'Freedoms get trampled': Trump’s ruthless media shakedowns are only becoming worse
President Donald J. Trump talks to members of the press on the South Lawn of the White House Friday, Aug. 30, 2019, prior to boarding Marine One to begin his trip to Camp David near Thurmont, Md. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)
Many experts on media law attacked President Donald Trump's $20 billion lawsuit against CBS News as frivolous and devoid of merit. Trump claimed that a "60 Minutes" interview with 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris aired in October was edited in a way that amounted to election interference, and quite a few attorneys said that his claims were ridiculous.
Yet on Tuesday night, July 1, CBS News' parent company, Paramount, agreed to settle the lawsuit by paying $16 million — which will go towards Trump's legal bills and a future presidential library.
In an article published on Independence Day 2025, Salon's Sophia Tesfaye argues that the harm resulting from Paramount's capitulation goes way beyond paying $16 million.
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"Tuesday's announcement was hardly surprising," Tesfaye explains. "Earlier this year, major law firms did the same, rushing to cut deals with Trump after he lawlessly targeted them for retribution. Then, some colleges and universities followed suit. Now, the corporate media is fully capitulating, collectively forking over upwards of $65 million to Trump entities since the November election. The following month, in the aftermath of Trump’s second shock election, ABC News, which is owned by Disney, set the precedent when it agreed to pay more than $15 million to Trump's future library after anchor George Stephanopoulos reported that Trump was found liable for the 'rape' of E. Jean Carroll."
Tesfaye continues, "The next month, Facebook parent company Meta paid Trump $25 million to end a lawsuit over its decision to ban his accounts after the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot. In an earlier shift made to appease Trump, the social media giant also agreed to end fact-checking on its sites ahead of the 2024 election. In February, Elon Musk's X reached a $10 million settlement with Trump for suspending his account following January 6."
When "big corporations" like Paramount cave to a "frivolous" lawsuit, Tesfaye warns, they "threaten journalistic independence."
"As it stands now," the Salon reporter observes, "ABC News is owned by Disney, NBC News is owned by Universal and CNN is owned by Warner Bros. The Washington Post is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, while the Wall Street Journal and cable news giant Fox News are owned by Rupert Murdoch. Good luck bursting this billionaire bubble — let alone fending off another billionaire's brazen attacks — with corporate-dominated media. Bezos, for example, infamously shelved a planned pre-election endorsement of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris by the Post's editorial board last fall, and his space exploration company, BlueX, has spent millions lobbying for government contracts."
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Tesfaye adds, "That's how we got oversaturated coverage of Bezos' $50 million celebrity-studded Venice wedding in a week when a Republican-led Congress rammed through one of the largest upwards redistributions of wealth in American history. When people fawn over billionaires, it feeds the frenzy as our freedoms get trampled."
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Sophia Tesfaye's full article for Salon is available at this link.
