How Trump's media war came for CBS
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 8 July 2025
⏱️ 29 minutes
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Summary
Donald Trump has spent the past decade waging war on the media. That has included filing frequent lawsuits against media organizations whose coverage he views as unfavorable. Those lawsuits have been largely unsuccessful, until recently.
Last week, Paramount announced it was settling a lawsuit brought by Trump against CBS News over the news program “60 Minutes.” Although many legal experts believed the case was unlikely to succeed at trial, Paramount chose to settle for $16 million.
Elahe Izadi talks to reporter Sarah Ellison about the origins of the case, why Paramount would choose to settle, and what implications the settlement has for the wider media landscape.
Today’s show was produced by Peter Bresnan. It was mixed by Sam Bair. And edited by Reena Flores.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | President Donald Trump just notched a win in his decade-long war on the media. |
| 0:07.8 | For months, Trump has been an illegal fight with Paramount. |
| 0:11.4 | That's the parent company of CBS News. |
| 0:14.1 | Trump claimed that in the last stretch of the 2024 presidential race, |
| 0:19.2 | CBS News aired a misleading interview |
| 0:21.5 | with his opponent Kamala Harris, |
| 0:24.1 | that they edited this to make her seem more coherent |
| 0:27.4 | than she was, |
| 0:28.7 | and that this harmed his electoral chances. |
| 0:32.1 | Trump sued for $20 billion. |
| 0:35.6 | CBS denied it did anything wrong, but then last week, Paramount decided to settle. |
| 0:42.0 | Paramount announced that it had agreed to settle Donald Trump's lawsuit, that he had launched against CBS News, and they were settling for $16 million. |
| 0:53.0 | Sarah Ellison is a national enterprise reporter for The Post. |
| 0:57.1 | She says this settlement is raising alarm bells, not because of the dollar amount, |
| 1:03.1 | but because of the fact that CBS's parent company settled at all. |
| 1:10.0 | This settlement was something where we saw CBS News. |
| 1:15.7 | This is the news network of Edward R. Murrow, who famously stood up to McCarthyism. |
| 1:23.1 | That network, which has stood up for so much about journalistic ethics and courageousness, |
| 1:30.5 | sort of gave in to corporate pressure and pressure from the Trump administration, |
| 1:36.3 | which was trying to sort of exert its will on not only this media institution, |
| 1:42.5 | but lots of other media institutions and lots of other democratic institutions in society. |
| 1:48.3 | And we just saw CBS and Paramount bend |
... |
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