Lesley Stahl on What a Settlement with Donald Trump Would Mean for CBS News

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

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Politics, Obama, News, Wnyc, Washington, Barack, President, Lizza, Wickenden

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🗓️ 2 June 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

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Summary

Lesley Stahl, a linchpin of CBS News, began at the network in 1971, covering major events such as Watergate, and for many years has been a correspondent on “60 Minutes.” But right now it’s a perilous time for CBS News, which has been sued by Donald Trump for twenty billion dollars over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris during the 2024 Presidential campaign. Its owner, Paramount, seems likely to settle, and corporate pressure on journalists at CBS has been so intense that Bill Owens, the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” and Wendy McMahon, the head of CBS News, resigned in protest. Owens’s departure was “a punch in the stomach,” Stahl tells David Remnick in a recent interview, “one of those punches where you almost can’t breathe.” And far worse could happen in a settlement with Trump, which would compromise the integrity of the premier investigative program on broadcast news. “I’m already beginning to think about mourning, grieving,” Stahl says. “I know there’s going to be a settlement. . . . And then we will hopefully still be around, turning a new page, and finding out what that new page is going to look like.” Although she describes herself as “Pollyannaish,” Stahl acknowledges that she is “pessimistic about the future for all press today. . . . The public has lost faith in us as an institution. So we’re in very dark times.”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the political scene.
0:07.0	I'm David Remnick.
0:08.3	Early each week, we bring you a conversation from our episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour.
0:15.8	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:25.1	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. One of the hottest tickets on Broadway
0:30.4	these days, in fact it just broke a box office record, is the play Good Night and Good Luck,
0:36.8	and it's adapted from George Clooney's
0:38.4	2005 film. Clooney is on stage as Edward R. Murrow, the CBS News anchor. Murrow was the most
0:46.3	respected journalist in his time, and the play dramatizes his stand against the lies and corruption
0:51.9	of one of the most powerful men in America in mid-century,
0:55.6	Senator Joseph McCarthy. It's an inspirational story, especially at a moment when Donald Trump,
1:01.8	someone far more powerful than McCarthy ever was, is using lawsuits and raw intimidation
1:07.7	to bring the media to heal. Donald Trump sued CBS eventually for $20 billion, over 60 minutes' interview with Kamala Harris.
1:17.4	By all legal accounts, it's a preposterous suit, and yet, Shari Redstone, the head of Paramond Global,
1:23.8	which is CBS's parent company, is actively trying to negotiate a settlement.
1:29.1	The reason is that she wants to sell her company Paramount, and to do so, she needs government
1:35.4	approval. Redstone's critics and people at 60 Minutes contend that settling the lawsuit is in
1:40.6	effect a surrender, a big payoff to the president. And yet Redstone has already made an
1:46.9	offer to settle of $15 million. Trump, however, says that's not enough, and he wants an apology.
1:53.8	So this is a very perilous time at CBS. And I sat down last week to talk with a veteran of the network,
2:00.0	Leslie Stahl, who reports for its premier news show 60 minutes.
2:04.9	And she's been at CBS for over 50 years.
	...

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