Why Is Paramount So Keen To Settle Trump's Laughable Lawsuit Against CBS?
The company is worried that the president's complaints about a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris could block a pending merger.
Paramount, which owns CBS, is reportedly trying to settle a laughable lawsuit that Donald Trump filed last October based on a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent in the 2024 presidential election. The New York Times reports that the company started settlement negotiations because it is keen to avoid regulatory obstacles to its planned merger with Skydance Media.
Paramount's openness to a settlement represents quite a turnaround from the position that CBS took after Trump filed his lawsuit. "The lawsuit Trump has brought today against CBS is completely without merit," the network said then, "and we will vigorously defend against it." The striking change illustrates the pressure that a president can exert on news outlets that annoy him—a reality that is especially troubling when the White House is occupied by someone determined to "straighten out the press." Although that mission is blatantly inconsistent with the First Amendment, Trump can pursue it indirectly by deploying executive power in service of his personal vendettas.
After Trump sued CBS, the Times notes, "many legal experts dismissed the litigation as a far-fetched attempt to punish an out-of-favor news outlet." That is arguably a charitable description of Trump's lawsuit, which avers that CBS violated a Texas consumer fraud statute by editing the interview with Harris in a way that made her seem slightly more cogent. His invocation of that law is patently frivolous. So is Trump's risible claim that the editing of the interview cost him "at least" $10 billion in damages.
During the interview, 60 Minutes correspondent Bill Whitaker asked Harris about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's response to the Biden administration's concerns regarding the war in Gaza. An October 6 preview of the interview on Face the Nation included this part of her response: "Well, Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in several movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by
or a result of many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region." In the edited version of the interview that aired on 60 Minutes the next day, by contrast, Harris says, "We are not gonna stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end."
Harris did not come across as especially forthright, articulate, or intelligent in either version of her response. But Trump complained that "her REAL ANSWER WAS CRAZY, OR DUMB, so they actually REPLACED it with another answer in order to save her or, at least, make her look better."
In response, 60 Minutes said the show gave Face the Nation "an excerpt of our interview" that "used a longer section of her answer" than the segment used in the interview that aired the next day. It was the "same question" and the "same answer," the producers said, but "a different portion of the response." They added: "When we edit any interview, whether [with] a politician, an athlete, or movie star, we strive to be clear, accurate and on point. The portion of her answer on 60 Minutes was more succinct, which allow[ed] time for other subjects in a wide ranging 21-minute-long segment."
As Trump saw it, however, that decision was "A FAKE NEWS SCAM, which is totally illegal." How so? In his lawsuit, which he filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Trump claims that CBS violated that state's Deceptive Trade Practices Act (DTPA), which prohibits "false, misleading, or deceptive acts or practices in the conduct of any trade or commerce."
In response to the lawsuit, CBS reiterated that "the interview was not doctored" and noted that 60 Minutes "did not hide any part of Vice President Kamala Harris's answer to the question at issue." But the problems with Trump's case go far beyond the question of whether CBS engaged in responsible journalism.
As relevant here, the DTPA defines "trade or commerce" as "the advertising, offering for sale, sale, lease, or distribution of any good or service," including "any trade or commerce directly or indirectly affecting the people of this state." In other words, the statute is aimed at misrepresentations in connection with the promotion or sale of goods or services.
When it edited the Harris interview, 60 Minutes was not advertising or selling anything. It was practicing journalism—poorly, in Trump's view, but in any case making the sort of editorial decisions that news outlets routinely make. Those decisions are indisputably protected by the First Amendment except in specific, narrow circumstances such as defamation. Whatever you make of Trump's objections to the Harris interview, they plainly do not support a claim for damages.
Trump claims his lawsuit is authorized by Section 17.50 of the DTPA, which says "a consumer may maintain an action" when he suffers "economic damages" or "mental anguish" as a result of false, misleading, or deceptive statements that he "relied on" to his "detriment." A consumer also can sue based on "breach of an express or implied warranty" or "any unconscionable action." The law defines that last phrase as "an act or practice which, to a consumer's detriment, takes advantage of the lack of knowledge, ability, experience, or capacity of the consumer to a grossly unfair degree."
Trump's lawsuit says he is "a 'consumer' within the meaning of the DTPA, since he is an individual who sought and received CBS's broadcast services." But the statute defines "consumer" as someone who "seeks or acquires by purchase or lease, any goods or services" (emphasis added). Trump did not purchase or lease anything from CBS.
While Trump may be a "consumer" of 60 Minutes in the sense that he watches the show, he is not a consumer who bought goods or services from CBS, let alone one who bought goods or services based on "false, misleading, or deceptive acts or practices." Since there was no transaction, Trump likewise could not have suffered damages by buying something based on "an express or implied warranty" or because he lacked the "knowledge, ability, experience, or capacity" to assess the merits of the purchase.
Trump's lawsuit notes that the DTPA covers practices that "caus[e] confusion or misunderstanding" regarding "the source, sponsorship, approval, or certification of goods or services" or regarding "affiliation, connection, or association with, or certification, by another." He says CBS confused "millions of Americans, and in particular residents of Texas," because it was "impossible for even the most discerning viewers to determine whether the 60 Minutes interview was independent journalism or de facto advertising for the Kamala Campaign." He says viewers also would have been confused about "the Interview's 'certification by' CBS given its legal obligation to broadcast news in a non-distortive manner."
The lawsuit adds that "CBS's misconduct was unconscionable because it amounts to a brazen attempt to interfere in the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election." That understanding of "unconscionable," invoking supposed election interference, has nothing to do with the way the term is used in the statute, where it refers to a situation in which a business cheats a consumer by taking advantage of his ignorance in a "grossly unfair" way.
None of this makes any sense in the context of the DTPA, because none of it is grounded in a commercial relationship between Trump and CBS. Trump is simply dressing up his criticism of news coverage as a consumer fraud complaint without any evidence that CBS engaged in the deceptive trade practices that the law covers. This is the same strategy he later used in his lawsuit against The Des Moines Register, which offended him by publishing a poll that inaccurately predicted a Harris victory in Iowa. If misleading journalism counted as actionable consumer fraud, news outlets would have to constantly worry about potentially ruinous litigation whenever their work might be characterized that way, which is almost always the case.
Trump's estimate of the damages he supposedly suffered as a "consumer" who never bought anything from CBS compounds the absurdity of his lawsuit. He says the damages are "reasonably believed to be at least $10,000,000,000." In case that seems like a number pulled out of thin air, a footnote avers that "CBS's distortion of the 60 Minutes Interview damaged President Trump's fundraising and support values by several billions of dollars, particularly in Texas." Trump's 2024 campaign spent a total of about $355 million, which is a lot of money but a tiny fraction of the additional $10 billion he says he could have raised—"particularly in Texas"—if CBS had not aired an interview that was edited to make Harris look a bit less "DUMB."
Why is Paramount so eager to settle this comical excuse for a lawsuit? Needless to say, it has nothing to do with the legal or logical merits of Trump's complaint.
The New York Times reports that Shari Redstone, Paramount's controlling shareholder, "supports the effort to settle" because she "stands to clear billions of dollars on the sale of Paramount." The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which is now chaired by Trump appointee Brendan Carr, has the power to queer that deal by refusing to approve the transfer of the broadcasting licenses held by CBS-owned TV stations.
That approval could be contingent on what the FCC makes of the complaint that the Harris interview violated its rule against "broadcast news distortion," which makes it "illegal for broadcasters to intentionally distort the news." As the FCC put it in 1979, "broadcasters are public trustees licensed to operate in the public interest and, as such, may not engage in intentional falsification or suppression of news."
Because the FCC is "prohibited by law from engaging in censorship or infringing on First Amendment rights of the press," the agency says, it "will only investigate claims that include evidence showing that the broadcast news report was deliberately intended to mislead viewers or listeners." It "does not investigate claims of collateral inaccuracy in news reports or differences of opinion over the truth or validity of aspects of a news program."
Carr has implicitly acknowledged that proving CBS "deliberately intended to mislead viewers or listeners" would be a tall order. "In my view," he told Glenn Beck last year, "the best way forward" would be to "release the transcript," which would mean "there's no reason to have this before the FCC." Although "CBS had refused previous requests from Mr. Trump's lawyers" to release the complete transcript of the interview, the Times says, "people inside Paramount have been expecting the F.C.C." to request it, and Carr "has said that the commission would probably look into the '60 Minutes' interview as part of its review of the Paramount merger." Trump, for his part, argues that the editing of the Harris interview is sufficient reason for the FCC to "TAKE AWAY THE CBS LICENSE."
The upshot of all this is that Paramount is eager to settle Trump's ridiculous lawsuit, perhaps with some sort of clarification or apology. That outcome, the Times notes, is apt to provoke "an uproar within CBS News and among the '60 Minutes' staff," since "journalists at the network have expressed deep concern about the notion of their parent company settling litigation that they consider tantamount to a politician's standard-issue gripes about a news organization's editorial judgment."
Trump can extort that outcome because of the FCC's antiquated and constitutionally dubious authority over the content of broadcast journalism, which the government treats differently from journalism disseminated via print, cable, satellite, the internet, or any other nonbroadcast medium. That is just one of many ways that a president can try to punish or suppress speech he does not like. Other levers of executive power include the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the IRS, antitrust enforcement by the Justice Department, privacy and financial regulations, and presidential support for new legislation. Trump has even suggested that the Justice Department "should" be policing the press to make sure it is telling the truth, an idea that is legally baseless and starkly at odds with the First Amendment.
Trump and other Republicans rightly complained when the Biden administration persistently pressured social media platforms to suppress speech that federal officials viewed as a threat to public health, democracy, or national security. That pestering, they plausibly argued, violated the First Amendment because it carried an implicit threat of government retaliation against companies that refused to comply. Yet Trump is doing essentially the same thing in this case by pressuring Paramount to assuage his wrath by settling a lawsuit that was bound to fail on its merits.
Like the Biden administration officials he despises, Trump is demanding that a private company kowtow to him—or else. Also like them, he claims to be serving the public interest: He argues that "our press is very corrupt," which represents a threat not only to him but to democracy itself. But his chilling crusade against the press, which he openly says is aimed at changing the way journalists cover the news, is an assault on the values that distinguish a liberal democracy from one that elects autocrats who are free to punish speech that offends them.
