It was a give up broadly foreseen. For months, rumors abounded that Paramount would finally settle the seemingly frivolous lawsuit introduced by President Donald Trump regarding editorial selections within the manufacturing of a CBS interview with Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in 2024.
On July 2, 2025, those rumors proved true: The settlement between Paramount and Trump’s authorized staff resulted in CBS’s dad or mum firm agreeing to pay $16 million to the longer term Donald Trump Library – the $16 million included Trump’s authorized charges – in alternate for ending the lawsuit. Regardless of the opinion of many media regulation students and training attorneys who considered the lawsuit meritless, Shari Redstone, the most important shareholder of Paramount, yielded to Trump.
Redstone had been making an attempt to promote Paramount to Skydance Media since July 2024, however the transaction was delayed by issues involving government approval.
Particularly, when the Trump administration assumed energy in January 2025, the brand new Federal Communications Fee had no authorized obligation to facilitate, with out scrutiny, the switch of the CBS community’s broadcast licenses for its owned-and-operated TV stations to new possession.
The FCC, underneath newly put in Republican Chairman Brendan Carr, was totally conscious of the problems within the authorized battle between Trump and CBS on the time Paramount wanted FCC approval for the license transfers. And not using a settlement, the Paramount-Skydance deal remained in jeopardy.
Till it wasn’t.
At that time, Paramount joined Disney in implicitly apologizing for journalism produced by their TV information divisions.
Earlier in 2025, Disney had settled a different Trump lawsuit with ABC Information in alternate for a $15 million donation to the longer term Trump Library. That lawsuit concerned a dispute over the wording of the actions for which Trump was discovered liable in a civil lawsuit introduced by E. Jean Carroll.
It’s not sure what the ABC and CBS settlements portend, however many are predicting they will produce a “chilling effect” throughout the community information divisions. Such an final result would come up from concern of recent litigation, and it could set up a type of internal self-censorship that will affect community journalists when deciding whether or not the pursuit of investigative tales involving the Trump administration could be well worth the threat.
Trump has apparently succeeded the place earlier presidents failed.
Presidential strain
From Jimmy Carter making an attempt to get CBS anchor Walter Cronkite to stop ending his night newscasts with the variety of days American hostages had been being held in Iran to Richard Nixon’s administration threatening the broadcast licenses of The Washington Publish’s TV stations to weaken Watergate reporting, earlier presidents sought to use editorial strain on broadcast journalists.
However within the instances of Carter and Nixon, it didn’t work. The published networks’ deal with each Watergate and the Iran hostage disaster remained unrelenting.
Nor had been Nixon and Carter the primary presidents in search of to affect, and probably management, community information.
President Lyndon Johnson, who owned native TV and radio stations in Austin, Texas, regularly complained to his outdated good friend, CBS President Frank Stanton, about what he perceived as biased TV protection. Johnson was so livid with the CBS and NBC reporting from Vietnam, he as soon as argued that their newscasts appeared “controlled by the Vietcong.”
But none of those earlier presidents gained tens of millions from the firms that aired moral information reporting within the public curiosity.
Earlier than Trump, these conflicts principally occurred backstage and informally, permitting the broadcasters to sidestep the injury to their credibility ought to any give up to White Home administrations be made public. In a “Reporter’s Notebook” on the CBS Night Information the night time of the Trump settlement, anchor John Dickerson summarized the brand new dilemma succinctly: “Are you able to maintain energy to account while you’ve paid it tens of millions? Can an viewers belief you when it thinks you’ve traded away that belief?”
“The viewers will determine that,” Dickerson continued, concluding: “Our job is to indicate as much as honor what we witness on behalf of the individuals we witness it for.”
Holding energy to account
There’s an adage in TV information: “You’re only as good as your last show.”
Quickly, SkyDance Media will assume management over the Paramount properties, and the brand new CBS might be on the airwaves.
When the licenses for KCBS in Los Angeles, WCBS in New York and the opposite CBS-owned-and-operated stations are transferred, we’ll be taught the long-term legacy of company capitulation. However for now, it stays too early to evaluate tomorrow’s newscasts.
As a scholar of broadcast journalism and a former broadcast journalist, I like to recommend evaluating packages like “60 Minutes” and the “CBS Night Information” on the report they may compile over the subsequent three years – and the report they compiled over the previous 50. The identical goes for “ABC World Information Tonight” and different ABC Information packages.
A serious complicating issue for the Paramount-Skydance deal was the truth that “60 Minutes” has, over the previous six months, broken major scoops embarrassing to the Trump administration, which led to additional scrutiny by its company possession. Judged by its reporting within the first half of 2025, “60 Minutes” has upheld its report of essential and impartial reporting within the public curiosity.
If viewers members need to see moral, impartial {and professional} broadcast journalism that holds energy to account, then it’s the viewers’s duty to tune it in. The one strategy to be taught the implications of those settlements is by watching future programming reasonably than dismissing it beforehand.
The journalists working at ABC Information and CBS Information perceive the legacy of their organizations, and they’re additionally conscious of how their house owners have forged suspicion on the information divisions’ professionalism and credibility. As Dickerson asserted, they plan to “present up” whatever the stain, and I’d guess they’re extra motivated to redeem their reputations than we count on.
I don’t assume reporters, editors and producers plan to let Donald Trump change into their editor-in-chief over the subsequent three years. However we’ll solely know by watching.