Wendy McMahon stop her function as CEO and president of CBS Information on Monday because the community’s guardian firm, Paramount, strikes nearer to settling President Donald Trump’s lawsuit.
In a memo to employees, McMahon introduced her resolution to step down, citing a distinction of opinion with CBS and calling the previous few months on the community “challenging.”
“It’s become clear that the company and I do not agree on the path forward. It’s time for me to move on and for this organization to move forward with new leadership,” she wrote.
Paramount reportedly plans to settle a $20 billion lawsuit that Trump filed in November 2024, when Trump alleged {that a} “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris main as much as the 2024 election—along with different reporting—was “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference.”
For context, Trump refused to be interviewed by “60 Minutes,” although each main occasion presidential candidates normally accomplish that. Trump stormed off the set throughout his 2020 interview after gentle questioning.
First Modification attorneys instructed CNN in November that the go well with is “frivolous and dangerous,” however Paramount seems to be able to settle as a result of it wants federal approval for its proposed $8 billion merger with Skydance Media.
Shari Redstone, Paramount’s lead shareholder, reportedly helps coming to a settlement with Trump, even when it means sidelining the work of the community’s information division.
Invoice Owens, who served as government producer of “60 Minutes,” resigned in April, saying in a memo to employees that it had “become clear I would not be allowed to run the show” with out company interference. He additionally mentioned that he wasn’t allowed to “make independent decisions based on what’s right for ‘60 Minutes,’ what’s right for the audience.”
9 Democratic senators—Bernie Sanders, Dick Durbin, Peter Welch, Chris Murphy, Sheldon Whitehouse, Elizabeth Warren, Ed Markey, Richard Blumenthal, and Jeff Merkley—wrote to Redstone in Might, asking her to not settle. The letter described the Trump go well with as an “an attack on the United States Constitution and the First Amendment.”
McMahon and Owens’ resolution to stop echoes that of Washington Publish contributors Ann Telnaes, Jennifer Rubin, and others who left the paper as proprietor Jeff Bezos has pivoted the outlet to be pro-Trump.
Trump is systematically attacking and suing a number of information organizations for precisely reporting on him and his political campaigns in an try and squelch the free press. He’s additionally within the technique of corrupting organizations like Voice of America to turn out to be a pro-MAGA mouthpiece whereas calling for the defunding of public media.
Reporters With out Borders has referred to as Trump’s campaign an “unconstitutional assault on the country’s press freedom and the right to reliable information in the US and globally.”
And whereas Trump destroys the Structure, it solely helps his trigger that company media shops proceed to bend the knee.
