The New Yorker:

The veteran journalist Lesley Stahl on the pressures at CBS News, the history of Presidential attacks on the news media, and how journalists today should respond.

By David Remnick

Lesley Stahl joined CBS News just in time to cover the Watergate scandal, and went on to become its White House correspondent for three Presidential Administrations. Since 1991, she has been a correspondent for “60 Minutes,” and has reported, in recent years, from Afghanistan, Rwanda, Taiwan, and Bhutan. Stahl is, with thirteen Emmy awards, the senior journalist at the most prestigious news program in television, and, as its owners move to placate the Trump Administration, she is witness to its moment of greatest peril.

CBS is owned by Paramount Global. Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, badly wants to merge the company with Skydance, an entertainment enterprise backed by one of the wealthiest people in the world, the pro-Trump software magnate Larry Ellison. The deal could bring her billions of dollars. One problem: Donald Trump has sued “60 Minutes” for twenty billion dollars. He and his legal team claim—to the derision of nearly all legal experts—that the program edited an interview with Kamala Harris in a way that somehow jeopardized his candidacy in the 2024 election. Rather than challenge Trump, Redstone wants to settle the suit, the better to soothe the President amid pending F.C.C. approval of the multibillion-dollar deal. On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Paramount had offered Trump fifteen million dollars to settle, but the President’s team turned the offer down, insisting on at least twenty-five million, and an apology.

In recent weeks, both Bill Owens, the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” and Wendy McMahon, the C.E.O. of CBS News, resigned from their jobs, citing disagreements with corporate leadership. Among media executives, Redstone is not the only one who seems to be taking stock of her interests and deciding to accommodate the President rather than stand up for the journalists in her employ. Similarly, Jeff Bezos has made moves at the Washington Post that seem to cater to Trump’s interests and protect Amazon, the primary source of his fortune. The executive leadership of Disney, which owns ABC, settled a suit with Trump, who had been displeased with the way George Stephanopoulos had characterized his liability in the sexual-assault case involving the writer E. Jean Carroll.

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