amendment infringement and win. Seen this movie too many times. $31 mill is peanuts
Izvestia nye Pravda, y Pravda nye Izvestia.
The entire legacy media should be shredded or pulped and turned into melamine dishes and printer paper.
How are they able to afford these payouts? Nobody watches them and the only advertisers they can get are pharmaceutical companies (please let that go away at some point). The only thing I can think of is because nobody would pay for it directly they’re surviving on carriage fees from cable, and now streaming, subscriptions. Really hope at some point we can go a la carte in picking what stations we do/don’t want to watch or pay for.
how much of that settlement comes from tax funding ???? to the network
Their insurance company most likely pays out the settlement. The rate increase will make it back, but over years rather than a lump sum.
That the lamestream media is paying for the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library is pretty darn awesome.
This was an interesting case. Unlike the previous cases that have been settled, there’s a small chance Trump could have prevailed in this one. Generally, it’s simply too difficult under existing jurisprudence for active politicians to prevail in defamation cases. An ‘election interference’ claim might be substantively different; I’m not sure if something like this has ever been fully litigated. But, it still likely would have been an uphill battle (at trial) for Trump because of the power of 1A, which Paramount’s lawyers certainly understood. So, why did they settle considering the unaired interview has already been released: Discovery. They know exactly what would have been uncovered during discovery and to Paramount/CBS, it was worth over $20M to keep it hidden.
In reality, it was probably worth even more. As bad as the edited broadcast clearly was, think about how much worse the conversations (memorialized in texts and emails and potentially in video conferences) about that broadcast between on-air talent, producers, directors & executives are. I’m sure it would have made DanRatherGate seem tame in comparison because these people hate Trump exponentially more than they hated Bush.
they were not “speaking out against trump”
THAT WOULD BE LEGIT as an opinion
They fabricated a lie ( again) against him
lets recall that a man sits in jail for a joke.. a fabricated joke against hillary
I’ll bet discovery would have been a blast if this settlement hadn’t happened.
Thnat’s a major reason they settled.
Undoubtedly, that is THE reason they settled. I have absolutely no doubt their lawyers took one look at the stack of emails/texts pulled from their system using the keywords “tRump, cheeto, etc..” during that time frame and had a Come To Jesus meeting with the board, saying in effect “Settle or he will own the entire building and flatten it for a parking lot, with you as the attendants.”
off topic
another metoo moment failure that the jury reversed in the Pdiddler case
as he was found guilty ( which is bs) of charges of trafficking
no way!
the lefty attempts to control us via the msm and their lawfare has failed as those guilty verdicts should be reversed upon appeal
same way they railroaded djt with that bs on sexual abuse
Just the Mann Act violations – transporting across state lines….
dont agree
the law is assuming that women are children ( in this case!) and /or the men who he actually paid for the services ,,were not consenting
otherwise the diddler should have been nailed for the racketeering ..orchestrating the “prostitution ring”
And they wonder why we call them the fake news
Note to Bernie and the others…
The 1st amendment wasn’t intended to protect fraud.
It was intended to protect the integrity of elections by preventing office holders, candidates, and supporters from censoring truthful (or at least truthful adjacent) info or opinions from reaching the voters.
“Mixing and matching questions and answers. This isn’t journalism. It’s fraud.”
“The 1st amendment wasn’t intended to protect fraud.”
How deliciously ironic.
“The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting ‘all is well!’ in a theatre that is on fire.”
It is very telling that Bolshevik Bernie and the other 8 dramacrat senators have no problem with a pseudo-journalistic entity such as CBS manipulating interviews to make a dramacrat candidate look good even if it is decitful, disingenuous, biased, and manipulative. These dramacrats should be shamed and never allowed near true reins of power.
A law should be passed that requires so called news media to make all raw videos of political candidate interviews available with severe penalties for failure to do so and any and all modifications.
We dind’t do nufin, man. 😊
We need more than a mere monetary award as punishment for CBS to provide sufficient deterrence. Put the whole network out of business if that’s possible.
“In May, when a settlement appeared imminent, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and eight other senators sent a letter to controlling shareholder Shari Redstone and Paramount Global’s board urging them not to settle the lawsuit.”
So Sanders and the other senators think 1A grants immunity for election tampering? The other senators are the usual suspects: Dick Durbin, Sheldon Whitehouse, Richard Blumenthal, Peter Welch, Chris Murphy, Jeffrey Merkley, Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey. They are all condoning election tampering.
NBC doctored the recording of the conversation between the 911 dispatcher George Zimmerman to prejudice him. I consider that a form of jury tampering. Others might disagree.
The lack of institutional integrity in the US has become pervasive, and serious. We don’t punish the big shots hard enough.
$16 million is walking around money for Paramount. They may not like it but it certainly doesn’t hurt the bottom line.
What WOULD be a big deal is the discovery phase that would occur in a lawsuit. Neither Paramount or any other media corporation will go into discovery if they can get out of it. What discovery would uncover would shred their reputations (yeah yeah I know) and put them at risk.
They settled to avoid discovery. Media corporations always do.
What’s needed is some sort of major, well publicized boycott of CBS/Paramount,, a la Bud Light.
It’s time the case moved from the court to the Court of Public Opinion, with CBS/Paramount shown to be the terrible organization that it is.
If Kamala runs again they’ll just have an AI generated version of her likely at all interviews to avoid having to edit anything. All this will do is teach them to be better liars, but I do appreciate it getting exposed. I just don’t think nay lessons will be learned.
It’s been done.
Okay I watched that, It was hilarious! Thanks, I needed a good laugh.
I wonder about the payout to Trump but I wonder more about what the DNC is paying the MSM. It is clear that the various MSM follow the daily Dem script and it is killing their amount of viewers, which if they did not get some other financial benefit the MSM would be changing. It is just a matter of time and the MSM will die as their viewers leave.
I like to think of it as the DNC ultimately paying into Trump’s “F Letitia James Fund,” just laundering it through CBS.
I find that a ridiculously small amount. That’s a rounding error for a company like Paramount. A major media corporation committed malfeasance in order to affect a national election! Sorry they should have held out!
It’s just another example of what happens when the considerable powers of the Government are in the hands of a corrupt MORON.
It doesn’t help when sites like this are littered with unprincipled MAGA sycophant (pretend ) journalists who can’t see this MORON for what/who he really is. Gentle reminder- 3 frauds, sexual assault, libel, 34 count felon, 2 impeachments, 3 more felony indictments with mountains of credible evidence. ( Just the person to Make America great, huh? *VOMIT* ).
For real, unprincipled, non-partisan information on this lawsuit- go here.
https://reason.com/2025/07/02/by-settling-trumps-laughable-lawsuit-against-cbs-paramount-strikes-a-blow-at-freedom-of-the-press/
“For real, unprincipled, non-partisan information on this lawsuit- go here.”
“unprincipled”?
Given this, and just about every other post you’ve made here, you might not want to refer to ANYONE else as a moron.
LAFFRIOT- whoops typo. meant principled. Partisan and Unprincipled is what this site is all about. Or more accurately-selectively principled. BTW- did you buy your Trump cologne yet? {{GUTBUST}}}. Or you Trumpphone? {{{GUFFAW}}} Hey, what’s a little grift … he’s going to get to get rid of those Mexicans, right? They’re poisoning or blood.!!!