Paramount Global/Skydance merger - Variety; Defeat the Press: How Donald Trump’s Attacks on News Outlets Undermine the First Amendment

Story from Variety:

Kiss the ring; bend the knee. Whatever metaphor you choose, President Trump has cowed the owners of two major media outlets into paying him millions of dollars.

The settlements over Trump’s lawsuits reached between his lawyers and Paramount Global and Disney — both for $16 million, with the bulk of those funds earmarked as contributions to Trump’s presidential library — are the highest-profile examples of the U.S. president exerting pressure on the news media to submit to his will. And they show Trump has found tactical ways to prevail in his nonstop battle to discredit outlets that report critically on him and his activities.

Trump has long derided what he dubs “the fake news,” and he has famously called the press “the enemy of the people.” In the 10 years since he announced his first run for president on June 16, 2015, Trump has written nearly 3,500 social media posts that attack the press, according to an analysis by the not-for-profit Freedom of the Press Foundation. 4-Over the course of a decade, that’s roughly one per day.

But defenders of free speech have raised alarms about Trump’s recent lawsuits against media companies — which legal analysts have called baseless — and his willingness to use the power of the federal government to punish perceived adversaries. They see the unwillingness of Paramount and Disney to defend their First Amendment rights as a dangerous precedent that will only embolden Trump and his allies to push even harder against a free press.

“‘Attacking the press’ is too weak a phrase,” says Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. According to Jaffer, the goal of Trump’s anti-media efforts “appears to be to make the government the only source of information and authority in our society. It sounds crazy to say it because we have never seen this in American history.”

Late on July 1, Paramount Global announced the settlement with Trump. He had sued CBS five days before the 2024 presidential election over the allegedly deceptive editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris — seeking an absurdly astronomical $20 billion in damages. Trump cited a Texas consumer-protection law as the basis for his complaint. CBS and Paramount called the suit “meritless” and sought to have it tossed. Legal experts said the company was fully protected by the First Amendment. CBS News released transcripts of the interview, showing that it used different parts of Harris’ answer to a single question about the Biden administration’s relationship with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — which is standard industry practice.

But Paramount settled anyway, by all appearances to try to clear the way for the Trump administration’s approval of its Skydance Media merger deal.

“It’s a sad day for journalism,” Dan Rather, the legendary 24-year anchor of “CBS Evening News,” tells Variety. “It’s a sad day for ‘60 Minutes’ and CBS News. I hope people will read the details of this and understand what it was. It was distortion by the president and a kneeling down and saying, ‘Yes, sir,’ by billionaire corporate owners.”

Jon Stewart blasted his corporate bosses on the July 7 episode of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” calling the settlement “shameful” and likening it to a mob shakedown. Former “60 Minutes” correspondent Steve Kroft, who was Stewart’s guest that evening, agreed and said it was “devastating” to morale at the newsmagazine: “I think there is a lot of fear over there. Fear of losing their jobs. Fear of losing their country. Fear of losing the First Amendment.”

Why didn’t Paramount fight, considering the repercussions of such a settlement for journalism and free speech in general?

“Companies often settle litigation to avoid the high and somewhat unpredictable cost of legal defense,” CBS chief George Cheeks, who is a co-CEO of Paramount Global, said at the company’s annual shareholder meeting on July 2. Pursuing litigation also runs the risk of “an adverse judgment” that could produce “significant financial as well as reputational damage,” Cheeks added.

In other words, Paramount’s Trump settlement was the cost of doing business.

The FCC has immense discretion over license renewals and transfers, and Paramount needs its blessing to complete the sale of its local stations to Skydance ownership. The pending Skydance deal “created leverage” for Trump’s legal team, says Mark Fowler, who was chairman of the Federal Communications Commission under President Reagan. “Without the FCC’s timing and coordination, they could not have done this. I’d say it’s pretty shameful.” (The FCC did not respond to a request for comment.)

As to “reputational damage,” however, CBS News’ own employees say the Trump payout will only tarnish the “60 Minutes” brand. Months of news reports about Paramount’s negotiations with Trump’s lawyers about a settlement (or lack of one) allowed the newsmagazine to be seen as “the opposition,” says a network insider. “It’s so damaging.”

One silver lining: Paramount and CBS are not issuing any kind of apology under the settlement. “Thank goodness there’s no apology,” says one CBS News correspondent. “There’s nothing to apologize for.”

But the backlash against what was seen as Paramount’s capitulation to Trump was broad and severe. “This Paramount settlement is the nadir for the network,” Armen Keteyian, an Emmy-winning journalist who was an investigative correspondent for CBS News and “60 Minutes” for 12 years, wrote in a post on X. He called it “a breach of the public trust” that CBS broadcasting legends Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, “60 Minutes” creator Don Hewitt “and thousands of us worked decades to build.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., was among those slamming the settlement. “The Trump administration’s level of sheer corruption is appalling, and Paramount should be ashamed of putting its profits over independent journalism,” she said. Warren called for “a full investigation into whether or not any anti-bribery laws were broken.” Of course, such a federal charge would not likely to be brought by the Trump administration’s Justice Department.

In May, Warren, along with Sens. Bernie Sanders and Ron Wyden, warned Paramount controlling shareholder Shari Redstone that a settlement with Trump could run afoul of a federal anti-bribery law — in other words, that Paramount could be seen as illegally paying Trump in return for his giving the go-ahead for the company’s Skydance deal. (Commenting on the senators’ warning to Redstone, a White House spokesman said, in part, “Anyone who seriously believes the president could be bribed by anyone, especially a liberal and notoriously unreliable institution like Paramount, lacks the intelligence to hold public office.”)

In claiming the Paramount settlement was a bribe, Warren and others have called out what they see as a quid pro quo: The FCC has yet to approve the Paramount-Skydance deal, which was clinched in July 2024, and the assertion is that Trump wouldn’t let it go through while his “60 Minutes” suit was still in play.

Brendan Carr, the FCC’s Trump-appointed chairman, claims Trump’s lawsuit is separate from the agency’s approval process (and Paramount has claimed the same thing). However, Carr revived an agency probe into a “news distortion” complaint against CBS over the “60 Minutes” Harris segment, which several former FCC commissioners said was a highly unusual step. (The initial investigation was shut down by former FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, appointed by Biden.)

Trump, asked on the White House lawn on June 18 by a reporter why the Paramount-Skydance merger hadn’t closed yet, immediately launched into a discussion of his “60 Minutes” lawsuit — CBS was “very embarrassed” about the whole thing, he said.

The $16 million figure for the Paramount settlement is the same amount Disney agreed to pay Trump last December. That was to settle his defamation suit against ABC News and George Stephanopoulos, who had incorrectly said Trump was found “liable for rape” in the E. Jean Carroll case. (Trump was found liable for sexual abuse.) As in the Paramount situation, legal observers said ABC News would have likely prevailed.

Trump, of course, is not the only politician who has engaged in legal battles with the media. Last month California Gov. Gavin Newsom sued Fox News, alleging the network defamed him by calling the Democrat a liar about a phone call with Trump about the recent L.A. protests. Fox News said in a statement: “Gov. Newsom’s transparent publicity stunt is frivolous and designed to chill free speech critical of him. We will defend this case vigorously and look forward to it being dismissed.” Newsom, at a July 2 press conference, said, “I sued Fox News for defaming me, for knowingly lying, for editing and assaulting truth and trust… So I don’t have a problem holding people to a higher level of ethics and accountability in journalist standards.” But Newsom characterized Trump’s lawsuit against CBS and Paramount as different, with the settlement appearing “transactional” given the pending Skydance deal. The governor urged media companies facing similar threats to “Do the right thing. You know what the right thing is.”

In both the Paramount and Disney suits, Trump seems to have found an Achilles’ heel for some media conglomerates: that protecting First Amendment freedoms is of secondary importance to their business imperatives.

The decisions by Paramount and Disney to wave the white flag in the face of Trump’s legal assault, though, have puzzled some First Amendment attorneys. “To be blunt, I’m surprised to see settlements,” says Rob Rickner, a New York attorney who has represented clients in free-speech cases. He speculates that Disney and Paramount settled with Trump to avoid potentially embarrassing revelations in the discovery process or to eliminate the risk of an unfavorable decision.

The problem with the settlements, according to Rickner, is that they establish an expectation that these are cases where it’s reasonable to pay some sum to settle. And that will only encourage Trump to continue pursuing such legal action. “Trump’s a bully,” Rickner says. “The only meaningful way to stop what’s going on is for the media companies to fight it out — and when they win, tell the world they won.”

Trump’s antagonism toward the media has shot across multiple vectors. To cite a few examples: The White House has banned The Associated Press from Oval Office events and Air Force One because the AP continues to refer to the “Gulf of Mexico” (not the “Gulf of America,” as Trump decreed it should be so called). Trump is seeking to eliminate federal funding for PBS and NPR, while the White House has effectively dismantled the Voice of America.

On June 26, a Trump lawyer threatened to sue The New York Times and CNN over their reports about the Pentagon’s early assessment that the U.S. bombings of Iranian nuclear sites set back the country’s nuclear weapons program by “a few months,” whereas Trump has claimed Iran’s facilities were “totally obliterated.” “No apology will be forthcoming,” a New York Times Co. lawyer wrote in response.

That came as part of an above-average week for Trump’s social media attacks on news organizations and journalists. He said reporters who wrote stories challenging his Iran narrative were “BAD AND SICK PEOPLE” and “sleazebags,” and demanded The New York Times and CNN fire those responsible for the coverage.

At the FCC, Carr has launched investigations into the diversity, equity and inclusion practices of Disney and Comcast-NBCUniversal for potential “invidious forms of discrimination.” Carr — who once proudly posted a photo of himself wearing a golden lapel pin of Trump’s head — also claimed he would block M&A deals for media companies that promote DEI.

All of this raises an uncomfortable question: Are news organizations being intimidated into pulling their punches?

Anna Gomez, the FCC’s sole Democratic commissioner, says multiple broadcast executives have told her that, given the threats by Trump and the White House, they have instructed reporters “to be careful about what they’re reporting.” That doesn’t mean they have held off on airing controversial stories. But Gomez, who was appointed by President Biden, says the FCC is being “weaponized” to retaliate against news outlets for editorial decisions. She has embarked on a First Amendment “tour,” hosting panel discussions across the U.S. with policy experts to call attention to — and fight against — what she calls “this administration’s campaign of censorship and control.” Gomez adds that she’s surprised Trump hasn’t tried to fire her from the FCC. “As long as I have this job,” she says, “I will continue to fight for our freedoms.”

Variety reached out to major news organizations — including ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time and The Wall Street Journal — for comment on Trump’s anti-press rhetoric. Each of them declined to make executives available for interviews. Privately, news execs insist their coverage of Trump and his administration has remained fair but aggressive. The PR strategy generally seems to be to let the work speak for itself and not respond to Trump’s attacks.

One of the only media executives to agree to speak on the record is Paula Kerger, CEO of PBS. The Trump administration’s pressure to defund public media, she says, “clearly is an attempt to try to impact and control the kind of programming we do. It pulls on a thread that could unravel our entire system.”

At the same time, Kerger claims that, at PBS at least, there has not been a chilling effect from Trump’s attempts to cut funding. “I look around at my colleagues who are feeling more focused than ever in making sure we do the kind of work we’re doing,” she says. News represents 10% of PBS’ programming lineup. “Some people,” she says, referring to political conservatives, “would just as soon we didn’t do news at all.” Kerger adds, “But unflinching news coverage is part of the mission. Once you start to make concessions, you’re on a slippery slope.”

PBS and its member stations receive about 15% of their operating budgets from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in aggregate. But for some smaller stations, federal funding is upwards of 30% or 40% of their revenue. Congress is considering Trump’s measure to claw back $1.1 billion in CPB funding for the next two years. “People say, ‘Oh, everybody [in public media] will be fine,’” says Kerger. “They won’t be. It’s massively disruptive and potentially existential.”

Some of the sharpest criticism of Trump has come from late-night hosts, who unlike traditional journalists have free rein to mock people in power. Trump has responded with insults. Last year, Trump lashed out at Jimmy Kimmel as he was hosting the 2024 Oscars (“Has there EVER been a WORSE HOST than Jimmy Kimmel,” he said in a Truth Social post), to which Kimmel responded live on air: “I’m surprised you’re still [up] — isn’t it past your jail time?”

Is Kimmel worried about the Trump administration going after him and his competitors with lawsuits or some other action?

“Well, you’d have to be naive not to worry a little bit. But that can’t change what you’re doing,” Kimmel tells Variety. “And maybe it is naive, but I have the hope that if and when the day comes that he does start coming after comedians, that even my colleagues on the right will support my right to say what I like. Now, I could be kidding myself, and hopefully we’ll never find out. But if we do, I would hope that the outrage is significant.”

Critics say Trump’s media bashing and litigation have already disordered the news business.

They point to the resignation of longtime “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens, who wrote in a farewell note to staffers in April that it has “become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it” or to “make independent decisions based on what was right for ‘60 Minutes,’ right for the audience.” That came after Redstone instructed CBS execs to implement more oversight of the news division, including “60 Minutes.” (Paramount and CBS declined to comment on the matter.)

“The worst aspect of all of this is, we don’t know the extent to which the media is being intimidated,” says Robert Reich, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and former Clinton administration official.

Some journalists may be bailing out of corporate media so they can share uncensored opinions about Trump. Last month, ABC News fired correspondent Terry Moran for a since-deleted post on X labeling Trump a “world-class hater” (and saying the same of top White House adviser Stephen Miller). “I used very strong language deliberately,” Moran said in a June 16 livestreamed interview with The Bulwark’s Tim Miller. Now, he said, he can “speak [his] mind.”

About ABC’s decision to let him go, the 28-year veteran of the network said on the livestream, “From my perspective, it looked like a business decision. I became bad business, it feels like.” (Asked about Moran’s firing, ABC News referred to its June 10 statement: “We are at the end of our agreement with Terry Moran and based on his recent post — which was a clear violation of ABC News policies — we have made the decision to not renew.”)

Joy-Ann Reid, for her part, says she doesn’t know why MSNBC canceled her primetime show, “The ReidOut,” in February, one month after Trump retook office.

“It was very surprising,” says Reid, a vocal Trump critic. “It was very much out of the blue.” She met the morning of Feb. 21 with newly appointed MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler, who, according to Reid, told her “we’re making some changes, and your show will not be continuing.” Reid acknowledges that ratings for “The ReidOut” were down, but “we were told we were down less than others.”

After leaving MSNBC, Reid launched a podcast through her company Image Lab Media Group, “The Joy Reid Show,” which jumped to 1 million streams within a week of its June 9 premiere.

In the absence of “an official explanation” from MSNBC for her show’s cancellation, Reid says, “I can just tell you the things that I know” that “created discomfort at work.” She says that included “any sort of name-calling of Trump” and “too much vigorous opposition to him in a certain style.” After Reid’s show was axed, Trump used Truth Social to call her a “mentally obnoxious racist.” About Trump’s insult, Reid says with a smile, “It made me feel seen.”

“I’m proud to be his opponent,” she says. “If a fascist is displeased with me, then I think I’m doing the right thing.”

Former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann (who himself was fired by the network in 2011) believes that a chief reason Comcast is spinning off NBCUniversal’s cable networks (into a new company called Versant) is that it “wants to get rid of MSNBC and its big controversial news operations.” MSNBC declined to comment on Reid and Olbermann’s remarks.

To be sure, some media organizations are fighting back. In another case of Trump targeting a news outlet, the president has sued The Des Moines Register and pollster Ann Selzer in Iowa state court. Trump alleges that the newspaper’s poll showing him trailing Harris by three points in Iowa, a state he won by 13 points in the 2024 election, represents consumer fraud. A rep for The Des Moines Register says the paper “will continue to resist President Trump’s litigation gamesmanship and believes that regardless of the forum it will be successful in defending its rights under the First Amendment.”

In addition to news media and journalists, Trump has attacked numerous Hollywood celebrities, including Rosie O’Donnell (whose U.S. citizenship Trump threatened to revoke, even though he has no authority to do so), Taylor Swift (after she endorsed Harris), Bruce Springsteen (who has called the Trump administration “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous”) and George Clooney, who was a major fundraiser for Biden and Harris.

Clooney recently starred in a hit Broadway adaptation of his film “Good Night, and Good Luck,” about Murrow’s leadership at CBS to challenge Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s campaign in the 1950s to root out communists in the U.S. government. “Governments don’t like the freedom of the press. They never have,” Clooney said in a “60 Minutes” interview in March. “And that goes for whether you are a conservative or a liberal or whatever side you’re on. They don’t like the press.”

In response, Trump posted on Truth Social, “Why would the now highly discredited ‘60 Minutes’ be doing a total ‘puff piece’ on George Clooney, a second rate movie star and failed political pundit?” (A rep for Clooney said he was unavailable for an interview.)

For many celebrities who spoke out against Trump, there was a sense of fatigue and defeat when he won a second term, says Jessica Weitz, the ACLU’s national director of artist engagement. After Trump’s election in 2024, “I felt this real depression, this feeling of ‘I used my voice, I spoke out, and now here we are,’” says Weitz, who works with music artists, actors and influencers to advocate for civil liberties issues. Recently, though, she’s seeing more celebrities “come to the table for the first time.”

One example: Diego Luna, the Mexican star of Disney+’s “Andor,” who guest-hosted “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” last month and spoke out against the Trump administration’s efforts to round up and deport undocumented immigrants.

“I have never been able to fully understand how it is that someone like Donald Trump is able to acquire this level of power,” Luna said on the show’s June 23 telecast. “I always struggle to understand how his hate speech can take root in a country whose nature has always been a welcoming one.”

Luna “could have said anything,” Weitz says. “But to use that experience and speak out can be scary, but my hope and real belief is he will see the real benefits of doing so.”

Nominally, Trump is a supporter of the First Amendment.

On Jan. 20, the first day of Trump’s second White House term, he signed a record 26 executive orders. One of those was the directive “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship,” which begins like this: “The First Amendment to the United States Constitution, an amendment essential to the success of our Republic, enshrines the right of the American people to speak freely in the public square without Government interference.”

What did Trump mean by “restoring” free speech? The order alleged the Biden administration “trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties.”

But in a June 2024 ruling, the Supreme Court rejected a Republican-led case claiming the Biden White House illegally coerced social platforms into removing posts about COVID and the 2020 presidential election that were deemed misinformation.

In fact, the actions of Trump and his administration have routinely run counter to constitutional ideals, says Nico Perrino, executive VP of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free-speech advocacy organization. The Trump White House seeks to censor information that it “simply rebrands as ‘news distortion,’ ‘fake news,’ ‘consumer fraud’ or ‘deceptive trade practices,’” he says. “And the administration regularly jawbones private institutions while hanging the threat of regulatory action over their heads if they don’t comply.”

And Trump’s attempts to curtail free speech are not just limited to the press, says Brian Hauss, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy & Technology Project. He notes the administration has tried to punish law firms that have represented groups opposing Trump, has used immigration laws to deport people who have expressed pro-Palestinian views and has threatened to slash grants to universities including Harvard over their alleged shortfalls in battling antisemitism and a lack of “viewpoint diversity.”

“The Trump administration has engaged in the most flagrant campaign against free expression that I’ve seen in my lifetime,” says Hauss. “This is a revanchist administration that has gone after its critics.”

The White House, asked for comment about how Trump’s stated support for the First Amendment squares with evidence that he is undermining free speech, sent the following statement from spokeswoman Anna Kelly: “There is no greater defender of freedom than President Trump, who signed an Executive Order to protect free speech on his first day back in office, ended the weaponization of justice, restored over 400 press passes to the White House complex, and takes media questions daily.”

In a statement about the Paramount settlement, a spokesman for Trump’s legal team boasted of scoring a victory over “the fake news.” The president, the rep said in part, “deliver[ed] another win for the American people as he, once again, holds the Fake News media accountable for their wrongdoing and deceit.”