Paramount has agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit from Donald Trump over 60 Minutes’ editing of an interview with Kamala Harris. Trump alleged that the interview was deceptively edited to make Harris look good. This was not true (Harris sounded her usual vacuous self in every edit CBS put out) but even if it had been true, Trump had no case. If the case had been litigated, this baseless lawsuit would have been resolved in Paramount’s favor. But they settled with the president in order to stay in his good graces. Trump originally sought an insane $20 billion in damages.
By capitulating to Trump’s extortion, Paramount has encouraged Trump and others on the right to try this tactic more in future. If you don’t like coverage, file a frivolous lawsuit. You might lose, but on the other hand you might get paid millions of dollars even if you have no claim whatsoever. To Paramount, a profit-seeking corporation, the calculus here was obvious: $16 million is a trivial sum to avoid the president’s ire. Paramount obviously doesn’t care what the implications of this are for journalism, or for others in the media. But the rest of us now have to navigate a world in which the right sees litigation as a great way to squelch totally legitimate critical coverage…
