You are currently viewing Paramount’s Settlement With Trump Is a Humbling Moment for ’60 Minutes’

After an astonishing concession to a sitting president, the country’s most popular television news program faces the prospect of new ownership and a chilled environment for the First Amendment.

For many veteran correspondents at “60 Minutes,” paying even $1 to settle a left-field lawsuit from an aggrieved president seemed too high a price.

At stake, they believed, was the long-term credibility of the country’s most decorated and most-watched television news program, a journalistic institution since 1968 that prided itself on holding elected leaders to account.

Late Tuesday, CBS’s parent company, Paramount, concluded differently. It agreed to pay $16 million so President Trump would drop a lawsuit that essentially boiled down to a politician’s gripe: that “60 Minutes” had edited an interview with his 2024 opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris, in a manner that he did not like.

Many legal experts called Mr. Trump’s case frivolous and unwinnable, running counter to long-established First Amendment

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