White Home protection unshaken: CBS’ ’60 Minutes’ and Trump’s $20 billion authorized battle

As CBS company leaders ponder settling President Donald Trump’s $20 billion lawsuit in opposition to the community’s “60 Minutes,” America’s storied information journal has produced some quick and hard-hitting tales crucial of the brand new administration in each episode since Trump was inaugurated.

The newest was Sunday, when CBS Information helped pay for a efficiency that includes non-white center and highschool musicians who had gained a contest and with it, the fitting to play with the U.S. Marine Corps Band. The unique live performance, nevertheless, was canceled due to Trump’s govt order ending variety, fairness and inclusion efforts.

Correspondent Scott Pelley narrated six of the present’s seven tales since Trump’s inauguration, together with Sunday’s. He examined the administration’s insurance policies towards Ukraine and tariffs, checked out adjustments within the Justice Division and reported on firings of presidency watchdogs. Shortly after his piece on the dismantling of USAID, Elon Musk urged “lengthy jail sentences” for these engaged on the present.

All got here at a time when tv’s hottest and influential information broadcast was being watched to see how it could reply to a singular strain.

“This can be a lawsuit that’s designed to intimidate, however they’re clearly making an announcement that they won’t be intimidated,” stated Tom Bettag, a longtime tv information producer who labored below Mike Wallace and Morley Safer on the CBS present.

Pelley, in the meantime, has shortly turn into a polarizing determine.

“One other week, one other ‘60 Minutes’ story attempting to discredit Trump insurance policies,” Brent Baker, editor of the conservative media watchdog NewsBusters, wrote on X on Sunday night time.

The context surrounding the ‘60 Minutes’ studies

Trump’s lawsuit, coupled with a parallel Federal Communications Fee investigation, accuses “60 Minutes” of election interference for the way in which it edited Invoice Whitaker’s interview final fall with Trump’s 2024 opponent, Kamala Harris.

Two sound bites, broadcast on “60 Minutes” and CBS’ “Face the Nation,” depicted Harris giving totally different responses to Whitaker in a dialogue about Israel. CBS stated Harris made each feedback in her reply to Whitaker and that the 2 exhibits ended up utilizing totally different components of an extended sound chunk. CBS argued the obvious discrepancy was typical of modifying and never, as Trump has urged, that totally different remarks by Harris have been used to make her look higher.

CBS father or mother Paramount World filed new motions previously two weeks to get each the lawsuit and the FCC probe dismissed. Nonetheless, Shari Redstone, head of Paramount, is reportedly anxious for a settlement, very similar to Disney agreed to pay $16 million in December to finish Trump’s lawsuit in opposition to ABC Information’ George Stephanopoulos. Complicating issues is Paramount’s proposed merger with Skydance Media, which wants approval from the Trump administration.

Many at CBS Information resist a settlement, insisting “60 Minutes” did nothing fallacious. The present’s govt producer, Invoice Owens, instructed his employees final month that he wouldn’t apologize as a part of any potential settlement.

“My treasured ‘60 Minutes’ is preventing, fairly frankly, for our life,” correspondent Lesley Stahl stated earlier this month in accepting a First Modification award from the Radio Tv Digital Information Affiliation. “I’m so pleased with ‘60 Minutes’ that we’re standing up and preventing for what is true.”

Neither Owens nor Pelley would touch upon whether or not the present is attempting to ship any form of message concerning the lawsuit via its work. Bettag stated he believed “60 Minutes” is motivated by the significance of the tales.

What the present has executed in the course of the previous two months is putting, stated Bettag, now a journalism professor on the College of Maryland.

“The ‘60 Minutes’ persons are such dedicated journalists that they’d contemplate it silly to be doing these tales due to what’s a frivolous lawsuit,” he stated. “The lawsuit pales compared with the monumental adjustments Trump is attempting to implement. These correspondents and producers know that this can be a second that requires their highest work.”

A number of the segments have been unusually pressing for the newsmagazine, which tends to do longer-range tales that might take months to provide. Pelley’s March 2 report about Ukraine got here solely days after the White Home confrontation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Musk’s indignant touch upon his X social media platform got here after Pelley’s Feb. 16 story concerning the billionaire’s function within the fast shutdown of the USAID workplace. “The world’s richest man had reduce off help to the world’s poorest households,” Pelley stated, noting that Musk collects “billions of taxpayer {dollars}” for his SpaceX firm.

Hours later, Musk wrote on X: “60 Minutes are the most important liars on the planet! They engaged in deliberate deception to intervene with the final election. They deserve an extended jail sentence.”

Different information organizations have executed admirable work below troublesome circumstances, stated Invoice Grueskin, a Columbia College journalism professor. In addition to Pelley, he cited the information employees of the Washington Publish at a time the newspaper’s proprietor, Jeff Bezos, has proven extra friendliness to Trump.

‘The live performance that was not meant to be heard’

Sunday’s “60 Minutes” story concerned some elite highschool college students — every of them both of both Black, Hispanic, Indian or Asian descent — who had earned the fitting to play with the Marine band earlier than the present was referred to as off.

CBS labored with Fairness Arc, a corporation dedicated to growing the variety of minority college students taking part in classical music, to prepare a present for household and associates of the scholars outdoors Washington, D.C.. Retired members of army bands have been introduced in to work with the scholars. CBS Information, which wished to interview the scholars, paid for the journey and lodging of twenty-two of them.

Pelley referred to as it the “live performance that was not meant to be heard.”

“The unique Marine Band live performance would have been seen by tons of,” he stated. “Right here tonight, these musicians are being heard by tens of millions.”

Pelley’s March 9 report, “Firing the Watchdogs,” was about Trump’s efforts to fireside inspector generals and thwart others who defend whistleblowers in authorities companies. He quoted Trump as saying the firings have been normal for a brand new administration taking workplace. “He’s fallacious,” Pelley stated.

His story concerning the U.S. Justice Division examined the resistance amongst some prosecutors to drop corruption prices in opposition to New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams.

“As he continues to step up his assaults on President Donald Trump and the brand new administration, Pelley is elbowing apart all others to emerge as Trump’s loudest TV critic,” wrote Paul Bedard of the Washington Examiner.

In his tales, Pelley’s deadpan voice and methodical type couldn’t conceal the sharpness of some observations. Whereas narrating the story about USAID, Pelley famous that “It’s too quickly to inform how critical President Trump is in defiance of the Structure.”