Wendy McMahon quit her role as CEO and president of CBS News on Monday as the network’s parent company, Paramount, moves closer to settling President Donald Trump’s lawsuit.
In a memo to staff, McMahon announced her decision to step down, citing a difference of opinion with CBS and calling the last few months at the network “challenging.”
“It’s become clear that the company and I do not agree on the path forward. It’s time for me to move on and for this organization to move forward with new leadership,” she wrote.
Paramount reportedly plans to settle a $20 billion lawsuit that Trump filed in November 2024, when Trump alleged that a “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris leading up to the 2024 election—in addition to other reporting—was “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference.”
For context, Trump refused to be interviewed by “60 Minutes,” even though both major party presidential candidates usually do so. Trump stormed off the set during his 2020 interview after mild questioning.
First Amendment attorneys told CNN in November that the suit is “frivolous and dangerous,” but Paramount appears to be ready to settle because it needs federal approval for its proposed $8 billion merger with Skydance Media.
Presidential nominee Kamala Harris campaigning ahead of the 2024 election.
Shari Redstone, Paramount’s lead shareholder, reportedly supports coming to a settlement with Trump, even if it means sidelining the work of the network’s news division.
Bill Owens, who served as executive producer of “60 Minutes,” resigned in April, saying in a memo to staff that it had “become clear I would not be allowed to run the show” without corporate interference. He also said that he wasn’t allowed to “make independent decisions based on what’s right for ‘60 Minutes,’ what’s right for the audience.”
Nine Democratic senators—Bernie Sanders, Dick Durbin, Peter Welch, Chris Murphy, Sheldon Whitehouse, Elizabeth Warren, Ed Markey, Richard Blumenthal, and Jeff Merkley—wrote to Redstone in May, asking her not to settle. The letter described the Trump suit as an “an attack on the United States Constitution and the First Amendment.”
McMahon and Owens’ decision to quit echoes that of Washington Post contributors Ann Telnaes, Jennifer Rubin, and others who left the paper as owner Jeff Bezos has pivoted the outlet to be pro-Trump.
Trump is systematically attacking and suing multiple news organizations for accurately reporting on him and his political campaigns in an attempt to squelch the free press. He is also in the process of corrupting organizations like Voice of America to become a pro-MAGA mouthpiece while calling for the defunding of public media.
Reporters Without Borders has called Trump’s crusade an “unconstitutional assault on the country’s press freedom and the right to reliable information in the US and globally.”
And while Trump destroys the Constitution, it only helps his cause that corporate media outlets continue to bend the knee.
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