Trump continues to reshape the landscape of the American presidency and news media
By Tony Pederson
President Donald Trump secured two major victories last week. The first, and most highly publicized, was passage of his One Big Beautiful Bill in Congress and a ceremonial signing on July 4. The bill includes the priorities of his second term including spending for immigration enforcement, extension of his 2017 tax cuts, Medicaid reform, and other issues Republicans have promised.
The second victory, much less publicized, was the settlement of a libel suit Trump filed against CBS News over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris and shown in two versions just before the November election last year. Paramount Global, the parent of CBS News, agreed to pay $16 million. After Trump’s legal fees are taken out of the settlement, the remainder will go for Trump’s future presidential library. The settlement included no apology from CBS News.
The CBS interview in question concerned an answer Harris gave to a question on the Middle East. The two versions of the interview show major editing. The shorter version has Harris answering succinctly and to the point. The original video is a longer version that Trump officials said amounted to the “word salad” they accuse Harris of using frequently.
As news of settlement talks had leaked in previous weeks, journalists warned of the damage that would be done to journalism and independent news judgments. Former CBS News anchor and 60 Minutes veteran Scott Pelley told Anderson Cooper of CNN that any settlement would “be very damaging to CBS, to Paramount, to the reputation of those companies.”
Paramount has been in talks for a multi-billion sale to Skydance Media, a Hollywood production company. The Federal Communications Commission must approve the sale. Brendan Carr, the FCC chair appointed by Trump, had announced that the lawsuit was not related to the agency’s approval of the merger. However, previously Carr had reinstated complaints about election coverage bias against CBS, ABC and NBC that had been dismissed by the Biden administration.
Shari Redstone, chair and controlling shareholder of Paramount, had told her board earlier that she favored discussion of a settlement. The sale of Paramount would end the Redstone family’s involvement in the company and CBS News.
This is the second settlement of a media lawsuit by Trump where corporate interests apparently held significant sway. In December, ABC News settled a lawsuit Trump filed over George Stephanopoulos referring to Trump as being held “liable for rape” in a civil case in 2023. In that federal case in New York, a jury found Trump “liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll.” However, as a civil matter, Trump was not found liable for rape.
ABC News is owned by Disney Co. Journalists are always suspicious of corporate motives that get in the way of independent journalism. In both the CBS News and ABC News cases, corporate interests seem to have played a deciding role. In its announcement, Disney said the settlement was a $15 million contribution to Trump’s library plus $1 million in legal fees.
In both cases, journalists and First Amendment lawyers had expressed the opinion that the news organizations could have prevailed at trial. Trump also has a lawsuit, filed last December, against the Des Moines Register and its pollster, Ann Selzer. Just before the election last year, the Register published a poll indicating a lead in Iowa for Harris. Trump won Iowa with almost 56 percent of the vote. He claimed the poll deliberately overstated support for Harris and amounted to election interference. Lawyers and First Amendment advocates have expressed the opinion that the lawsuit against the Register is also without merit.
Expedience and saving money have always been considerations in news media companies settling libel lawsuits. And the settlements in the ABC and CBS cases, while significant, are relatively small amounts of money for global companies. However, they likely represent savings over having to conduct extensive discovery, depositions, and trial costs.
The bigger question is the motivation of Trump in pursuing lawsuits against news organizations and whether such settlements damage the integrity of the news organizations and diminish the work of journalists. Trump has said repeatedly that the news media is “very dishonest” and “needs to be straightened out.”
In an interview with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central, longtime 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft called the settlement “a shakedown.” Comedy Central is owned by Paramount. “I think there is a lot of fear over there… fear of losing their job, fear of what’s happening to the country, fear of losing the First Amendment,” Kroft said.
“This settlement goes far beyond any legal precedent and seems to be a not-so-subtle effort to curry favor with the Trump administration,” said Charles Overby, chairman of the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics. “It looks more like a pre-merger transaction than a libel settlement.”
Strong protection for news media to report on public affairs and public officials has been the law and the tradition since Times v. Sullivan, the landmark Supreme Court case in 1964. In that case, the court said that public officials, to prevail in a libel case, must establish actual malice, defined as a news organization publishing false information knowing it was false or with careless disregard as to whether it was false or not. Information that is true traditionally has received complete protection from defamation claims.
Trump discovered early in his first campaign for president in 2016 that criticizing news media in stump speeches was a certain crowd-pleaser. That critique quickly morphed into his labeling of journalists as “enemies of the people” and his meme of fake news. Public confidence in news media to report news fairly and accurately remains at historic lows. In a statement after the settlement with CBS News, a Trump spokesman called it “another win for the American people.”
It will take time to understand damage being done to legal protections provided by the Sullivan case. There are already examples of self-censorship occurring, perhaps most notably in the resignation of longtime 60 Minutes producer Bill Owens. In what was described as an emotional meeting with staff in April, Owen said he no longer had the independence demanded of quality journalism. He alluded to the oversight that had been placed on his work by management.
In the interview with Anderson Cooper, Scott Pelley discussed his spring commencement speech given at Wake Forest University and the comparisons between fear and free speech in a previous era. His message is simple: “You cannot have democracy without journalism.” It is an 11-minute interview worth seeing.
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Tony Pederson is managing fellow of the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics and professor emeritus in journalism at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.