Welcome to July! Here's the latest on the BBC, AMC, Elon Musk, J. Ann Selzer, "Hamilton," NASA+, and "personal superintelligence for everyone." But first, the looming Paramount-Trump settlement... |
"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.
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Is the windfall worth it? |
The two sides told a Texas court yesterday that they're in "good faith, advanced, settlement negotiations." Paramount, I hear, is motivated to get a deal done ahead of its annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday. A Skydance merger termination deadline (July 7) is also looming.
A Paramount payout to Trump is increasingly seen as an inevitability, given the precedent Disney set last December, but we can't overlook the opposition that exists inside CBS News and across the news industry. Last night, Oliver Darcy reported for Status that all the correspondents on "60 Minutes" signed a letter to Paramount leadership warning of the reputational damage a settlement would cause.
Then there are the bribery allegations. "Even if Paramount directors and officers don't care about the harm to the First Amendment from settling, they need to think hard about whether it's worth the harm to themselves," the Freedom of the Press Foundation remarked yesterday. "Is securing Shari Redstone's windfall worth getting sued or investigated?"
As the WSJ editorial board wrote last week, any settlement will be a "Democratic target." The board said "the better alternative for Paramount and its reputation" is to keep fighting, "win the legal case, vindicate its CBS journalists and the First Amendment, and trust that the FCC has enough integrity to operate as something more than the President's personal protection racket."
Now place yourself in Redstone's shoes: Would you trust the FCC right now?
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'Litigation gamesmanship' |
Yesterday Trump dropped his lawsuit against Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register in federal court — and immediately refiled it in state court. The maneuver happened "one day before an Iowa law intended to provide strong protections against baseless claims like these — an 'anti-SLAPP' statute — goes into effect," Selzer's attorneys at FIRE said. The Register dismissed the move as "litigation gamesmanship" and predicted that Trump will lose "regardless of the forum."
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The Senate waiting 'game' |
The Senate "vote-a-rama" is approaching the 24-hour mark. Since there's no audible action on the floor right now, C-SPAN2 has taken to rerunning some of Sunday's debate about the bill in a split screen while "waiting for a senator to speak" in the live feed. Check CNN.com's live updates page for the latest.
>> Overnight, the Senate adopted an amendment that will allow state AI laws to take effect. The amendment "strikes language from the bill that would have blocked state and local governments from enforcing their own artificial intelligence regulations for 10 years." CNN's Morgan Rimmer has more here.
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Republicans 'fooling themselves' |
"As the debt and the population of retirees rise, cutting taxes while increasing spending has become more and more reckless," National Review editor Ramesh Ponnuru writes in his latest WaPo column. "The cynical take is that Republicans keep coming up with one phony argument after another to evade the fiscal truth. The more alarming truth is that they have done a good job of fooling themselves."
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Here comes Musk's 'America Party' |
"Elon Musk just made his starkest political threat since the election," Hadas Gold writes. Musk is pledging to fund primary challenges to members of Congress "who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history." He also says that if the "insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day."
Musk kept tweeting all night/morning, and Trump swatted back just now, saying, "DOGE is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon."
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"Who's calling? A reporter, and it's often President Donald Trump answering," David Bauder writes. I told him that the president's call habits reminded me of his "Apprentice" era, when business reporters and New York Post columnists could always get Trump on the phone for a pithy quote or two. Read on...
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Saturday's BBC live-stream of Bob Vylan leading a Glastonbury crowd to chant "death, death to the IDF" continues to reverberate today. The Guardian's front page reports on local police opening an inquiry into both the rap punk duo and the Irish rap trio Kneecap. The Daily Telegraph, The Times and The Daily Express all have headlines about BBC director general Tim Davie being under pressure.
>> Meanwhile, Bob Vylan "was slated to go on a US tour beginning in late October," but now that's probably not happening: The State Department says their US visas have been revoked "in light of their hateful tirade," CNN's Jennifer Hansler reports.
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"Right-wing British news channel GB News is launching in the US," Politico's Noah Keate reports. The channel "will have a Washington bureau that broadcasts a nightly two-hour show." It will also "soon announce its first dedicated US political editor," Press Gazette's Charlotte Tobitt reports.
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>> The Supreme Court has agreed to hear "a copyright dispute between Cox Communications and a group of music labels." (Reuters)
>> Sinclair has agreed to pay a $500,000 penalty to settle an FCC investigation that dates back to the Biden years. (TV Tech)
>> AMC's deal with ad giant National CineMedia takes effect today, which means more ads coming to a movie screen near you, Liam Reilly writes. (CNN)
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'Personal superintelligence for everyone' |
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