Paramount is ready to settle a $ 20 billion lawsuit against CBS News

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Paramount is ready to conclude a deal to resolve the lawsuit by Donald Trump worth $ 20 billion against CBS News, after the studio owner, Shari Redstone, has grown up about the program balance in recent months.

Paramont He was ready to settle Trump’s suit, which claims the pioneer to CBS 60 minutes A person with deceitful liberation with his political opponent, Kamala Harris, said last year that two people are familiar with this issue.

The people said that the board of directors of Paramount submitted the financial conditions for a possible settlement at a meeting on April 18. One of the people said that a possible settlement could be in tens of millions of dollars. Lawyers were appointed to both sides to start mediation on Wednesday.

CBS lawyers said that Trump’s lawsuit is baseless, and some of his journalists have criticized the potential deal as a surrender to the White House by one of the most famous well -known news collections in the country.

A person familiar with her thinking said that the openness to the settlement comes after Redston, the billionaire that controls Paramount, has become disappointed by the tone of some CBS coverage in recent months.

The person said: “I felt anxious for a while now about the CBS balance,” the person said. Redston, who participated in the organizations fighting anti -Semitism after Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023 on Israel, was subjected to CBS coverage of the Israeli war last year. She caused her criticism in conference In October.

Although Redston has retracted itself from the Paramount Council’s deliberations on the settlement, it preferred an agreement. “We cannot be in complete stopping, and we have to move forward,” Redston told the council.

Redston and her family are also in line with $ 1 billion in compensation if the Trump administration agrees to the agreed integration of Paramount with Hollywood Studio Skydance. President Brendan Car, the media organizer, reviews the deal for several months.

Redston was shaken after Trump criticize In CBS 60 minutes On April 13, after the broadcast of stories about Ukraine and Greenland. A person familiar with this said.

A person close to Redston said: “You have not requested modifications to the stories. All I requested is that they are fair and balanced.” The person added: “Her thinking was:” We are in the eye of the storm now. It is published about the pieces. “

Journalists in the CBS news room have taken Redstone movements as an example of the billionaire owner who interferes in the editing strategy. Over the past year, Amazon Jeff Bizos and Pharma Billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong rose Likewise, I angered news rooms In the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, respectively.

60 minutes Best Product Bill Owens Leave Last week, in protest against what he said was the loss of journalistic independence. In unusual reprimand on the air, 60 minutes The anchor Scott Billy ended the broadcast on Sunday by telling viewers Bramont “to oversee our content in new ways” as she tried to complete the merger.

The puzzle emphasizes Paramount on the extraordinary power that the American president played on American companies.

Car denies a CBS lawsuit that has affected its deliberations on the Paramount’s Skydance deal. But Paramount executives believe that the two operations are intertwined.

The epic has brought criticism from the CBS journalists, who say Paramount’s abdication to Trump will lead to permanent damage to the news institution.

“When (Redston will be) will destroy the value of the origin that you are trying to sell, by informing the world mainly that one of the most brands in the news can be silenced, tampered with or insult when it is fast,” said Gabriel Kabeer, a former editor of the Wall Street magazine, a professor now at South Nichal California University.

60 minutes He has been a key player from the American living rooms since the 1970s and the home of journalistic myths such as Walter Kronkite. The program still brings 7 million viewers on Sunday evenings. It has continued to broadcast wide coverage of the Trump administration in recent weeks.

“In the press, the currency is confidence,” he said. “CBS News is one of the few places that are still able to maintain a high level of confidence and strong reputation (in the United States).”

The New York Times previously reported the details of Paramount’s plans and April Board of Directors meeting.

Last year, Trump filed a lawsuit against ABC News after broadcaster George Stefanopoulos said falsely on the air that Trump had been found “responsible for rape.” Disney, who owns ABC, in December Pay 15 million dollars Trump’s presidential library to settle the defamation lawsuit.

Trump hit CBS again on Wednesday with mediation start.

“The issue that we have for 60 minutes, CBS, and Paramount is a real winner. They deceived and united the American people at unprecedented levels in the political arena” wrote on the social media platform. “CBS is out of control, at the levels that have never been unprecedented, and they must pay a large price for this. Make America great again!”

Participated in additional reports from Christopher Graims