Call it Mission: Not Totally Impossible. Shari Redstone, the controlling shareholder of the $8 billion media giant Paramount Global, began talks to sell her stake in December 2023. A year and change later, staff, shareholders, and even viewers are on the edge of their seats, wondering what will happen next.
Paramount’s lawyers are in the midst of settlement talks with President Donald Trump over his complaints about the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. CBS said it left out a clumsy answer to a question about US-Israel relations because of time constraints, though it had used the answer in a promotion for the upcoming interview. Trump believes CBS’s top news show portrayed Harris in a positive light, interfering with the election, and sued under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, a law usually employed to protest false advertising claims. Trump had declined the show’s invitation to speak ahead of the election. He expanded his case in February, claiming $20 billion, up from an initial $10 billion, for having been harmed as a competitor to CBS via his social media network, Truth Social. The network, meanwhile, believes its edited interview has First Amendment protections.
Redstone has reportedly said that she is taking herself out of the talks, leaving it to her three chief executives to figure out the mess. That has left some feeling frustrated. “She needs to resolve this. Shari has the most to lose,” said one person familiar with the position of Redstone, who would have to pay a $400 million breakup fee if the deal were not to happen. (A CBS News spokesperson declined to comment. The White House press office didn’t respond for comment.)
If things go in Trump’s favor, Paramount Global will become the latest media organization to pay Trump millions, sending one more chill down journalism’s spine. On April 30, The Wall Street Journal reported that Paramount is ready to settle the dispute for between $15 million and $20 million. But if the president doesn’t like the number, a deal may not happen at all.
Adding to the pressure, a group of nine senators wrote a letter, made public on May 7, to the Paramount Global controlling shareholder, imploring her not to settle the case with Trump: “In our view, that would be 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 lawmakers wrote. “It will only embolden him to shakedown, extort, and silence CBS and other media outlets that have the courage to report about issues that Trump may not like.”
Trump shared a furious statement on Truth Social on Wednesday, May 7, about the Emmy nomination that the 60 Minutes interview with Harris received in the editing category. “These antics are why the American People have no trust in the Press, and demand that the Media, very much including 60 Minutes, CBS and its owners, be held responsible for their corruption and lies, which is exactly what we are doing in Court!”
Meanwhile, Redstone had been in on-again-off-again merger talks with David Ellison, the owner of Skydance Media. At one point Redstone even walked away from those negotiations before returning to finalize a complicated deal that will involve her shedding her voting control in Paramount by selling her stake in National Amusements, Inc. The current agreement with Skydance is backed by both Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison and Gerry Cardinale’s private-equity firm, RedBird Capital (where former CNN chief Jeff Zucker has a joint-venture business).
If Brendan Carr’s Federal Communications Commission gives the deal the go-ahead, Redstone will get to cash a check worth more than $1.75 billion and exit the business her grandfather Mickey Redstone helped establish. Redstone inherited her father Sumner’s controlling stake in what was then known as ViacomCBS in 2020, after his death at age 97.
Despite Redstone’s rocky relationship with her father, who, according to a 2015 WSJ article, once tried to buy her shares for $1 billion, he would likely be proud of the cards she’s played. Perhaps surprisingly, Redstone is well acquainted with Trump, which may help her navigate these stormy seas. Redstone is also trying to steer the tricky merger through the FCC, which is overseeing the request for the transfer of 28 local CBS TV stations and other licenses to Ellison family–controlled assets, even as it investigates the network for “news distortion” and is forcing Paramount to limit specific corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Paramount owns BET, one of the top cable destinations for African American viewers.
Redstone has shown she is unafraid to make tough decisions. But even after the ouster of Paramount CEO Bob Bakish (whose salary had hit nearly $87 million) and the installation of three chief executives (being paid around $20 million each), the 71-year-old, one of the most powerful women in media, is left with few good choices. Her relationships may help her survive it.
Redstone has done her best to curry favor with Republicans. “She’s right of center, but not by any means extreme,” according to one person who knows her. “She’s generally interested in news being as accurate as possible. People are a mix of things. She’s very supportive of race relations and things that would be called DEI. She’s not dogmatic, and she’s not a party regular for anyone at all.”
In January, Paramount hired Trump fundraiser and lobbyist Brian Ballard to help see the company through the rocky merger-approval process. Ballard Partners is also working for big tobacco companies in a fight against unlicensed vape products. Perhaps hoping a Republican government would be more likely to sign off on her plan, Redstone, through the company PAC, gave slightly more to Republican candidates than to Democrats in the most recent full-year cycle, according to opensecrets.org. And Redstone might have hoped for some goodwill from Trump, who once called to offer words of support amid her fight to get rid of former company management before he was ever a presidential candidate.
“He would call and tell her to keep up the good fight,” according to the person who knows her. “I think she feels personally appreciative of that.” (Another possible connection: Mark Burnett, producer of The Apprentice, sold Survivor to CBS.) Redstone and Trump have even lunched together. “Part of what is surprising is that he is giving CBS such a hard time when Shari is on one side and [Larry] Ellison is on the other,” that source said. The Oracle cofounder appeared in February at the Oval Office and is an ally of Trump.
Speaking at the New York Times DealBook Summit in 2016, just after Trump won the presidency, Redstone told interviewer Andrew Ross Sorkin, “I’m actually really optimistic for someone to come in and unify the country. I think he listened to a lot of voices around this country that people weren’t listening to about some of the challenges that we have, and I’m hopeful that he’ll surround himself with really good people and start to solve some of the problems we have.” In 2019, Redstone discussed launching a right-wing news channel to take on Fox News, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
At the center of Redstone’s dilemma is a news division that is at odds with both her mission to make peace with Trump and her life’s work fighting antisemitism. Redstone’s passion for Israeli causes has caused friction with news operatives for years. “She has no interest in understanding life in the Palestinian world,” one person told me, claiming Redstone did not understand journalism. A source close to Redstone denied this, saying she cared about innocent people on all sides of war. (Redstone declined to comment for this story.)
Redstone has weighed in on news coverage numerous times in recent months, including sticking up for anchor Tony Dokoupil after he challenged Ta-Nehisi Coates on air. Coates had been on CBS Mornings to discuss his book The Message, which is about censorship and includes a section on Israel and Palestine (Vanity Fair excerpted a portion of the book). But the interview got heated and Dokoupil was accused of not meeting editorial standards. (Dokoupil didn’t respond to a request for comment sent via a CBS PR representative.)
Only a few blocks away from its New York headquarters, an adaptation of Good Night, and Good Luck opened to packed houses on Broadway. The play stars George Clooney as CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow, who bravely challenges Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Amidst all this came the resignation of Bill Owens, the executive producer of 60 Minutes, one of American broadcasting’s longest-running, most respected, and most lucrative TV news series. Owens has claimed to be a victim of corporate interference, telling staff in a memo, “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,” according to a copy shared with The New York Times. “So, having defended this show—and what we stand for—from every angle, over time with everything I could, I am stepping aside so the show can move forward.” Staff wonder if Owens’s departure might have been a gesture of self-sacrifice, aimed to allow the news division to avoid having to apologize to the White House.
His close friend and anchor Scott Pelley went further, unspooling the unhappy tale for viewers on air on April 27, explaining that the company’s corporate parent is waiting on merger approval from the Trump administration for the deal with Ellison. “He did it for us, and you,” Pelley told the 60 Minutes audience in an on-air segment, speaking about Owens’s exit. “Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways. None of our stories has been blocked, but Bill felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires.”
Pelley has pushed a series of segments critical of the president, who has a long-standing beef with the show. (Trump walked off the set as Lesley Stahl began interviewing him back in 2020. A previous dispute in 2005 between Republican president George W. Bush and Dan Rather and his producer ultimately ended Rather’s career at the network.) Owens’s accusations have prompted questions internally about what exactly happened, though it appears that Owens felt that the heat kept getting turned up on him via Susan Zirinsky, who was appointed in January to a role overseeing sensitive news stories. The news division had been beefing up its oversight of news, which had become stretched by multiple growing responsibilities and under fire from critics, including the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, which had complained about a segment covering State Department resignations over President Joe Biden’s Israel defense policies.
Two TV news executives said that 60 Minutes made a mistake in the editing of the Harris interview. “You are not supposed to make the edit that they made,” said one person, describing the use of the shorter answer given by the then vice president in response to a question about US relations with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. CBS News released the transcripts, showing it had used one portion of Harris’s wordy answer in a promo during Face the Nation and a more succinct answer during the Sunday show.
“If Mike Wallace had done the interview, he would have said, ‘I can’t believe what you just said to me because it was garbage, and you’re supposed to be president?’” A second experienced TV news executive agreed and said: “Let her do the word salad, and then say, ‘She finally said this…’ You are being true and reflective of the conversation, and they didn’t do that. It’s relevant if you have a commander in chief who can’t communicate.”
A person close to the show pushed back on the idea of a mistake: “This is absolutely untrue.” The company responded to the Trump lawsuit in a statement that read: “The interview was not doctored; and 60 Minutes did not hide any part of…Vice President Kamala Harris’s answer to the question at issue. 60 Minutes fairly presented the interview to inform the viewing audience, and not to mislead it. The lawsuit Trump has brought today against CBS is completely without merit and we will vigorously defend against it.”
The first TV news executive believes that Pelley has become too zealous. “The problem is, Trump is a crazy, kooky, dangerous president. It’s not our job to be the place that looks for every angle possible to take him down. The audience as well. It’s not what 60 Minutes is meant to be.” This person continued, “It’s hurting the broadcast.” The May 4 edition of 60 Minutes included a Pelley segment on Trump’s targeting of law firms. The final broadcast of the season, airing this coming weekend (Sunday, May 18), is not expected to include Pelley.
Owens’s estimated $3 million contract is being honored, according to a person familiar with discussions. The question is: Who is now running the show? Technically, executive editor Tanya Simon, the daughter of legendary anchor Bob Simon, is in charge, but sources say Pelley had made himself the unofficial executive producer, in part because of his close partnership with Owens. A person close to the show said there was no question that Simon was in charge, while another person said staffers were taking their lead from Pelley because of his long tenure, leadership, and tough stance on Trump actions. (Pelley declined a request for comment via a spokesperson.)
Several people familiar with internal conversations said there’s also been friction between the Owens-Pelley camp and Zirinsky, the former CBS News chief. She stepped down from CBS News in 2021 and was given a wide-ranging programming-making role at the company, but stepped back in January after a segment about Biden’s State Department attracted criticism. Zirinsky returned as part of a broader effort to improve standards oversight across the board, which involved reviewing sensitive content at 60 Minutes. The announcement of Zirinsky’s appointment was made not by president of news Wendy McMahon, but by CBS CEO and president George Cheeks. The beefed-up standards team includes a returning Al Ortiz, a former EP of CBS Evening News who had previously retired, and Tom Cibrowski, working as president of news. (Zirinsky declined to comment.)
Zirinsky was given the title of interim executive editor. One rumor around CBS News is that Owens banned Zirinsky from appearing at their offices. While a person close to the show said that was untrue, Zirinsky has not physically been to the 60 Minutes offices, which are located near the CBS News main headquarters. Another source said that Zirinsky is close to Redstone and had a difficult relationship with Owens. Management of the show is complicated by the fact that 60 Minutes has historically been given leave to operate outside of the control of CBS News. The new layer of fact-checking, albeit one that had previously existed in other eras, had clearly irked Owens, though he noted in his exit comments that the show’s segments had not been blocked.
One TV executive wondered why Owens didn’t call out Redstone by name or reference Trump in his departure statement. As this person put it, “He’s still taking their blood money.” (Owens did not respond to a message requesting comment.)
Some people familiar with corporate politics point to McMahon, the president and CEO of CBS News and stations, who also runs CBS Media Ventures, which is jostling in court to retain the rights to distribute Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! And jeopardy is what they say McMahon may be in. She had gone to bat for Owens to get him a significant raise, one source told me, but she isn’t viewed as having strong footing at the moment given that the revamp of CBS Evening News, which saw the departure of Norah O’Donnell from the anchor chair, ended up losing viewers. “She supported Bill until the very end,” said one TV executive familiar with the company. McMahon declined to comment.
As the show’s month-to-month season comes to a close, Trump is scoring some wins—China agreeing to a pause on trade tariff tit-for-tat and the return of the last living American hostage held in Gaza. “The obvious fact is there are wins—tariffs and Trump directly dealing with Hamas. There are victories and they will be reported. CBS has to report the wins when they exist,” said one CBS News insider.
Another person familiar with the company summed up the problem thus: “It’s a no-win situation. If you want a deal to go through, you’re going to be in a compromise with the government.” If the deal were to get blocked, the news division would be low on the list of anyone’s investment priorities, according to this person.
The post Shari Redstone and Paramount’s Own Mission: Impossible—Survive a Trump Lawsuit and a Billion-Dollar Merger appeared first on Vanity Fair.
