Settlement Talks Between Paramount and Trump ‘End With a Whimper’: Two Sides Too ‘Far Apart’ on Resolving CBS News ‘60 Minutes’ Lawsuit

Negotiations to settle President Trump’s $20 billion lawsuit against CBS appear to be on life support as mediation talks between Mr. Trump’s attorneys and CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global, have “stalled out,” according to a new report.Mr. Trump sued CBS over its editing of the October 2024 “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Harris. CBS News producers removed an incoherent “word salad” from the beginning of her answer to a question about Israel, making her sound more coherent. Mr. Trump says CBS News was helping Ms. Harris’s campaign by making her sound more intelligent. CBS says that editing interviews for clarity and concision is standard practice. Both claims could well be true.Even as CBS attorneys sought in court to get the lawsuit dismissed, executives at Paramount decided it was in their best interest to settle the suit and authorized settlement talks that would culminate in a low eight-figure settlement, according to multiple reports. Paramount’s owners, the Redstone family, have concluded they need to settle the case in order to get Paramount’s acquisition by Skydance Media approved by Mr. Trump’s FCC. Consummation of the deal will deliver a giant sum to the Redstones and also save the family from having to pay a $400 million kill fee if the deal doesn’t go through. The FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, has said that an ongoing FCC “news distortion” probe of CBS over the Harris interview could factor into his agency’s review of the Skydance deal. He has also suggested CBS could lose its broadcast license for failing to comply with the law, which mandates that over-the-air broadcasters provide fair news coverage.Settlement talks took place last week, presided over by a professional mediator.A veteran media reporter, Matthew Belloni, published in his closely read “What I’m Hearing” email, which reflects the viewpoint of Hollywood’s business community, a little-noticed update on the mediation efforts. He says that the mediation talks had “stalled out” because Mr. Trump and Paramount “were far apart” on potential settlement terms and that the talks ended “with a whimper.” Ms. Redstone has reportedly been a major proponent of the idea of settling Mr. Trump’s suit despite internal opposition from reliably liberal CBS News. The Journal also reported that Ms. Redstone had recused herself from settlement talks. Mr. Belloni’s colleague at Puck, Dylan Byers, reported before the talks collapsed that he heard the settlement deal could have reached as much as $75 million, as executives are eager to ensure the deal goes through due to Paramount’s financial situation. Mr. Byers notes that under Ms. Redstone’s leadership, Paramount’s market cap has shrunk by 70 percent, to $8 billion in 2025 from $30 billion in 2019. If the Skydance deal is approved, the Redstone family is expected to get $2.4 billion. One source told Mr. Byers that there is “no plan B” for Ms. Redstone and that she is determined to ensure the Skydance deal goes through. Mr. Belloni noted Thursday that Ms. Redstone is “clearly nervous about the appearance of conflicts,” but asked, “How long can she manage this from afar?”Paramount did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment by the time of publication. Although the mediation talks have reportedly ended for now, Mr. Belloni has predicted that Mr. Trump’s lawsuit will be resolved. In an episode last month of his podcast, “The Town,” he noted that Ms. Redstone and Larry Ellison, the father of Skydance’s CEO, David Ellison, have been supportive of the 47th president and are his “friends.”“I think this is all noise. [Trump’s] going to get his victory, he may even get an apology from CBS, which will be insane if they apologize for this,” Mr. Belloni said. The CEO of CBS News and Stations, Wendy McMahon, and the outgoing executive producer of “60 Minutes,” Bill Owens, have reportedly stated an apology is a “red line” for the Harris interview they will not cross, according to a left-wing journalist, Oliver Darcy. Mr. Belloni has said of Ms. McMahon that she will not survive the closing of the Skydance deal. In addition to failing to control “60 Minutes,” she has failed to contain various antisemitism scandals at CBS News and also botched contract negotiations regarding CBS’s distribution rights to “Jeopardy” and “Wheel of Fortune,” according to Puck. Despite the apparently stalled mediation talks, Paramount says it expects the Skydance deal to close by the end of the first half of 2025. In its first-quarter earnings release, the company said, “Completion of the Skydance transactions is subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions. The transactions are anticipated to close in the first half of 2025. Until then, Paramount continues to operate in the normal course of business.”While Mr. Carr has suggested that CBS could lose its broadcast license for the Harris interview, he told CNBC that the Trump lawsuit is unrelated to his agency’s news distortion investigation and review of the Skydance merger. “There are three separate things that are going on. President Trump has his lawsuit against CBS that’s in state court. [I] haven’t read that complaint. I don’t know what all the complaints are. There’s a transaction before us, and there’s a ’60 Minutes’ complaint. The last two have to do with the FCC. The first one doesn’t,” Mr. Carr said at the Milken Global Conference last week.However, Ms. Redstone appears to believe that the president’s lawsuit and anti-Trump reporting by “60 Minutes” could sink the deal — or at the very least keep it in limbo.Mr. Byers reported that Ms. Redstone inquired whether “60 Minutes” could hold off on stories about Mr. Trump until after the deal is approved.So far, executives at CBS seem to have ignored her request. Mr. Owens was forced to resign in April, but despite the rolling of his head, the news magazine program has run near-weekly stories attacking Mr. Trump for his efforts to secure a deal to end Russia’s war against Ukraine, his vision to acquire Greenland, his cuts to the NIH and USAID, and his battle with law firms that have helped or employed his opponents. This week, the program took a break from its Trump-critical pieces and aired a segment about fraudulent spending costing the American government “billions a year.” It featured a former official from the Government Accountability Office, Linda Miller, who said the Department of Government Efficiency is “conflating fraud with wasteful spending.” Still, Ms. Miller said she welcomes Elon Musk’s message that there is “a huge amount of fraud.”There is just one week left until the current season of “60 Minutes” ends, and the show airs re-runs until the fall. It remains to be seen if the staff of the program will adhere to Ms. Redstone’s reported wish and hold off on stories critical of the president. If a settlement deal is somehow agreed upon within the next week, “The Breaker” podcast reports that the staff of “60 Minutes” is expected to publicly express its displeasure with the move. With billions of dollars at stake for the Redstone family and likely the future of Paramount, it remains to be seen whether staff would be fired if they declined to offer or endorse an apology for the Harris interview or if they issue a rebuke of executives for a settlement.

Settlement Talks Between Paramount and Trump ‘End With a Whimper’: Two Sides Too ‘Far Apart’ on Resolving CBS News ‘60 Minutes’ Lawsuit

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