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The head of CBS News has quit, in the latest rupture at one of America’s best-known news groups as its corporate owner Paramount considers settling a lawsuit from US President Donald Trump.
“The past few months have been challenging,” president and chief executive Wendy McMahon said in an internal memo viewed by the Financial Times. “It’s become clear that the company and I do not agree on the path forward.”
McMahon’s exit comes after the executive producer of CBS’s flagship 60 Minutes show left last month.
The senior departures come as Trump has waged war against CBS and the rest of the US news media with renewed vigour in his second administration. He sued CBS for $20bn for what he claims was deceptive editing of an interview last year with Kamala Harris, his opponent in the 2024 election.
Harris lost the election, but Trump has continued to seek revenge on CBS, slamming the network on social media. CBS and its lawyers have said the lawsuit is meritless. However, executives at Paramount and controlling shareholder Shari Redstone are considering paying a settlement in the “tens of millions of dollars” to move past the saga, according to people familiar with the matter.
CBS has been dealing with the ire of Trump as well as a perception inside the newsroom that corporate owners have betrayed it in favour of sealing a billion-dollar merger.
Paramount is waiting for Trump’s administration to approve an agreed merger with Hollywood studio Skydance. The president’s media regulator, Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr, has been reviewing the deal for several months. Redstone and her family are in line to receive a billion-dollar payout if the FCC approves the deal.
Redstone, the billionaire who controls Paramount, had been concerned by the “balance” in CBS’s stories in recent months, said a person familiar with her thinking.
After Trump lashed out online following the April 13 broadcast of 60 Minutes, Redstone called CBS chief executive George Cheeks asking what other stories were being prepared, said a person familiar with the matter.
CBS journalists have been concerned that Redstone is interfering in editorial strategy.
60 Minutes’ top producer Bill Owens quit last month due to what he said was a loss of journalistic independence. Later that week, 60 Minutes anchor Scott Pelley ended a broadcast by telling viewers Paramount had begun “to supervise our content in new ways” as it tried to complete a merger.
Additional reporting by James Fontanella-Khan
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