Long-tenured 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl is fully expecting a settlement of Donald Trump’s “frivolous” $20 billion lawsuit, but she dreads what will follow the resolution of the case.
“I’m already beginning to think about mourning, grieving,” Stahl said in a podcast interview with New Yorker editor David Remnick. “I know there’s going to be a settlement,” she added, and “I know there’s going to be some money exchanged” given that Shari Redstone, controlling shareholder of CBS parent Paramount Global, needs government approval for the pending merger with Skydance. (Deadline reported Wednesday that Paramount has made an eight-figure settlement offer, which has been rejected by Trump.)
After the settlement, Stahl speculated, “We will hopefully still be around, turning a new page and finding out what that new page is going to look like.”
Trump filed suit over a pre-election episode of 60 Minutes even after defeating Kamala Harris and winning re-election last November. He claims that CBS News wronged him by serving different edits of an interview with Harris to different CBS outlets in the course of promoting the segment, something that is standard practice in TV news. Legal experts universally agree there is no merit to the claim, but a number of news outlets have recently had their corporate parents pay settlements or otherwise capitulate to Trump after he applied pressure.
Stahl’s comments on The New Yorker Radio Hour come as uncertainty about the top-rated CBS newsmagazine continues to mount. Longtime executive producer Bill Owens departed in April, citing pressure from Redstone and other corporate executives concerned about the show’s coverage of Trump. CBS News chief Wendy McMahon also exited recently.
Stahl described the departure of Owens as “a punch in the stomach …. one of those punches where you almost can’t breathe.” Owens urged staffers not to quit and instead to keep advocating for tough coverage despite Trump’s muzzling efforts. His pleas came as employees were openly discussing an “en masse” exit from the program, according to Stahl.
Asked if she would expect 60 Minutes to change “radically” under Skydance’s control, Stahl said she is hoping Skydance CEO David Ellison and his executive team “hold the freedom of the press up as a beacon, that they understand the importance of allowing us to be independent and do our jobs. I’m expecting that, I’m hoping that, I want that, I’m praying for that.”
Remnick inquired if there is “a lot of optimism … at 60 Minutes that that will be the outcome,” and Stahl replied, “No. But there’s also not a lot of dark thinking, either.”
Throughout the interview, Stahl lamented the steady decline of public trust in the media, which has been amplified by Trump’s tactics. When she once asked him about his intensely combative stance with reporters, he told her that he operates that way so that when negative reports about him surface, “nobody will believe you.” The explanation “sent a chill through me because I thought, ‘Wow, he has thought this through,’” she said. “This isn’t something that’s a casual, angry” mood because “‘the press said something yesterday about me.’ It was thought out, it was a strategy.”
Stahl described having a “pain in my heart” about the state of her profession more than five decades after she joined CBS News to cover Watergate. (After joining CBS in 1972, she segued to 60 Minutes in 1991.) The average citizen “does not appreciate the importance of a free and strong and tough press in our democracy,” she said. They don’t grasp “that we have a function to fulfill,” she added. “The public doesn’t seem to want what we do to be part of our public life.”
