← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:00]
Sam Stein
Hey, guys, it's me, Sam Stein, managing out at the Bulwark. And I am so fortunate, so fortunate to be joined by Max Tawny. He is the media reporter for Semaphore, longtime friend, sometimes nemesis. Max had some serious text nfus before getting on this recording. So I'm just glad that you got headphones that worked and that we.
- [00:21]
Max Tawny
I'll just say I wasn't the only person who had text nephews before. That's all I'm gonna say. That's all I'm gonna say.
- [00:28]
Sam Stein
Fair enough. Touche. We're going to be talking about Paramount, which decided that shame is worth $16 million this morning, had a settlement with the Trump administration. No, it's not with the Trump administration. Trump for totally, and I think this is a totally objective way to describe it, an incredibly bogus lawsuit around the editing of 60 minutes transcript from the campaign. People have been following it, but today got a resolution. $16 million. Max, give us like, the sort of outline of the settlement, and then I have, like, five or six questions I just want to pepper you with.
- [01:03]
Max Tawny
Yeah. Last night, right around midnight, Paramount corporate, which owns cbs, it's. The owner of the studio is Paramount Studios as well, announced that it was settling a lawsuit with the Trump campaign that the campaign filed at the end, End. Very end of the 2024 contest. Basically, this had been centered around the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. What makes this different than some other major lawsuits against media organizations is that 60 Minutes didn't actually do anything wrong. And Trump wasn't suing them for defamation. He was suing them for something called news distortion. It's a much more kind of obscure, never, pretty much never used statute law, basically guide guidelines around what's allowed to be on the public airwaves and whether or not basically a media organization has changed the news to mislead the public. It's a very, it's very bizarre, it's very strange, but it's different than what the challenges that most media organizations face here.
- [02:20]
Sam Stein
Didn't at one point, his legal team say that the editing of the transcript caused Trump mental anguish?
- [02:26]
Max Tawny
Yes, it did. They did say it cost him mental anguish.
- [02:29]
Sam Stein
And explain that.
- [02:31]
Max Tawny
Trump's mental anguish. I, I mean, he does seem at times to be an anguished person. You know, you've seen that, I'm sure. I mean, what is that? What does that really mean? I don't know. Maybe they would call a psychologist or a therapist to testify. But, but, but, but, but essentially, Paramount decided that it was fight it was fighting this in court, but that it wanted to reach a settlement. Last night it did reach settlement for $16 million, as well as a future agreement to release the transcript of all interviews with presidential candidates on only President.
- [03:10]
Sam Stein
Only presidential candidates.
- [03:12]
Max Tawny
I believe that that's what that is. That's what Paramount announced.
- [03:15]
Sam Stein
Only for 60 minutes. Like, what if I, I don't really. Evening.
- [03:20]
Max Tawny
Yeah, I mean, I don't think that they're going to be releasing the transcripts of all interviews on 60 Minutes. They just said, as it relates to presidential, Presidential candidates. I look, I mean, I'm not opposed to that. I think that that's. I guess they weren't doing.
- [03:33]
Sam Stein
Yeah. Were they not doing that already? I don't know.
- [03:36]
Max Tawny
Yeah. And then, but, but crucially, crucially, they also said that they were not going to apologize for this, you know, for the editing of the, this interview, which was something that the Trump administration, the Trump campaign had sought. They had sought an apology from, from 60 Minutes. And that had been something that had been holding all of this up, as far as I. That's my understanding of it.
- [03:57]
Sam Stein
What a win. What a win for Paramount, right? Not apologizing for basic journalistic practices. This is all, basically, first of all, obviously, I find this ridiculous and kind of offensive and. But, you know, this is also business, right? Like Paramount is trying to get, you know, they want to sail to Skydance and there's a huge merger that the administration has to sign off on, and that was just hanging over all this. And the head of Paramount, Sherry Redson, wanted, Wanted it done. Now she said, well, I recused from all this stuff. But then, you know, it's clear she wanted the deal done. It wasn't hiding. But then the other thing that was happening was that Paramount has a new board elections coming up, and there was some complications about whether they would be comfortable with such a settlement. So how much was this just strictly business?
- [04:46]
Max Tawny
I mean, it's hard to see this as anything other than business. CBS obviously fights a number of other law, fights lawsuits all the time, like any other major organization. It's. You don't hear about a lot of them, but it's. This is a news organization. This is one of the oldest major news organizations in the country, one of the oldest broadcast organizations in the country. They've been fighting this for, for, for a very long time. And it's very unusual for them to pay out when they could win in court, to pay out millions of dollars to the president, a president who they're going to continue to cover. So I know. Even though they said. Right. So even though they said, oh, this has nothing. They said in their release, this has nothing to do with the ongoing merger investigation. It's just, it's obvious that this is, that this is a factor and that they.
- [05:32]
Sam Stein
Well, here's the thing. It's like, play with these two things. One, what if Brendan Carr, the head of the fcc, is just like, yeah, not going to approve the merger?
- [05:42]
Max Tawny
Still could. That's a totally, that's, it's totally valid. I mean, I don't believe that it would be. I'm not a, I'm not an anti, I'm not a regular federal regulatory expert when it comes to local station ownership, but it would be a totally, he's totally within his rights to do that. And we've, we've, we've also seen that organizations that have capitulated to Trump, you know, have still also faced face scrutiny. Disney famously paid out a very similar amount in the transition after the 2024 election to the Trump campaign over George Stephanopoulos segment in which he actually did make some mistakes. And that was a defamation case. Carr still said it was looking at, still said the FCC afterwards, after Trump took office, Brendan Carr still said he was looking into Disney and its DEI practices. So clearly it hasn't stopped, stopped the administration from scrutinizing these media organizations.
- [06:42]
Sam Stein
And what's to stop? Again, we're imagining a future. But like, you know, 60 Minutes or any other CBS enterprise does some story that Trump doesn't like and he thinks it's caused him more mental anguish. Nothing in this, nothing in the settlement says he won't sue again, obviously.
- [06:58]
Max Tawny
I mean, the funny thing, and I was talking to somebody at, I was talking to somebody at CBS about this is, I mean, the funniest thing would be if Trump tomorrow over. I mean, they cover him every single day.
- [07:07]
Sam Stein
Every day they're covering, they cover them.
- [07:10]
Max Tawny
Yeah, they have a news, they have an evening news broadcast every day. They have very popular weekly broadcasts as well. I mean, they could just pick out something they didn't like and just sue again. Right. What are they going to do?
- [07:20]
Sam Stein
Like you said, the guy is afflicted with mental anxiety and anguish. I mean, who knows what could set him off, Right? He might be watching this. What is this? So that brings. Let's go to the original sin here. Well, maybe it's not the original sin, but let's go to the ABC lawsuit. That was the first one Stephanopoulos had, you know, misrepresented to us to a degree the issue around aging Carroll. The Trump campaign sues him for defamation. ABC says, we don't want to go and deal with this. We're going to just get it out of the way. $60 million. They didn't want to, clearly me, they didn't want to deal with discovery. That was the first big lawsuit and that was the first quick settlement. And to me, and this is, maybe I'm misrepresenting this, but to me, that set the standard. And once Trump recognized that he could do that and get 60 million dollar gift for his library, which I'm sure who, he'll never take any money from, that once, once that happens, it sets the stage for everything else.
- [08:24]
Max Tawny
Yeah, I mean, it absolutely does. And it's really interesting. They didn't really get as much backlash to that. I was thinking about this today. Are you sure? I mean, there were definitely some people who were critical of that, but maybe.
- [08:40]
Sam Stein
We'Re just blown away that it happened.
- [08:42]
Max Tawny
Well, I, I think that there's a few things going on. One, the backlash isn't nearly as strong as, as, as it has been here. I mean, you have Democratic senators saying that they believe that Paramount broke the law and that they were bribed, that this is essentially a bribe being paid towards Trump and that when Democrats retake oversight power and potentially when they retake the White House, that this is something that they're going to be, that they're going to be looking at. That's not something that happened in Disney's case. And so I do think the degree is much greater when it comes to Paramount. No question.
- [09:16]
Sam Stein
Right. But there were, to me, it's like, this is like ABC was the Paul Weiss of the situation. Right. Like Paul Weiss first from Tick Bit, Guinea Pig. Right. And once Trump realized that, you know, he can actually extort or get money from these people and that, you know, people would go crazy, but that it would pass pretty quickly, then it just became, what's the next, you know, mole that I could whack?
- [09:39]
Max Tawny
Right, right.
- [09:41]
Sam Stein
Let's talk about Paramount, like in the Democratic side of things. So in California, they're looking into whether this is a bribe because you can make the case. Well, they paid $16 million to have the opportunity to not foreclose the possibility, I should say, that the sale will go through. Yeah, that's, I don't know. I'm not a lawyer, so don't trust me on this one. But that seems like you can make the case that's a bribe.
- [10:06]
Max Tawny
Yeah. I mean, this is a sale worth billions of dollars. And so this is something that obviously they see as a very small potential price to pay. But, but, but, yeah, I mean, I think the Democrats are going to continue to make. We broke the news that California was going to be looking into this. They've actually asked for Bill Owens, the former produce executive producer For. Of. Of 60 Minutes, who resigned in protest over this. They've asked him to testify. They've also called Wendy McMahon, the former president of CBS News, who left shortly afterwards. They, they. Who was. Who was forced out. They've. They've asked her to come and testify as well. And, you know, depending on what they decide to do it, those could be very, very interesting testimonies if they decide to fight. Because both, Both Owens and McMahon, it was pretty well known were essentially, they were pushing back to Paramount and to Sherry Redstone over, Over some of these.
- [11:02]
Sam Stein
Bill Owens was pretty adamant about. Bill Owens didn't hide the ball. He said he would. Felt pressure. Right. Actually, that brings me to my last question. What. What is the. First of all, I hope you're feeling better. You sound.
- [11:11]
Max Tawny
I'm cold. I have a little bit of a cold. I'm sure we'll edit your fantastic. Producers will edit some of that out.
- [11:16]
Sam Stein
No, no, we. Keep it real. We're leaving.
- [11:18]
Max Tawny
Yeah, we're leaving it all in.
- [11:19]
Sam Stein
Do you want me to send you some soup?
- [11:20]
Max Tawny
You know what? You actually did send me some soup one time when I was sick at Politico. It was when I had Covid. That was very nice of you.
- [11:26]
Sam Stein
Yeah, well, that was my managerial trick during COVID is that whenever Some got Covid, I was.
- [11:30]
Max Tawny
I would be like, you sent me some pho. It was very nice. It was.
- [11:33]
Sam Stein
Yeah. I'm not. I'm. I'm a totally fine boss.
- [11:36]
Max Tawny
Yeah, you could send me some. You could. Yeah. If you want to send me some soup, you're welcome to, too. Well, I know I feel pretty well, so.
- [11:43]
Sam Stein
No, if you, if you had made the original recording time, I would have sent you su. All right, let's talk about the future of 60 Minutes. So, yeah, Bill Owens gone. I, I was. You know, Scott Pelly had that speech. Where was that? Emory or. I forget where it was, but he had a graduation speech where he was just like, the media needs to step it up. What is the mood in there right now?
- [12:06]
Max Tawny
I mean, it's horrible. It's obviously horrible. It's been horrible for. It's been horrible for months. I mean, as this has dragged out and as a lot of the staff have seen, senior leaders who they like and who they trust depart. I think that there's been a, I think, I mean, the mood is pretty dire and I think, you know, we, we talked about this just a moment ago. I mean, people are like, basically feeling like we have to cover this guy, Donald Trump and his allies for the next three and a half years, you know, minimum. And so you, how do you have to do, how are you going to, how are you expecting to cover the administration fairly, do interesting stories when, you know, you've got this hanging over your head and, you know, you have the possibility, of course, that Trump could do it, do it all again. So I think that there is, I do think that there is obviously a sense of, a sense of frustration internally and I wouldn't be surprised if there were some, some departures at some point. But, but yeah, I think the mood is, the mood is fairly bleak and, you know, backdrop for this year too, is that this merger and the dance around the merger has been going on for like, essentially two years, whether, you know, shares sell or not. So CBS hasn't made a lot of major moves in the same way that you've seen some of the other networks do. You've seen, you know, NBC and MSNBC because of their spin off. There's a lot of things have been changing and these other places have been trying to adapt to this new, more digital landscape and CBS has been behind on that because they can't make major moves while, you know, because they, they're necessarily empowered to. And so I think that, well, I.
- [13:42]
Sam Stein
Mean, just imagine, Imagine. Yeah, imagine you're 60 minutes and then you want to like, go out and find someone to like, hire. Not saying that. I mean, they have such talent there, but the town is aging and they're going to need to like, replenish it. It's going to be tough. I mean, it is going to be tough.
- [13:57]
Max Tawny
Not to mention most of, you know, most of the staff who, you know, most of the people who are staff, the journalists, the talent. A lot of those people are spending their time, they're not necessarily consuming 60 minutes or the evening news or CBS Sunday Morning, even though those programs are very popular. They're watching shows like this YouTube podcast, Letters. Yeah, exactly. A lot of people do watch, you know, of course, that's why I spend my time doing this. I wouldn't do it otherwise. I wouldn't do it just for you. So.
- [14:28]
Sam Stein
All right, this is interesting. It's super depressing. I mean, I'm, I'll editorialize a little bit here, but like, this stuff really Gets me depressed, like, you can't do this. You just can't sell out on that principle. And I know the sale really matters to them, and it's billions of dollars and who am I, right? But, like, if you own a media company, this is the price you pay for owning a media company. Knew that. And when and when the rubber hits the road, you have to take the principled stand. But that's just, it's just a travesty.
- [14:58]
Max Tawny
I mean, look, I, obviously, as a journalist, I, you know, it's hard. I'm a media reporter. I try to look at these things objectively, of course. I mean, look, you know, to make, to make the argument in favor of Paramount, they really were held up on this idea of they're not going to apologize to Trump even if the money is, you know, some sort of appeasement, whatever you want to call it. There's no. It's bizarre to say this is, this is separate from, to argue that this is separate from the FCC merger stuff when you're also saying, I'm not apologizing, I'm just giving you $16 million and I'm not apologizing to you.
- [15:33]
Sam Stein
Right, right.
- [15:33]
Max Tawny
That's a, It's a bizarre argument to make. But you could say, you know, Paramount didn't want anything saying, we officially apologize. We're just, you know, we just want this to go away so that you could make that argument. But, you know, I, what, I. What, what I will say, but it's over the trans.
- [15:50]
Sam Stein
This is the thing. Maybe, but it's over something that is a standard practice in television journalism. I mean, right. What they did with the transcript or with the edit was they cut down a bite and they didn't, like, put it off and shelve it. They. They put a separate bite of the same answer, right. Arguably a worse one, I think, to the broadcast. And then they put the other one online and it's like, it was there. And this happens all the time. Trump interviews are edited. All. The guy weaves in a million different directions. You think you're getting the full experience when he does a tv, Right. They're at it all the time. And so to be like, you know, what we can, we can actually, like, take a hit on this is, to me, just. So it just sets such a bad precedent.
- [16:31]
Max Tawny
I mean, I, I obviously, like I said, I agree with you as a journalist, you always want an organization to stand behind you. The. But, you know, look, this is the reason why many people, news consumers, people who are, you know, news junkies are turning more towards places like yours, I think. I don't think that there is a. And I don't mean that to gas you up, Sam. I would never want to do something like that. I would never want to provide, you know, make you feel good unnecessarily. But I do think that. But. But it's like. It's actually. I think it's actually a fact that, you know, many people are. As their habits are changing, they're also finding places online that I think, you know, align with their values or it opens up opportunities for new outlets to.
- [17:16]
Sam Stein
Sure.
- [17:16]
Max Tawny
That have back, you know, a backbone to kind of demonstrate that in a way that some of these big corporate media organizations, which are, you know, which are more subject to regulation, you know, are showing that they don't or other have other business. Are showing that they don't. So opportunities for places like the Bulwark, not so much.
- [17:34]
Sam Stein
Fine. I'll buy you some.
- [17:38]
Max Tawny
I'm. Yeah, I'm singing for my supper here. Yeah, exactly.
- [17:41]
Sam Stein
All right, Max, take care. Appreciate you coming on. Feel better. Talk to you soon. For all you who watch this and enjoyed it, I hope you enjoyed it. Subscribe to the feed and we'll talk to you later.