The settlement doesn’t embody an announcement of apology or remorse, and the cash won’t be paid to Trump immediately or not directly.
President Donald Trump’s lawsuit in opposition to CBS mother or father firm Paramount over edits made to a “60 Minutes” interview was settled on July 2 after the media firm agreed to pay $16 million, the corporate mentioned.
Paramount mentioned in an announcement that the cash can be allotted to Trump’s future presidential library and wouldn’t be paid to him immediately or not directly.
“The settlement does not include a statement of apology or regret,” the corporate said.
The Epoch Occasions contacted Paramount and the White Home for remark however didn’t obtain a response by publication time.
Trump sued Paramount for $10 billion in October 2024 over its dealing with of an interview with then-Democratic presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris.
The lawsuit alleged the community deceptively edited the interview in an “attempt to tip the scales in favor of the Democratic Party” within the 2024 presidential election and accused CBS of getting engaged in “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference through malicious, deceptive, and substantial news distortion.”
The president amended his criticism in February, growing the declare for damages to $20 billion and alleging that CBS and Paramount’s actions amounted to false promoting and unfair competitors.
The amended criticism additionally named Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) as a plaintiff, alleging he was harmed as a client of CBS’s information programming.
Trump’s authorized group mentioned within the amended criticism that the interview “was conducted by CBS’s Bill Whitaker … and recorded in two sessions.”
On Oct. 6, CBS aired a promotional excerpt of the interview throughout CBS’s “Face the Nation,” wherein Harris responded to a query requested by Whitaker relating to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “incoherently and indecisively,” the lawsuit mentioned.
The next day, on Oct. 7, CBS broadcast and posted the interview on-line, based on the lawsuit. When it aired, it contained “approximately fifteen minutes of manipulated footage from the interview interspersed with about six minutes of footage related to the topics being addressed.”
Through the broadcast, Whitaker requested Harris the identical query relating to Netanyahu, and this time her reply was “coherent” and “decisive,” the lawsuit mentioned.
“Quite simply, the version of the Interview that Plaintiffs and other consumers ultimately saw during 60 Minutes on October 7, 2024 was not the Interview that Defendants advertised on October 6, 2024 during Face the Nation and at other times prior to the Election Special,” the criticism mentioned.
“The Preview and the Interview are both distortive, and to Defendants’ commercial and pecuniary benefit. Instead of broadcasting and posting the Interview online as advertised during the Preview and at other times prior to the Election Special, Defendants deceptively manipulated the Interview in a manner calculated to make Harris appear coherent and decisive, and thus the product more commercially appealing to Defendants’ audience.”
CBS beforehand denied that the interview was doctored, mentioned the lawsuit was “completely without merit,” and said the corporate would “vigorously defend against it.”
In January, the corporate agreed at hand over its full unedited transcript and digital camera feeds from the interview to the Federal Communications Fee.
The unedited transcript confirmed that a few of Harris’s solutions have been minimize roughly in half. It additionally clarified her full response to Whitaker’s query about Netanyahu—which attorneys for Trump referred to of their lawsuit—and that Harris’s full reply was a mix of the 2 clips that have been aired.
CBS and Paramount requested a decide to dismiss the lawsuit in March, and the case entered mediation in April.
Invoice Owens, the longtime government producer of “60 Minutes,” mentioned on April 22 that he was stepping down, citing a lack of full editorial independence.
Shortly after, CBS Information CEO Wendy McMahon introduced that she was resigning and described the previous few months on the community as difficult.
Tom Ozimek and Reuters contributed to this report.
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