Paramount Bends the Knee and Weakens a Nation

Paramount settlement in the ridiculous lawsuit against CBS News is a shameful bribe paid to Trump's extortion racket, and yet another indictment of the corporate media industry

Make no mistake. In its settlement with Trump, Paramount paid a shameful bribe to the president of the United States in order to grease the skids for a media deal that, and there really is no other way to put this, stinks to high heaven.

If it sounds like I take some of this personally, I do. I was a correspondent at CBS News in the early 2000’s with assignments ranging from the Iraq War in Baghdad to the 2004 campaign trail with Senator John Kerry to countless hurricane disaster zones, including the trail of destruction left by Katrina. Dan Rather, Bob Schieffer and Scott Pelley were some of the heavyweights at The Tiffany Network who guided me during my “greenhorn” years as a young, wet-behind-the-ears reporter. I will always be grateful for that experience.

Covering Hurricane Katrina in 2005 for CBS News

I’ve always looked up to Rather. To me, he represents the best of a golden age in television journalism and he’s been enormously supportive of my work over the years. Back in January, Dan was kind enough to send me a note after my launch here on Substack. And in 2019, he hosted an event during the rollout of my book on the Trump presidency. I can only imagine the outrage Rather, Schieffer, and Pelley must feel in the aftermath of the settlement authorized by Paramount’s Shari Redstone. Walter Cronkite, who was a hero of mine when I was an even younger aspiring journalist, would undoubtedly be ashamed.

But I am sorry to report this bending of the knee to Trump is the culmination of years of devastating actions by the corporate media industry in its reckless pursuit of putting profits and ratings over the public interest. For decades, the networks, and their corporate overlords have closed bureaus, laid off newsroom staffers and shut down quality news programs, all in the name of maximizing returns for shareholders.

According to the New York Times, Paramount viewed the settlement as the price of doing business with Trump. Paramount Settles with Trump

“Redstone, the chair and controlling shareholder of Paramount, told her board that she favored exploring a settlement with Mr. Trump. Some executives at the company viewed the president’s lawsuit as a potential hurdle to completing a multibillion-dollar sale of the company to the Hollywood studio Skydance, which requires the Trump administration’s approval.”

Redstone’s decision has almost certainly tarnished the once stellar CBS News brand for years, far beyond the immediate damage down by the Trump lawsuit settlement. How can viewers trust CBS’s coverage of the Trump presidency, knowing its parent company just forked over millions of dollars under the threat of litigation? Bill Owens, the former Executive Producer of “60 Minutes,” recently resigned from his position, citing corporate pressures on the program. And that was just before ex-CBS News president Wendy McMahon also stepped aside. After three decades in television news, I can assure this kind of shake-up inside a news organization creates enormous instability and job fear. As I have said on my own show, when “60 Minutes” is in trouble, we are all in trouble. We can only expect matters to get worse for CBS. If past is prologue in our current corporate media landscape, Skydance will likely become yet another micromanaging parent company that views such highly successful and profitable CBS programs as “60 Minutes” and “Sunday Morning” as little more than an ATM machine, that dispenses cash for corporate executives while avoiding any reporting that may irritate the Dear Leader.

Armen Keteyian, the former chief investigative correspondent for CBS News summed up the feelings, I assume, for many journalists at the network, past and present, in a post on X: CBS Veteran on Paramount settlement

“I spent seven years as the Chief Investigative Correspondent for CBS News and eight as a contributing correspondent to 60. This Paramount settlement is the nadir for the network - a breach of the public trust Murrow, Cronkite, Hewitt and thousands of us worked decades to build.”

All of this comes after an almost identical extortion payment made by Disney earlier this year to settle the lawsuit Trump filed to rattle the cage of ABC’s “Good Morning America” anchor George Stephanopolous. American television networks are being reduced to becoming notches on Trump’s authoritarian belt. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to assume the same man who has derided the press as “fake news” and worse, “the enemy of the people,” will simply move on to the next network in line in his media shakedown racket. That should, of course, raise serious questions about viewer confidence in some of the biggest names in news in the world. How can TV journalists have the ability to speak truth to power when the president and his top aides can simply lean on the top brass at the networks every time he sees a story he doesn’t like? That’s an easy one. They can’t. What makes these settlements all the more onerous is that the payments will go to Trump’s future presidential library. And for what, a Trump library wing featuring his attacks on the news media? Perhaps he’ll include his own “fake news hall of shame,” brought to you by Paramount and Disney.

And that brings us back to the larger issues of the free press in America. Needless to say, experts who monitor First Amendment challenges in the U.S. are deeply disturbed by the Paramount decision and warn, as I said earlier, the settlement only makes matters more perilous for journalists across this country. Consider this statement from Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) Chief Counsel Bob Corn-Revere.

“A cold wind just blew through every newsroom this morning. Paramount may have closed this case, but it opened the door to the idea that the government should be the media’s editor-in-chief.

Trump has a long history of filing frivolous lawsuits to intimidate critics, and his targets have a long history of capitulating to avoid legal headaches. And here, he had the added tactic of using the FCC and its review of the multi-billion-dollar Paramount-Skydance merger to bring added pressure to bear.

Behavior that gets rewarded gets repeated. This settlement will only embolden the president to continue his flurry of baseless lawsuits against the press — and against the American people’s ability to hear the news free from government intrusion.”

Perhaps it is time to reassess the state of press freedom in America. Under Trump, the case could be made that the U.S. no longer qualifies as a nation boasting a strong, free and independent news media system. With Fox, conservative media, and even brand name news outlets (not just the networks but newspapers like The Washington Post under Jeff Bezos) increasingly under Trump’s thumb, it might be more accurate to describe America as having something that falls between state-controlled media and a free press. We could call it “not fully independent media” or a “free press under duress.” Or worse, “state compromised media.” Whatever you want to call it, this is not how a free press operates.

This is why I had, in my own public comments, all but begged Paramount to choose the path of “courage,” as Rather might put it. Paramount and Redstone have weakened a nation in its settlement with Trump, arming the president with more ammunition in his almost decade-long war on the press. The titans in corporate media need to understand something. Trump won’t stop. He will continue his attacks on journalists. Enabling his unconstitutional behavior does damage to our First Amendment and the free press. As we celebrate Independence Day, we should recognize this nation is backsliding when it comes to one of the key pillars of our republic. Walter Cronkite once put it this way: “Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy.”

You can’t speak truth to power if those in power can crush the truth.