Not just CBS. How Trump 2.0 is already changing Hollywood and media

If Paramount Global settles President Trump’s multibillion-dollar CBS lawsuit over a “60 Minutes” Kamala Harris interview, it will be a reminder that the unusually robust press freedoms enjoyed in the U.S. are only as good as the institutions tasked with exercising and upholding them.

Paramount-owned CBS News came under attack late last year, with Trump’s lawyers accusing the venerable network of deceptively editing an interview with then-Vice President Harris to present her in a more favorable light during the closing weeks of the campaign. Over the weekend, Trump’s damages claim doubled to $20 billion.

Separately, CBS last week turned over the raw footage and transcript of its October Harris interview in response to a separate Federal Communications Commission inquiry. Newly appointed FCC Chairman Brendan Carr recently revived a complaint filed by the Center for American Rights, which took issue with CBS producers’ edits of the Harris interview.

This is a high-stakes dilemma for Paramount, which is in the process of merging with tech scion David Ellison’s Skydance Media in an $8-billion transaction after years of chronic under-investment. Paramount needs FCC approval for the Skydance deal to advance. The agency’s sign-off is required for the transfer of CBS television licenses.

As my colleagues Meg James and Stephen Battaglio have written, the conflict is also a worrying development for free speech advocates, particularly given that “60 Minutes” is a standard-bearer for quality television journalism. The materials released by CBS confirm that the editing of the Harris interview was an example of common practice in such situations where you have to pare down a long conversation into a digestible TV segment.

To recap: CBS ran an excerpt of the interview during its public affairs show “Face the Nation,” which included a wordy response Harris gave to a question from Bill Whitaker about the Israel-Hamas war. Then, “60 Minutes” aired with a different part of Harris’ response that was shorter and more direct. In other words, it was better for TV. Conservatives pounced. Trump, who backed out of his own “60 Minutes” sit-down, cried foul.

CBS’ defense is strong, legal experts told The Times. But the bigger picture here is that media, entertainment and tech companies are facing a pivotal moment in the second Trump era, and many are choosing to try to placate the new administration rather than provoke more ire. Some experts say it’s a self-defeating strategy.

“This is an act of pure cowardice for short-term gain that corrupts every journalistic value imaginable,” USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism professor Gabriel Kahn told James at the end of January.

CBS would not be the first to cave. Previously, ABC News in December agreed to pay $15 million toward Trump’s presidential library, plus $1 million in legal fees, to settle a lawsuit over George Stephanopoulos’ erroneous on-air assertion that the president had been found civilly liable for raping E. Jean Carroll (a jury actually found him liable for sexual abuse). Legally, ABC had a more difficult case than CBS, though probably still a winnable one.

Entertainment is feeling the effects too. Hollywood’s backing away from political battles began even before Trump beat Harris. After premiering at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival in May, the young Trump biopic “The Apprentice” struggled to find a theatrical distributor who would risk taking it on after the candidate threatened legal action.

Tom Ortenberg’s Briarcliff Entertainment acquired the rights in August, leaving itself just weeks to mount a promotional campaign for theaters. The movie still doesn’t have a streaming deal, despite Oscar nominations for Sebastian Stan (who played Trump) and Jeremy Strong (as legal pitbull and Trump mentor Roy Cohn), The Times’ Samantha Masunaga reported. The film is, however, available for digital purchase and rental.

The situation with “The Apprentice” contrasts starkly with Amazon’s decision to buy a Melania Trump documentary, executive produced by the first lady herself, for a reported $40 million. This came just months after Amazon founder Jeff Bezos killed the Washington Post’s planned endorsement of Harris. (Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong also blocked his paper’s Harris endorsement shortly before the election.)

It all speaks to a moment when the media and entertainment industry is destabilized. Technological changes and shifting audience preferences have diminished the influence of traditional news organizations, with podcasters and social media taking big chunks of people’s attention. Audiences want personalities and opinion. The news landscape is increasingly fragmented.

The recent examples of capitulation expose the vulnerabilities of a weakened, consolidated and corporatized media industry, where the fates of news organizations are closely tied with other industries that require interaction with the government. Although the news industry has problems of its own, the businesses that often help buttress it (including movies and television) are themselves facing uncertain futures, especially in Paramount’s case.

It’s logical that the parties with the most to lose in the CBS dispute — Paramount’s controlling shareholder Shari Redstone and the Ellison family — just want this latest obstacle removed. The proposed Paramount-Skydance transaction, which had been the subject of endless negotiations and speculation even before it was inked, is a saga that refuses to end.

But instead of making the problem go away, CBS would be selling out press freedom by settling Trump’s suit, argued Ronnie London, general counsel of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, in a recent post for Reason.

“When parties to legal disputes resolve them with monetary payments rather than seeing them through to a decision, it is often said they are ‘buying peace,’” London wrote. “Here, there is no peace to be bought, at least not without reassurance from the courts that CBS can cover political matters as its editorial discretion dictates, no matter how much it might displease the president or his appointees.”

Not only will such an action set a bad precedent. It also won’t work. If media organizations fold now, there’s every reason to think Trump’s legal team and other self-styled free speech warriors will do the exact same thing the next time some legacy news outlet gets under his skin.

Stuff we wrote

Inside the bare-knuckle legal brawl between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. The legal drama highlights conflicting claims about the tactics used by powerful celebrity attorneys on behalf of their clients.

Disney studio earnings soar with ‘Moana 2.’ Hurricanes hit theme park profits. Walt Disney Co. reported first-quarter earnings as the company continued its comeback with recent box-office success, including a hit animated sequel.

CNN finds itself at a digital crossroads after years of turmoil. A major pivot to digital is coming. But will consumers value the CNN brand enough to pay for it online? And is it too little, too late?

Judge allows CBS to distribute ‘Jeopardy,’ ‘Wheel of Fortune’ amid Sony dispute. CBS won an early legal victory against Sony Pictures, which owns and produces the popular shows and had tried to cut out the network by taking them directly to television stations.

A grinning Kendrick Lamar brings ‘Not Like Us’ to the Super Bowl halftime show. The Compton rapper spent much of his 13 minutes on the field at New Orleans’ Caesars Superdome flirting with whether or not he’d perform his 2024 smash about Drake.

ICYMI:

• Chappell Roan responds to writer who criticized her Grammy speech
• Warner Music buys Bruno Mars, Adele songs in $450-million deal
• After shuttering in the pandemic, an ArcLight theater gets a second act
• This animated sequel made $1 billion in China alone
• Television Academy to raise AI with lawmakers

Number of the week

The big game itself was not what Fox or the NFL wanted, with the Philadelphia Eagles blowing out the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 in a dull rematch that was blessedly livened up by Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show.

But even while lacking much in the way of thrills, Super Bowl LIX claimed a huge viewership number. The battle at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans drew 126 million viewers Sunday, according to early Nielsen data and projections from Fox and the NFL.

If the total holds up when final official numbers are issued Tuesday, the game would be up slightly from last year’s record of 123.7 million viewers who watched the Chiefs’ 25-22 win over the San Francisco 49ers on CBS, wrote The Times’ Stephen Battaglio.

Nothing tops the scale of the audience the NFL can draw. Every single one of the top 10 telecasts of 2024 was a pro football game. Of the top 20, a total of 15 were NFL matchups. (Football was even more dominant in 2023, when there were no Olympics and the World Series was weak.)

This year, Super Bowl advertisers paid as much as $8 million for a 30-second spot to get their wares in front of that many eyeballs.

ChatGPT maker OpenAI made its Super Bowl debut, while Google and Salesforce touted artificial intelligence tools, once again giving big tech a place at the table alongside the beer and snack commercials (the stuff people really want to see).

Did the ads themselves deliver? Times columnist Mary McNamara wrote that, with few exceptions, the lineup proved that television advertising is a “dying art.”

Other than Eagles fans, there was another winner: Tubi, the ad-supported, Fox Corp.-owned streaming service that let millions of people watch the game for free. Fox said an average of 13.6 million viewers watched the game on Tubi.

Film shoots

The latest weekly local production data from FilmLA.

Finally ...

Read: “James,” a novel by Percival Everett.