The Media Research Center’s gloating over Paramount settling with President Trump over a lawsuit that he filed in order to further federal approval of a merger continued in a July 5 post by Curtis Houck, who once again lashed out at Oliver Darcy, whom he has previously smeared as a “Benedict Arnold” for daring to leave the right-wing bubble:
Former conservative media reporter-turned-far-left lunatic Oliver Darcy wrote Wednesday night in his Status newsletter about the mood inside CBS News following the overnight announcement Tuesday into Wednesday that parent company Paramount had reached a $16 million settlement with President Trump over 60 Minutes’s infamous interview with Vice President Harris.
All told, it read like these pampered millionaires suffered a huge personal loss as though someone died as opposed to getting called out on the carpet as biased liberal hacks. The headline and subhead were written for these Drama Llamas: “‘60’s’ Hardest Hour; The “60 Minutes” team is aghast after Shari Redstone’s payout to Donald Trump—revealing how an autocratic-behaving president can wield the power of the office to make even America’s most iconic news broadcast bleed.”
[…]Showing his open partisanship and that journalism is a sharp object to be wielded against non-liberals, Darcy boasted “[t]he saga may not be over” with the Freedom of the Press Foundation filing a lawsuit against the settlement, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) calling for investigations, and Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) demanding criminal charges.
Houck offered no evidence that Darcy is a “far-left lunatic” or that merely leaving the right-wing bubble made him one, and he didn’t mention that the likely reason Paramount settled with Trump was to gain federal approval of a merger with Skydance Media.
Clay Waters went into Stelter derangement mode in a July 5 post because the settlement was called what it was:
CNN media analyst Brian Stelter posed as Journalism’s Hero again against the powers of censorship, i.e. the Trump administration, on Wednesday’s PBS News Hour.
Trump’s latest sin? Paramount agreeing to pay $16 million toward his future presidential library to settle a lawsuit over the CBS News program 60 Minutes for selectively editing an interview of his opponent, then-Vice President Kamala Harris, to make her look better. (Paramount owns CBS.)
If PBS were fair and balanced, a conservative could have balanced out the liberal narrative. But unchallengeed liberal narrative is their goal.
Waters doesn’t mention that unchallenged conservative narratives in the media are the goal of his employer. instead, he continued to whine:
Stelter thought “Paramount likely would have prevailed” but noted uncertainties in the lawsuit given the jurisdiction of the case, adding “….up until this year, this is incredibly abnormal to have a sitting president suing a television network, trying to strike a settlement deal, maybe asking for an apology, which CBS refused to provide….”
Nawaz asked Stelter if he’d heard anything from inside CBS News about possible meddling by “Paramount leadership…in their coverage of President Trump,” noting internal resignations.
Stelter lamented that “corporate priorities trumped journalistic principles in this case,” and eventually Stelter dropped the “A” word. (Authoritarianism.)
Waters did not dispute the accuracy of anything Stelter said.
Intern Matthew Seck grumbled in a July 7 post that MSNBC’s Chris Hayes discussed the settlement:
As much as Hayes made it seem as though the Paramount settlement with Trump over editing of a 60 minutes interview with Kamala Harris in 2024 was “frivolous,” he was operating with the same amount of evidence as the rest of America, yet still claimed that Paramount would have won had they just fought back.
He operated on this assumption despite their settlement of $16 million and agreement to release unedited interview transcripts with presidential candidates from now on.
Alex Christy spent a July 8 post grousing that a “60 Minutes” correspondent discussed the settlement on “The Daily Show”:
Comedy Central’s The Daily Show returned from two weeks of vacation on Monday with Jon Stewart welcoming former 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft to the program to claim that his former colleagues fear “losing the First Amendment” after mutual parent company Paramount settled with President Trump in a lawsuit over their 2024 campaign interview with Kamala Harris. Elsewhere, Stewart ranted and raved against the Big Beautiful Bill, claiming that supporters better get used to people like Zohran Mamdani, because he is “the best case scenario.”
Stewart declared, “Paramount, which is the parent company for CBS and 60 Minutes, and also for Comedy Central, recently made the unusual arrangement of settling a lawsuit that President Trump brought for—and I don’t even really know what it was for. And they paid him—”
Kroft interrupted to add, “It was making one edit.”
Stewart then continued, “They made an edit. You bastards. They paid him $16 million. What is—I would assume internally, that is devastating, to the people who work in a place that pride themselves on contextual, good journalism.”
It is statements like that that make the late night comedy shows unintentionally funny. 60 Minutes has constantly performed hit pieces against Republicans and was spreading fake news before that became a popular term.
Christy didn’t mention that his employer gave Fox News a pass for spreading fake news after the 2020 election, which resulted in a $787 million settlement with Dominion.
Jorge Bonilla whined that a CBS anchor inveighed against the settlement in a July 14 post:
Fresh from a week off, CBS’s John Dickerson returns to the airwaves with a particularly pompous fit of cope and seethe over the Paramount-Skydance settlement with President Donald Trump. What’s most notable about his too-cute-by-half is its one glaring omission.
[…]Tonight’s offering is a throwback to the Sedition Act of 1798, and a muckraker cast as a brave First Amendment warrior. One supposes that Dickerson agrees with Paramount’s characterization of the settlement as “an affront to the First Amendment”, hence this is his first editorial out of the chute.
Another interpretation of the facts suggests that Dickerson went all the way back to Adams and Jefferson’s dealings with James Callender so as to avoid modern, more egregious and ACTUAL attacks on the Free Press and abuses of The First Amendment. How else to explain the mention of Jefferson and Adams, but not President Barack Obama’s actual, more recent, and more egregious abuses of the press?
Yes, Bonilla tried to play whataboutism to deflect from Trump. Here’s one of the examples he cited:
Dickerson’s former colleague at CBS, Sharryl Attkisson, reported on The DoJ’s role in Operation Fast & Furious, which angered many in the Obama administration. Her computer was hacked by the Obama Department of Justice.
As we’ve noted, what Attkisson claimed was hacking was just a stuck backspace key.