’60 Minutes’ heavily edited Kamala Harris’s interview answers, unedited transcript reveals
Paramount, the parent company of CBS News, will begin mediation on Wednesday with President Donald Trump’s legal team to settle a lawsuit that accuses 60 Minutes of election interference by deceptively editing a 2024 interview with Kamala Harris.
The Paramount board discussed acceptable financial terms for an out-of-court resolution during its April 18 meeting and is open to settling the $20 billion lawsuit Trump brought against the company’s flagship news program, three people with knowledge of the internal deliberations told the New York Times. The exact amount for the potential settlement remains unclear.
60 Minutes, the most-watched weekly news program in the United States, came under fire after Trump sued in late October, alleging that it deceptively edited its interview with Harris to boost her 2024 presidential campaign. An unedited transcript of the interview, released by the Federal Communications Commission in February, confirmed that several of Harris’s lengthy, rambling responses—particularly on Israel—were heavily condensed.
“To paper over Kamala’s ‘word salad’ weakness, CBS used its national platform on 60 Minutes to cross the line from the exercise of judgment in reporting to deceitful, deceptive manipulation of news,” the lawsuit says.
While Paramount has denied the allegations, describing the editing decisions as standard journalistic practices, 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens abruptly resigned last week. Owens, whose resignation came after 24 years with the show and 37 years at CBS News, called out Paramount, saying he is not “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,” the Times reported.
Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, has said she is in favor of settling the case with Trump, though any agreement would ultimately require the board’s approval, according to the Times.
This wouldn’t be the first time a major media outlet has opted to settle with Trump. ABC News, owned by the Walt Disney Company, in December agreed to pay $16 million to resolve a defamation lawsuit that Trump filed against anchor George Stephanopoulos, who falsely claimed on air that Trump had been found “liable for rape.” ABC has also issued a written apology.