CBS Reaches $16 Million Settlement With Trump

Under the settlement, Paramount will pay $16 million that will go toward a Trump presidential library after plaintiffs' fees and costs are deducted. The settlement doesn't include “a statement of apology or regret,” Paramount said. Going forward, the company has also agreed to release transcripts of interviews with eligible U.S. presidential candidates after they air.

“A cold wind just blew through every newsroom this morning,” said Robert Corn-Revere, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression's chief counsel and a former FCC chief of staff. Trump’s lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Northern Texas is currently stayed, with a status report on the settlement due Thursday.

Paramount would likely have won the case in court, academics, attorneys and lawmakers told us. Duke University law professor Stuart Benjamin said in an interview that a media organization settling a claim this frivolous is unprecedented. "I cannot imagine any lawyer regarding this as a claim that has any legs at all." It appears Paramount agreed to the deal to ease the path of its stalled purchase by Skydance Global, currently held up at the FCC, attorneys said.

But Paramount refuted that idea. “This lawsuit is completely separate from, and unrelated to, the Skydance transaction and the FCC approval process,” it said. “We will abide by the legal process to defend our case.”

The settlement is widely seen as likely to chill negative reporting about Trump and encourage future lawsuits against media companies by the White House, free speech and journalism organizations said. It “shows that Trump is able to leverage the power of the FCC under [Chairman] Brendan Carr's leadership to facilitate a result in litigation that had very little substantive merit to it,” said the American Enterprise Institute’s Clay Calvert, a First Amendment expert.

The FCC didn’t comment on the relationship between the lawsuit, the FCC’s review of the Skydance deal and its ongoing news distortion proceeding against CBS, but lone Democratic FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez blasted the settlement Wednesday. “Despite repeated attempts to deny the obvious, this Paramount Payout is a desperate move to appease the Administration and secure regulatory approval of a major transaction currently pending before the FCC,” she said in a statement. Carr has repeatedly said the FCC merger review and Trump’s lawsuit aren’t related.

“Instead of standing on principle, Paramount opted for a payout,” Gomez said. That decision casts “a long shadow over the integrity” of the Skydance transaction. The agency must bring up the Skydance deal for a full commission vote rather than approve it on delegated authority because of its entanglement with the lawsuit and public interest in the matter, Gomez said. “Approving this transaction behind closed doors and under the cover of bureaucratic process would be a shameful outcome that denies the American people the transparency and accountability they deserve, especially when press freedom is at stake.”

Although rumors spread online Wednesday that Paramount had also agreed to carry public service announcements supporting pro-Trump causes, Paramount denied this in a release Wednesday. "Contrary to some news reports or media speculation, Paramount’s settlement with President Trump does not include PSAs or anything related to PSAs." The company said it "has no knowledge of any promises or commitments made to President Trump other than those set forth in the settlement proposed by the mediator and accepted by the parties."

Democratic lawmakers also ripped the settlement Wednesday. Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon threatened that if “Democrats retake power, I’ll be first in line calling for federal charges" against Paramount, which "just paid Trump a bribe” to secure federal approval of the Skydance deal. “In the meantime, state prosecutors should make the corporate execs who sold out our democracy answer in court, today,” Wyden added. He and two other senators -- Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. -- opened a probe in May into whether Paramount was “engaging in improper conduct involving the Trump Administration in exchange for approval of its megamerger.”

“This looks like bribery in plain sight,” Warren said Wednesday. “Paramount folded at the same time it needs Trump's approval for a billion-dollar merger. I’m calling for an investigation into whether any anti-bribery laws were broken, and I'm working on a new bill to rein in this kind of corruption.” In May, she, Sanders and other Senate Democrats urged Paramount controlling shareholder Shari Redstone “not [to] capitulate” to Trump by settling the lawsuit (see 2505070061).

Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, another Democrat who warned Redstone in May, said Wednesday that Paramount's settlement “is a sad day for media independence. With Paramount’s merger pending before [the FCC], it also reeks of political interference. I will be watching [the commission] closely.” Sanders said the “Redstone family diminished the freedom of the press today in exchange for a $2.4 billion payday.”

The settlement is likely to harm future reporting on this White House, said media organizations and public interest groups. “Paramount/CBS just sold out every journalist in its newsroom and set back every future effort to accurately cover presidents or presidential candidates,” said Free Press co-CEO Craig Aaron in a post on Bluesky.

The settlement “will be remembered as one of the most shameful capitulations by the press to a president in history,” said the Freedom of the Press Foundation in a release. “Each time a company cowers and surrenders to Trump’s demands, it only emboldens him to do it again.” ABC reached a similar settlement with Trump in December (see 2412160043). FPF, a Paramount shareholder, filed shareholder information demands against the company seeking details about the settlement. “Paramount directors should be held accountable, and we will do all we can to make that happen.”

Carr has repeatedly said FCC and White House actions against media organizations are justified as a response to tactics from the previous administration, including efforts to persuade social media companies to remove COVID-19 misinformation. “The Biden Admin repeatedly weaponized government against its political foes. In contrast, I’m ensuring that everyone gets a fair shake,” Carr said in a June post on X that echoed comments he has made several times. “That change may feel like discrimination to those that once benefited from Biden’s two-tier system, but that doesn’t make it so.”

AEI's Calvert noted that the Biden administration engaged in jawboning against social media companies, but that doesn’t justify the current administration's behavior. “Just because one side does it, doesn't mean that the next side, the Republicans, have to come in and do the same,” he said. “This is a new extreme in this sort of behavior.”