Shari Redstone, the chair and controlling shareholder of Paramount Global, is confronting a personal health crisis as she navigates a high-profile battle over the future of her media empire and a lawsuit filed by President Trump against her news division at CBS.
Ms. Redstone, 71, was recently diagnosed with thyroid cancer and underwent surgery last month, she acknowledged in an interview after The New York Times asked about her condition.
“Shari Redstone was diagnosed with thyroid cancer earlier this spring,” said Molly Morse, a spokeswoman for Ms. Redstone.
The diagnosis adds a new layer of complexity to the legal and political quagmire that Ms. Redstone and her company, which controls television stations, streaming platforms and a movie studio, have been struggling to navigate.
Ms. Redstone said she sought medical attention about two months ago after experiencing fatigue and other symptoms. She received the diagnosis the next day. Surgeons removed her thyroid gland but were unable to remove all of the cancer cells because they had spread to her vocal cords.
Ms. Redstone continues to be treated with radiation, and “she and her family are grateful that her prognosis is excellent,” Ms. Morse said. “While it has been a challenging period, she is maintaining all professional and philanthropic activities throughout her treatment, which is ongoing.” She was recently involved in the selection of three new Paramount board members.
Knowledge of Ms. Redstone’s condition was confined to a close circle of family members, friends and advisers. Ms. Redstone also shared the news with David Ellison, the tech heir who runs Skydance, which has agreed to acquire Paramount and the Redstone family’s stake.
Skydance, backed by Mr. Ellison’s father, Larry, struck a multibillion-dollar deal to acquire Paramount last year after months of on-again-off-again negotiations. The two companies said the deal would infuse Paramount’s traditional TV and movie businesses with new technological expertise. But the deal has languished, with approval by the Federal Communications Commission a major hurdle.
A significant complication arose in October when Mr. Trump sued CBS News and “60 Minutes,” accusing the popular news program of deceptively editing an interview with his Democratic opponent in the presidential race, Vice President Kamala Harris. Mr. Trump has denounced “60 Minutes” as “fraudulent” and said CBS “should pay a big price.”
Many legal experts have called the lawsuit baseless, and news networks routinely edit interviews before airing them. But the F.C.C. has not yet signed off on the Skydance deal, and some Paramount executives believe that a settlement with Mr. Trump would facilitate the agency’s approval. (Brendan Carr, the chairman of the F.C.C., has said the lawsuit is unrelated to the approval process; Paramount has also said the two are not connected.)
Lawyers for Paramount and Mr. Trump have been locked in settlement talks for months. While the sides have inched closer to an agreement, no settlement appears imminent, two people with knowledge of the talks said. The president has been seeking more than $25 million, and Paramount recently signaled that it would pay $15 million. The two sides are consulting regularly with a mediator.
The prolonged negotiations have frustrated executives at Paramount and Skydance, and they have held discussions about the possibility that a settlement may not be reached. Some have discussed the possibility that their merger could fall apart. Mr. Trump’s team has threatened to file an additional lawsuit, over a “60 Minutes” segment in May about the president’s executive orders that targeted law firms.
A lawyer for Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment.
The unease over the lawsuit has led executives at Paramount and CBS to apply more scrutiny to segments on “60 Minutes” that could be construed as critical of the Trump administration. CBS News has not killed a story because of the pressure, but the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” Bill Owens, resigned in April, saying he “would not be allowed” to make independent journalistic decisions.
Last month, CBS forced out the news division’s president, Wendy McMahon, who said in a memo that “the company and I do not agree on the path forward.”
Ms. Redstone previously recused herself from her board’s discussions of how to handle the Trump suit, given that her financial stake in the pending Skydance deal is so much greater than the stakes of other shareholders, whose interests the directors are expected to represent.
Even before her cancer diagnosis, though, she told board members that she wanted the company to explore a settlement with Mr. Trump. Ms. Redstone has said she wants to avoid a protracted legal war with the president that could cost hundreds of millions of dollars and jeopardize other divisions that have business before the government, two people familiar with her thinking said.
CBS journalists believe the reputation of “60 Minutes” is at stake. And senators like Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont have warned that any payment by Paramount to Mr. Trump could be construed as a bribe and would potentially set off a congressional hearing.
“Politicians and presidents can’t go suing people over stories they do not like,” Mr. Sanders said in a recent interview. “That is not what this country is supposed to be about.”
The prospect of being accused of bribery, and perhaps facing legal action because of it, has vexed Paramount’s directors, who must weigh the corporate benefits of a settlement against the perception that they are greenlighting a deal to secure an unrelated merger.
Meanwhile, the makeup of the Paramount board is changing. The company said this week that Judith McHale, a long-serving director, would not stand for re-election and that it was nominating three new directors: Mary Boies, counsel to the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner; Charles E. Ryan, a co-founder of Almaz Capital; and Roanne Sragow Licht, an adjunct professor at Boston University.
Ms. Redstone also harbors her own concerns about the editorial judgment of CBS News. She has acknowledged being troubled by some of her network’s news coverage, and on occasion has raised those concerns publicly and spoken to corporate leadership.
Ms. Redstone has told people that her priorities remain her family and philanthropy, and that the business issues related to CBS and Paramount pale in significance to her recent diagnosis. While she closely monitors developments at Paramount and remains eager to see a deal with Skydance completed, she continues to be occupied with medical consultations and treatment.
Lauren Hirsch contributed reporting.
James B. Stewart has been a reporter and business columnist for The Times since 2011, focusing on the human drama of the business world and the struggle for corporate power.
Michael M. Grynbaum writes about the intersection of media, politics and culture. He has been a media correspondent at The Times since 2016.
Benjamin Mullin reports for The Times on the major companies behind news and entertainment. Contact him securely on Signal at +1 530-961-3223 or at [email protected].
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