Paramount Global’s agreement to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit President Donald Trump filed over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris has elevated tensions over the rights—and responsibilities—of the American press that have mounted as Trump has targeted an array of media outlets with threats and legal action.
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A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team celebrated the settlement, saying it holds the “Fake News media accountable for their wrongdoing and deceit.” Legal experts, however, say the case further fuels concerns about declining press freedom in the country, and may lead to self-censorship in newsrooms across the U.S.
In his lawsuit, Trump sought $20 billion in damages after accusing CBS, the network that broadcasts “60 Minutes,” of editing Harris’s answers to sway audiences in her favor.
CBS denied the allegations, and experts tell TIME the lawsuit was regarded as legally weak.
“The lawsuit alleged that this ordinary editorial judgment amounted to an unlawful or misleading business practice,” says Heidi Kitrosser, a professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. “This is outrageous. It essentially would hold every news media organization to the threat of a lawsuit any time Donald Trump doesn’t like the way the coverage makes someone look.”
Paramount Global co-CEO George Cheeks defended the settlement—which comes as the company seeks approval from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to merge with Skydance Media—saying decisions were made to avoid the “unpredictable cost of legal defense,” potential business disruptions, and a possible adverse judgement.
Paramount, CBS’s parent company, previously filed two motions asking a judge to dismiss the case before ultimately opting to settle. “The settlement does not include a statement of apology or regret,” said Paramount in a statement. “The company has agreed that in the future, 60 Minutes will release transcripts of interviews with eligible U.S. presidential candidates after such interviews have aired, subject to redactions as required for legal or national security concerns.”
Did CBS deceptively edit Kamala Harris’s comments? What the lawsuit alleged
A legal complaint filed by Trump in a Texas federal court against CBS alleged that the network aired two different versions of a “60 Minutes” interview featuring Harris, which included statements from her about the Israel-Hamas War. Trump claimed that Harris’s jumbled answer was edited to prevent backlash.
CBS denied the allegations, saying that the edits were made so that the interview would fit within the time constraints allotted to the segment and show.
“CBS selected clips from the interview that they thought would be the best to inform their audience—a very common journalistic practice,” says Amy Kristin Sanders, a former journalist and professor who teaches the First Amendment at Penn State. “It’s been recognized by the Supreme Court as the process of editorial discretion or editorial decision making and it’s protected by the First Amendment.”
The Paramount settlement comes after ABC News agreed to pay $15 million towards Trump’s presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos’s inaccurate statement about the verdict of a civil lawsuit against Trump for sexual abuse.
Trump also filed legal complaints against Ann Selzer, an Iowa-based pollster, and The Des Moines Register for publishing a poll showing that Harris appeared to be in the lead before Election Day. The President dropped his federal lawsuit on Monday but refiled it in state court shortly thereafter.
The Administration has launched broader attacks on the legitimacy of legacy media outlets as well, often calling them “fake news.” Officials took unprecedented action when the Associated Press was barred from certain White House media events because of their policy on the “Gulf of America.” An appeals court in June ruled in Trump’s favor, though 40 press associations issued a statement condemning the action.
Can politicians now sue over edited interviews?
Legal experts tell TIME that Trump’s lawsuit had poor legal standing. Courts have generally protected freedom of the press through cases such as Miami Herald Publishing Company v. Tornillo, which found a Florida law mandating newspapers to grant equal space to political candidates to be unconstitutional. “The court talked about the importance of the press’s editorial discretion and how a law like that tried to interfere with its content based decision making,” says Kitrosser.
Still, some scholars say the settlement might embolden similar actors to use the threat of multi-million dollar settlements to ensure that news coverage embodies their personal goals and opinions. “Certainly one could imagine a scenario where some of the people closest to him, with his explicit or implicit backing, engage in similar shakedowns by bringing frivolous lawsuits that run afoul of the First Amendment,” says Kitrosser.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom sued Fox News last week for defamation, alleging that the popular right-leaning network lied about when he had last spoken with the President on the phone.
Newsom is seeking $787 million in damages. The company agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems about the same amount in 2023 to settle a lawsuit in which the election tech company accused Fox News of pushing false conspiracy theories of fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
What the Paramount settlement means for press freedom and coverage of future elections
Trust in the media is at a historic low: Less than a third of Americans say that they have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in the press to report accurately and fairly, according to a 2024 Gallup report.
Legal experts have expressed concerns about how media companies’ actions may further hinder declining trust in the press and cause editorial leadership to engage in self-censorship. Beyond CBS and its parent company, other news organizations have also been criticized for their apparent acquiescence to the President. Jeff Bezos announced in February that The Washington Post’s opinion desk would focus on coverage in support of “personal liberties and free markets.” More than 750,000 people cancelled their digital subscription to The Post as a result of Bezos’ decision, according to NPR.
Sanders says that there is an emerging wave of lawsuits being filed alleging that the presentation of information is deceptive, even though the information is true. “That’s really dangerous territory for us to be crossing into,” she says. “It is a major threat to every citizen’s free speech rights, but the real danger to freedom of the press is the fact that CBS was willing to settle that lawsuit.”
She warns that Paramount’s decision to settle could have repercussions for other media outlets.
“When a major news organization gives in to political bullying in a situation where they could easily defend themselves, it emboldens that kind of bullying against news organizations, and it leaves small to mid size news organizations who don’t have the same financial resources defenseless,” says Sanders. “Local news organizations, nonprofit news organizations, none of them can afford to write a $16 million check if they get sued, they’re going to have to shut the doors. Fundamentally, that means less news and information for Americans, and that’s anti democratic.”
Organizations representing journalists at CBS have offered a statement in support of their workers. “The Writers Guild of America East stands behind the exemplary work of our members at ’60 Minutes’ and CBS News. We wish their bosses at Paramount Global had the courage to do the same,” it said in a statement. “Paramount’s decision to capitulate to Trump threatens journalists’ ability to do their job reporting on powerful public figures.”
Trump has long accused the media of being biased against him and painting him in a negative light. Distrust in the media and perceptions that it has a liberal media bias are widely shared among many conservatives. Gallup’s poll found that just 12% of Republicans trust the media even a fair amount, a notably lower figure than for either Democrats or independents.
In the statement praising the settlement as a win for media accountability, the spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said that “CBS and Paramount Global realized the strength of this historic case and had no choice but to settle.”
What does the FCC have to do with it—if anything?
Under Trump, the FCC has been putting the press under greater scrutiny. The agency, which regulates broadcast, television, radio, wire, and satellite in the U.S., opened investigations into PBS and NPR, both of which receive federal funding, in January over concerns that they could be violating federal law by airing commercials.
The following month it opened a “broadcast news distortion” probe into CBS over the “60 Minutes” interview. The FCC’s broadcast news distortion rule is an informal policy that directs the agency to oversee incidents involving the misrepresentation of “a significant event and not merely a minor or incidental aspect of the news report.”
Amid the investigation, the agency is also charged with either approving or rejecting a potential merger between Skydance and Paramount, which is valued at some $8 billion.
Paramount Global has denied that the lawsuit had anything to do with the “Skydance transaction and the FCC approval process,” stating that it “will abide by the legal process.”
But Bob Corn-Revere, chief legal counsel at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a nonprofit civil liberties group, said the FCC’s deciding power in regard to the merger might make it more difficult for the media company to “stand on legal principle.” The organization is representing Selzer in the lawsuit Trump filed against her.
All the settlement does, he says, “is show that bullying tactics sometimes work, but it doesn’t change what the law is.”
The $16 million Paramount is paying in the settlement will go to Trump’s future presidential library, another aspect of the agreement that has raised concerns. Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts on Wednesday called for an investigation into Paramount and a potential breach of anti-bribery laws, saying the settlement appeared to be “bribery in plain sight.” due to the pending merger. Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon expressed a similar sentiment, calling on state prosecutors to “make the corporate execs who sold out our democracy answer in court.”
The FCC’s lone Democratic commissioner, Anna M. Gomez, said in a statement on Wednesday that the settlement “marks a dangerous precedent for the First Amendment, and it should alarm anyone who values a free and independent press.”
Saying that “the transcript and video of the 60 minutes interview show no evidence of wrongdoing,” Gomez asserted that “this Paramount Payout is a desperate move to appease the Administration and secure regulatory approval of a major transaction currently pending before the FCC.”
A group of conservative advocacy groups expressed its own concerns about the investigation, telling the FCC in March that while there are legitimate worries about conservative media being held to a different regulatory standard, the best thing for the agency to do was to drop the case and not pursue news distortion investigations into media content. The groups said they feared a ruling against CBS would be “regulatory overreach” and could set a dangerous precedent.