CBS and its “60 minutes” have long been maintained as brilliant transmission news beacons.
The Newsmagazine on Sunday night, with its omnipresent clock, won the reputation of not going back from a fight. By half a century, the program established the standard for television research reports with their unrestricted questions of US presidents and others in power.
But a different clock is marking.
The new president of the Federal Commission of Communications of President Trump, Brendan Carr, demanded this week from CBS to deliver the complete transcription and without editing from his interview “60 minutes” in October with former vice president Kamala Harris, including the images of films from The different angles of the camera.
That interview caused Trump's anger, who filed a lawsuit against CBS claiming that the network was involved in misleading editing practices.
“We are working to comply with that research as we are legally obliged to do,” said Global CBS Paramount on Friday in a statement.
The last development occurs when Paramount's global lawyers participate in preliminary conversations to resolve the demand Trump presented last year during the “60 minutes” interview. Trump claimed that the network “misleading” edited the interview to present Harris more favorably in the last weeks of the elections.
Trump's lawyers on Friday asked a Texas judge to extend a key deadline in the judicial case. Paramount's lawyers opted with the application, which could give both additional time to try to hammer on a truce.
The FCC research raises bets in the dispute, which has fueled the fears that Trump and his team are using power levers to cool a little flattering news coverage. Paramount's controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, has been agitated for her team to solve Trump's demand to facilitate the sale of her family from Paramount to David Ellison's media, according to people familiar with the matter that were not authorized to comment.
Paramount needs the approval of the FCC so that the paratrooper agreement progresses. The signing of the Agency for Television Licensing CBS to the Ellison family is required.
The apparent will of the company to placate Trump has traveled journalists, even within CBS News. First amendment experts initially interpreted the demand for “60 minutes” of Trump, which seeks $ 10 billion in damages, such as a political trick. They said that resolving the case with Trump would give a crushing blow to the legacy of CBS News.
“This is an act of pure cowardice for a short -term gain that corrupts each imaginable journalistic value,” said USC Annenberg communication and journalism, Gabriel Kahn.
“It's a sad day,” wrote the lawyer of the first amendment Floyd Abrams on Friday in an email to The Times. “It is a heartbreaking that CBS, which again, CBS, seems ready to pay a lot of money for its own editing decisions.”
The historical news division has maintained “60 minutes” as the gold standard in television journalism for more than five decades. People within the company, who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said that they fear that the measure will not only tarnish the brand “60 minutes”, but also established a dangerous precedent that could weaken journalism institutions.
“Do you think that in the next four years we will not say something that will make it angry and will do this again?” A veteran journalist said in the division.
Trump filed the lawsuit on October 31, accusing the CB of “partisan and illegal acts of election and interference of voters through a malicious, misleading and substantial distortion calculated to … tilt the scales in favor of the party Democrat, “according to his complaint.
He filed the demand in Texas, ensuring that one of his appointed judicial would supervise the case.
In the judicial presentations last month, CBS lawyers argued that Texas's place was not appropriate. Trump was a resident of Florida when the demand was filed. Some legal experts dismissed the maneuver as “Judge Purchases.” CBS lawyers argued in judicial presentations that the case must be dismissed or transferred to New York, where CBS is located.
The “60 minutes” transmission was edited in New York, and the segment did not belong to Texas or even Trump, CBS lawyers wrote. Trump's lawyers on Friday requested an extension of one week to present their response.
The producers of “60 minutes” denied Trump's accusations that they manipulated one of Harris's responses to eliminate their louder answer to a question. Harris was answering a question of the CBS News correspondent, Bill Whitaker, about the management of the Biden administration of the Israel-Gaza War.
The conservatives quickly took an apparent discrepancy in Harris's comments after CBS made an interview extract during his public affairs program “Face the Nation”, which included Harris's longest response.
The next day, a special edition of “60 minutes” was broadcast with more than Harris's interview. That program used a different and much shorter part of Harris's response.
The anger for a possible settlement is so deep that CBS News could experience an exodus of journalists and even executives if the company closes, some said.
“This is essentially a crack in the foundations of our free press,” Kahn said.
George Cheeks, executive co -chair of Paramount Global, has realized the concerns of the news division about how an agreement in the industry and its broader impact on press freedom would be received. The members of the Global Board of Paramount have also received supplications from inside the news division to fight Trump's demand, the sources said.
The cheeks spent months trying to navigate in the choppy waters in the middle of Redstone's growing unhappiness with CBS News and “60 minutes” about its coverage of the war in Gaza.
Redstone has not publicly opined on settlement conversations. A Redstone spokesman declined to comment.
The Redstone family is in the process of relaxing their participations in Paramount watching their investment vehicle to the Ellison family for more than $ 2 billion. The Skydance transaction would see the Redstone family fracture leaving Hollywood after four decades.
Shari Redstone has focused his philanthropic work on the fight against anti -Semitism. She the bosses publicly called the CBS presenter Tony Dukoupil after the coanfrerion of the morning program was called by her bosses for an aggressive interview with the author Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose most recent book compares the treatment of Israel to the Palestinians In the West Bank with the era of Jim Crow of the era of segregation in the United States
Redstone was also not happy with a recent history of “60 minutes” about the dissent in the State Department about the management of the Biden administration war, according to two expert sources. After the segment was issued, the cheeks appointed the former president of CBS News and veteran producer Susan Zirinsky as editor of standards to supervise “highly complex and delicate issues such as war in the Middle East,” according to a memorandum.
People close to the lawsuit describe the conversations of agreement in Trump's demand as preliminary. Some executives suggested privately that resolving the demand was the price of doing business in the second Trump administration. These people saw an agreement as an efficient means to keep CBS out of court and accelerate the end of the paratrooper agreement.
Paramount and Skydance Media also declined to comment.
Carr's FCC investigation occurs after his agency last week revived a complaint filed by the American Rights Center, which was also taken into account with the CBS Editions producers of the Harris interview.
“There is a line between the editorial discretion, which is protected, and the distortion of the news or the manipulation of news, which is not,” said Daniel Suhr, president of the non -profit group, in an interview at the beginning of this week.
“When there are serious concerns raised, in general, the regulator investigates and resolves it based on what the investigation finds,” said Suhr. “That's what we expect here.”
The FCC commissioner, Anna M. Gómez, a Democrat, opposed the agency's measure.
“This is a government retaliation movement against the issuing whose content or coverage is perceived as unfavorable,” Gomez said in a statement. “It is designed to instill fear in the transmission stations and influence the editorial decisions of a network.”
CBS News executives had argued to launch a complete transcription of Harris's interview before the FCC investigation. But they saw that as a dangerous precedent because the raw transcripts of the edited interviews are generally released to address the problems related to the possible defamation. Trump's demand is not a defamation case.
“If I were CBS, I wouldn't solve it,” said Jeff McCall, a professor of media studies at the University of Depauw. “I would fight and simply go on the way that this is editorial discretion. Free Press has every right to issue judgments as it is convenient, even if they want to take sides in an election. “
