| “60 Minutes” correspondent Bill Whitaker asked Kamala Harris more than 40 questions during the October 2024 interview that President Trump is still relitigating eight months later. It was a probing, informative interview. Whitaker asked Harris tough questions. He also pointed out that Trump refused to sit down for an equivalent interview. Trump’s objection, and the basis of his lawsuit, is about the editing of one answer to one of the 40+ questions. CBS didn’t cover anything up. It broadcast the answer at issue, which certainly wasn’t flattering to Harris. But it chopped up the answer and aired two different parts on two different shows, which exposed the network to criticism. That’s it. That’s the substance of the lawsuit that CBS parent Paramount is on the verge of settling. Trump went on the warpath last fall, claiming “election interference” and “the biggest scandal in broadcast history,” which it wasn’t and isn’t. He is seeking $20 billion in damages, which is an amount more than twice the market cap of Paramount and nearly four times as much as Trump’s estimated net worth. Here’s the thing: No one believes Trump was damaged to the tune of $20 billion. No one believes the Harris interview changed the outcome of the election. But with Paramount’s big-money Skydance deal hanging in the balance, this legal battle has strained “60 Minutes” and consumed CBS. I find myself grappling with how to convey the context of this case to readers and viewers. “Trump’s CBS lawsuit” is not enough. “Paramount’s settlement” is not sufficient. To flatten it that way, to treat it as just another legal dispute, is to treat the abnormal as normal. To ignore the absurdity is to side with Trump’s hyperbole over observable reality. No legal expert thinks the president would have a fighting chance if this went to trial, and much of the news coverage has rightly said so, which brings us to the impending settlement. Words like payoff and bribe are legally and politically charged, but those are the words being used in and around CBS. I previously quoted an anonymous correspondent calling it “extortion.” Mother Jones’ DC bureau chief David Corn has likened it to a “mob-like shakedown.” Part of the journalistic solution is to state all the facts of the case plainly – which exposes Trump’s power play for what it is. As CJR’s Jon Allsop wrote yesterday, “I’m finding that the most valuable coverage of this moment is that which fearlessly, but clinically, documents what is happening.” Clinically, fearlessly. |
