CBS is facing renewed scrutiny over a media scandal involving its editing of a 2023 Joe Biden interview. Former Paramount chairwoman Shari Redstone admitted she pushed to settle President Donald Trump’s suit against CBS’s 60 Minutes. The case involved a separate interview of former Vice President and failed 2024 presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Redstone said she acted partly out of fear that Trump’s attorneys would expose CBS’s questionable edits of another interview that portrayed former President Joe Biden far more favorably than the raw footage suggested.
According to the New York Times, Redstone believed that discovery in a lawsuit could “do more damage to CBS News’s reputation than any settlement would” by revealing unedited footage and internal communications. She confirmed that CBS staffers described Biden as “drowsy” during his sit-down with 60 Minutes host Scott Pelley, adding that Biden “had to be prodded to answer.” Pelley dismissed concerns at the time, attributing Biden’s performance to “a rough week” and his “lifelong stutter.”
Trump’s lawsuit originally focused on CBS’s editing of Vice President Kamala Harris’s interview, which allegedly boosted her coherence and image during her campaign. While media outlets mocked the suit as unserious, Redstone admitted, “This case was never as black-and-white as people assumed.”
Paramount ultimately paid $16 million to settle the case, and Trump has hinted at a “side deal” requiring CBS’s parent company to air millions in conservative ads. Redstone also criticized CBS’s anti-Israel tilt, blasting a 60 Minutes segment tied to sources at the Council on American-Islamic Relations. In her candid reflection, she conceded, “Part of me thought, maybe Trump could accomplish what I never got done.”
