Trump's $16M win over '60 Minutes' edit sends chilling message to journalists everywhere

On Tuesday, Paramount announced an agreement to pay $16 million to settle President Donald Trump’s lawsuit over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris.

The following can be attributed to FIRE attorney Bob Corn-Revere, who filed a comment to the FCC calling its investigation into the Harris interview a “political stunt”:

A cold wind just blew through every newsroom this morning. Paramount may have closed this case, but it opened the door to the idea that the government should be the media’s editor-in-chief.

Trump has a long history of filing frivolous lawsuits to intimidate critics, and his targets have a long history of capitulating to avoid legal headaches. And here, he had the added tactic of using the FCC and its review of the multi-billion dollar Paramount-Skydance merger to bring added pressure to bear.

Behavior that gets rewarded gets repeated. This settlement will only embolden the president to continue his flurry of baseless lawsuits against the press — and against the American people’s ability to hear the news free from government intrusion.