The Paramount debacle: We're in an era of journalism falling victim to corporate greed

In a bid to secure federal approval of its proposed Skydance merger, Paramount Global settles a frivolous lawsuit filed by President Trump.

Let me begin by saying that CBS News did not handle the 2024 Kamala Harris interview perfectly. Viewers were shown two different versions of a crucial answer. The first was on Face the Nation, then later on 60 Minutes. Both answers were drawn from the same question and were part of an extended response from the then-vice president.

This could have been explained at the time the interviews aired, but it wasn’t. The editing of the Harris responses was clumsy and raised eyebrows when viewers noticed discrepancies in responses to the same question. At a time when partisans are quick to assign motive to every journalistic decision, the inconsistency fueled suspicion. Still, the editing did not hurt Donald Trump, who was the GOP nominee at the time. He won Texas, where the lawsuit was filed, and the controversy had no real impact on the presidential race.

But Paramount executives didn’t seem to care that they had a strong legal case. Their focus was elsewhere: getting their merger approved, and journalism ethics be damned. They just wanted to curry favor with Trump.

No betrayal of journalism is worse than trying to please the powerful. Hold them accountable. Report on them fairly, but fearlessly.

Trump, of course, sees the Paramount capitulation as another way he can bend big media to his liking because he controls the federal government as long as he is president. The question conservatives should ask is this the way they want federal agencies to act when the Democrats hold the presidency.

We’ve entered an era where many news organizations fear how Trump could use the regulatory process to hurt their bottom lines. But the greater threat to their future isn't government pressure. It’s journalism that bends to power and compromises its integrity. When you become a shill for politicians, turn in your reporters notebook,

Virtually every First Amendment lawyer agreed that Trump didn’t have a case, but he had something else: the power to influence a federal agency’s decision on whether to approve the massive merger. So Paramount, which owns CBS News, took the easy way out.

There have been many early takes on the issue, but I will offer this statement from the Freedom of the Press Foundation. The Foundation interviewed legendary First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams.

Abrams, who represented The New York Times during the Pentagon Papers case and was involed in many other First Amendment cases, told the Freedom of the Press Foundation that “the agreement of Paramount to pay any settlement amount to Donald Trump based on a ‘60 Minutes’ broadcast that was both journalistically responsible and fully protected by the First Amendment is an ominous blow to press freedom in our nation.”

When I was an investigative reporter for The Fresno Bee, I always believed that my company, and its lawyers, would stand behind me when legal threats came my way. The lawyers always got nervous, but they had our backs. And this was importrant because legal threats came often, especially when reporting on powerful individuals in the San Joaquin Valley. These people believed they were above criticism, and frequently tried to intimidate journalists with threats of litigation and other tactics. They knew it was costly to defend a lawsuit, even when the reporting was accurate and well-documented.

I also remember a Fresno mayor from decades ago who hired a private investigator to dig into the backgrounds of me and my reporting partner, Royal Calkins. The goal was simple: make our work as uncomfortable as possible. At one point, we even suspected our phones were being tapped. We couldn’t prove it, but we started communicating in code just in case.

City Hall had other ways of sending a message. I began receiving parking tickets while parked in clearly marked media spaces, even with my press credentials displayed on the dashboard. When I raised the issue, the city manager’s office told me that if I felt the citations were unfair, I was welcome to plead my case in the courthouse down the block. This is how petty Fresno City Hall can get.

Politicians may hold office, but journalists hold them to account through their reporting. That’s the power of a well-told story. But that power vanishes the moment you get too cozy with the powerful, or you decide to compromise your ethics to get a merger approved.

The easiest decision an editor can make is approving an upbeat feature story about a child’s pet. Things get more complicated when the people you’re writing about have money for lawyers, and they don’t want their deeds exposed. So investigative reporting can be costly. That’s why you don’t see much investigative journalism happening in Fresno anymore. News outlets don’t want to hire a lawyer, or do the deep reporting it takes to get a story published.

In the old days of newspapering, we had lawyers on staff whose job was to help get stories into print; not to find legal excuses to kill them.

I recall the words of legendary journalist Frank McCulloch, who once told me: Defending solid journalism is the price we should pay for protecting our First Amendment freedoms.

Unfortunately, we are in a time when most news outlets don’t want to spend the money hiring lawyers to defend their work. That’s too bad.

(This column has been updated.)