’60 Minutes’ heavily edited then-candidate’s interview answers, unedited transcript reveals
Lawyers for President Donald Trump and CBS News parent company Paramount said Monday that they have reached an “advanced” stage in their settlement talks over Trump’s lawsuit that accuses CBS’s flagship news program of election interference, with the New York Times reporting that “the filing is the clearest sign yet that the two sides are nearing a settlement.”
The two sides are “engaged in good faith, advanced, settlement negotiations” over Trump’s $20 billion lawsuit, according to a joint legal filing reported by the Times.
60 Minutes, the most-watched weekly news program in the United States, came under fire after Trump sued in late October, alleging that it deceptively edited its interview with Harris to boost her 2024 presidential campaign. An unedited transcript of the interview, released by the Federal Communications Commission in February, confirmed that several of Harris’s lengthy, rambling responses—particularly on Israel—were heavily condensed.
“To paper over Kamala’s ‘word salad’ weakness, CBS used its national platform on 60 Minutes to cross the line from the exercise of judgment in reporting to deceitful, deceptive manipulation of news,” the lawsuit says.
While Paramount has denied the allegations, describing the editing decisions as standard journalistic practices, CBS has faced internal turmoil in recent months.
In April, 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens abruptly resigned after 24 years with the show and 37 years at CBS. Owens called out Paramount, saying he was not “allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for ’60 Minutes,’ right for the audience,” the Times reported at the time.
Weeks later, CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon resigned, also criticizing the company’s direction. “It’s become clear that the company and I do not agree on the path forward,” McMahon wrote in a memo to staffers. “It’s time for me to move on and for this organization to move forward with new leadership.”
CBS controlling shareholder Shari Redstone, meanwhile, has said she is in favor of settling the case with Trump as she “wants to avoid a protracted legal war with the president that could cost hundreds of millions of dollars and jeopardize other divisions of Paramount that have business with the government,” the Times reported Monday.
This wouldn’t be the first time a major media outlet has opted to settle with Trump. ABC News, owned by the Walt Disney Company, in December agreed to pay $16 million to resolve a defamation lawsuit that Trump filed against anchor George Stephanopoulos, who falsely claimed on air that Trump had been found “liable for rape.” ABC has also issued a written apology.
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