The Media Research Center loves that President Trump filed a money-grubbing lawsuit against Paramount over something that didn’t even involve him, an interview with Kamala Harris on “60 Minutes.” Alex Christy was still pushing the Trump Regime Media narrative on that interview in a May 30 post:
ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel announced himself on Thursday as not be a fan of President Trump’s lawsuit against 60 Minutes, but whatever one thinks of the suit’s legal merits, Kimmel’s claim that the network did not deceptively edit the interview with Kamala Harris to make her look better fell flat.
Kimmel began by dreaming about using Trump’s legal arguments against him, “Trump right now is reportedly one step closer to settling the lawsuit he filed against 60 Minutes. Trump’s suing CBS for $20 billion because an interview they aired with Kamala Harris caused him ‘mental anguish.’ He can sue them for mental anguish; imagine how much we could sue him for. We’re going to be rich.
[…]Kimmel further explained, “But Trump, who never misses an opportunity to, A, whine and, B, abuse the legal system, claimed, based on no evidence, that 60 Minutes edited the interview deceptively to make his opponent look better.”
That’s just not true. In the original video, Harris was pressed from the left by Bill Whitaker on why Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not appear to be listening to the Biden administration. She gave a typical Harris word salad of an answer, “Well Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by, or a result of, many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region.”
In the version that aired on 60 Minutes, Harris came across as more competently, “We are not gonna stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”
As we’ve noted, that claim as been discredited — observers who aren’t right-wing partisans noted that “60 Minutes” did normal, standard editing and not partisan work. But the MRC has never told its readers that because it’s, well, Trump Regime Media.
Trump and the MRC both got what they wanted from the nuisance lawsuit, as announced in a July 2 post by Jorge Bonilla, who merely copied what he found from his fellow right-wingers at Fox News:
In a late-breaking development, Paramount Global and CBS entered into an agreement with President Donald Trump to resolve his ongoing lawsuit against the former Tiffany Network. Trump has originally sought $20 billion, but the agreed-upon terms fall in line with the earlier resolution of his lawsuit against ABC.
[…]The settlement of the lawsuit clears the way for the sale of Paramount Global to Skydance Media, who will then have to decide what to do with the beleaguered CBS News. The most interesting development here will be CBS’s adoption of the Trump Rule, wherein full, unedited interview transcripts will be immediately released upon conclusion of an interview with a presidential candidate.
The Acela Media will surely whine about the settlement and Trump Rule, and call it some form or other of a capitulation before authoritarianism, or preventive obedience or whatever else they might want to make up. But it is important to remember what led to the suit being filed in the first place. CBS’s new ownership has an opportunity to assess a number of things related to how they cover presidental candidates going forward.
Nicholas Fondadcaro followed by cheering Trump-style lawfare against media outlets — or as Fondacaro benignly described it, “Holding the Liberal Media Accountable Through the Legal System”:
Since 2016, the ends had justified the means in the liberal media’s total war against President Trump as they flaunted their false moral superiority as the sole defenders of democracy and the world. Drunk on their delusions of grandeur and thinking they were protected from defamation claims by New York Times v Sullivan, the liberal media would viciously lash out against anyone they wished with lies and falsehoods, quickly including private citizens. But by 2025, it was clear they had gone too far as they were repeatedly being held accountable by the legal system they thought they were safe from.
For decades, the conventional wisdom was that the bar to prove defamation or even to get the ball rolling on a case against the media was just too much to surmount. But now there have been numerous cases of private citizens like student Nicholas Sandmann, Navy veteran Zachary Young, the family of 9-year-old child Holden Armenta (trial pending), and Dr. Mahendra Amin (who settled with MSNBC) taking bite after bite out of the liberal media.
Then there was the settlement between ABC News and Trump. CBS’s parent company Paramount settled their own non-defamation-related case to the tune of $16 million upfront with it possibly reaching upwards of $30 million. The CBS settlement also reportedly resulted in an editorial change at the network in which they will promptly release full and unedited transcripts of future interviews with presidential candidates.
Fondacaro made sure to rehash once again the lawsuit Zachary Young filed against CNN (but not mentioning that he colluded with Young’s lawyers to make CNN look bad and Young look good). He also didn’t mention that Sandmann’s settlement was never made public, meaning it’s likely he never got anything more than going-away money. Finally, he was silent on how his right-wing buddies at Fox News were held accountable to the tune of $787 million for its irresponsible fake news about the 2020 election that falsely smeared election-tech company Dominion. Fondacaro concluded — again, without mentioning Fox News — that “The future seems bright for media accountability.”
Jorge Bonilla cranked up the partisan schaudenfreude in a July 3 post:
Tonight’s CBS Evening News offerings presented viewers with an amazing split screen as it fell upon John Dickerson to deliver the news that Paramount Global entered into a settlement agreement that would terminate the lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump.\
If you listen closely enough, you can hear the chagrin in Dickerson’s voice as he looks to the teleprompter and reads what up to this moment must have been inconceivable at the former Tiffany Network. Dickerson slogged through it without sounding pompous until the very end, with the little flourish on the First Amendment.
But as is always the case when reviewing ANY legacy media news product: the most important thing in any given report is often that which is left out.
Bonilla then huffed that Dickerson had a different tone in an online report:
Viewers at Plus got the pomposity we are all used to. Here, there is no description of the settlement beyond its disclosure in the very first sentence. What follows next is a tour-de-delusion that gives us a glimpse at the sort of insular newsroom culture that allowed things to get out of control in the first place .
Rather than giving viewers a full accounting of the terms of the agreement, Dickerson delved into lyrical soliloquy about the sacred role of journalism, the importance of getting it right, and on working to regain lost trust. Dickerson sounded legitimately apologetic over the settlement, notwithstanding CBS’s lack of an actual apology over its standards and practices.
If we can learn anything from these twin segments, it is that there is still shock and denial over the settlement. One hopes that CBS News (and, by broader extension, the media) learned something from the 60 Minutes fiasco at the heart of the suit. Sadly, it appears that they haven’t.
Bonilla offered no evidence that CBS violated any standards or practices, thus negating the need for an apology — and he didn’t mention that the settlement was likely driven by Paramount’s desire to gain federal approval for a merger with Skydance Media, making it much more of a transaction and less of an admission of accountability.