After yet another CBS News figure resigned in apparent protest, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) repeated his calls for Paramount Global’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, not to settle with President Donald Trump over his “bogus” lawsuit concerning a “60 Minutes” segment.
CBS News President Wendy McMahon announced Monday she was leaving her post, saying she could not agree with Paramount, the network’s parent company, on how to proceed.
“Bill Owens, the producer of CBS’s 60 Minutes, resigned in protest,” Sanders wrote on social media, referencing Owens’ April exit. “Wendy McMahon, the head of CBS News, has now resigned. I say to Shari Redstone: Enough is enough. Do not capitulate to Trump’s attack on a free press. Do not settle Trump’s bogus lawsuit against 60 Minutes.”
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Redstone has reportedly indicated she’s in favor of settling Trump’s $20 billion lawsuit, in which he claims CBS News deceptively edited an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris in October in a way that would help her beat him in the presidential election.
Redstone’s position is apparently at odds with those of staffers including Owens and McMahon, who both expressed grave concern about the company surrendering to legal pressure from Trump.
“It’s become clear that the company and I do not agree on the path forward,” McMahon wrote in a memo to CBS News staff obtained by HuffPost.
Owens delivered a similar farewell in his memo from last month, writing, “Over the past months, it has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for ‘60 Minutes,’ right for the audience.”
Earlier this month, Sanders spearheaded a letter from him and eight other senators urging Paramount Global not to “capitulate to this dangerous move to authoritarianism” from Trump. The letter commended the company for initially filing two motions to dismiss Trump’s case, but said the movement toward a settlement is “a grave mistake.”
“Rewarding Trump with tens of millions of dollars for filing this bogus lawsuit will not cause him to back down on his war against the media and a free press,” the senators wrote. “It will only embolden him to shake down, extort and silence CBS and other media outlets that have the courage to report about issues that Trump may not like.”
