Cowardly Paramount Just Waved the White Flag at Trump and Threw ‘60 Minutes’ Under the Bus

It was nice of CNN to show the Broadway production of Good Night and Good Luck, even though I consider the play completely unnecessary and, frankly, a sluggish repetition of the fine movie. (Also, no David Strathairn.) But it was interesting in our present context to watch CBS executives wrestle with the problem of political courage in the face of power and actually come out on the right side of the fight. Because that might as well have happened on another planet. From the BBC:

U.S. media company Paramount Global has agreed to pay $16 million (£13.5m) to settle a legal dispute with US President Donald Trump regarding an interview it broadcast on CBS with former Vice-President Kamala Harris. Trump filed a lawsuit last October, alleging the network had deceptively edited an interview that aired on its 60 Minutes news program with his presidential election rival Kamala Harris, to “tip the scales in favor of the Democratic party.” Paramount said it would pay to settle the suit, but with the money allocated to Trump's future presidential library, not paid to him “directly or indirectly.”

It doesn’t matter how many fringes or how much filigree you hang on it, a white flag is a white flag. I mean, to call the president’s cause of action a nuisance suit, is to insult nuisances. I know this because I happen to be a nuisance, and I feel attacked. The president contended that CBS edited interviews with Harris in such a way as to interfere in the election. This is because the president is a faker and a paranoid.

According to the lawsuit filed in federal court in Texas, CBS aired two versions of the Harris interview in which she appeared to give different answers to the same question about the Israel-Gaza war. Interviewer Bill Whitaker asked the Democratic nominee about the Biden administration’s relationship with Israel. The network later aired two different versions of her response, according to the claim. One clip aired on Face the Nation and the other on 60 Minutes. Trump claimed Harris’s “word salad” answer had been deceptively edited in one version to shield her from backlash. CBS said it edited Harris’s answer for time, in accordance with television news standards.

But CBS News isn’t the entity that signed away the Sudetenland. Neither was the Columbia Broadcasting System. It was Paramount, the entertainment behemoth that owns them both, and it is axiomatic now that the bigger and more profitable the corporation, the more chickenshit it has in its heart. Paramount has enough to grow cabbages in the Kalahari. Of course, there are other considerations.

According to both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, the settlement was agreed—with the help of mediator—so as to not affect Paramount’s planned merger with Skydance Media, which the Federal Communications Commission has been reviewing and therefore Trump technically has the power to halt.

During the month-long settlement talks, some CBS News executives including chief executive Wendy McMahon have left their roles, due to their unwillingness to issue an apology to Trump. There were also reportedly concerns over whether paying to settle the lawsuit could be viewed as bribing a public official.

Such cynical minds. The money is going to go to the Trump Presidential Library; one wonders if it will be the first one equipped with a stripper pole and VIP room. It certainly wouldn’t be going straight into the president’s pocket. Because that would be wrong.