Lesley Stahl on What a Settlement with Donald Trump Would Mean for CBS News
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Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. One of the hottest tickets on Broadway these days, in fact, it just broke a box office record, is the play Good Night and Good Luck, and it's adapted from George Clooney's 2005 film. Clooney is on stage as Edward R. Murrow, the CBS news anchor. Murrow was the most respected journalist in his time, and he was the first to be on the show.

And the play dramatizes his stand against the lies and corruption of one of the most powerful men in America in mid-century, Senator Joseph McCarthy. It's an inspirational story, especially at a moment when Donald Trump, someone far more powerful than McCarthy ever was, is using lawsuits and raw intimidation to bring the media to heel. Donald Trump sued CBS eventually for $20 billion over 60 Minutes' interview with Kamala Harris.

By all legal accounts, it's a preposterous suit, and yet Shari Redstone, the head of Paramount Global, which is CBS's parent company, is actively trying to negotiate a settlement. The reason is that she wants to sell her company, Paramount, and to do so, she needs government approval. Redstone's critics and people at 60 Minutes contend that settling the lawsuit is, in effect, a surrender, a big payoff to the president.

And yet Redstone has already made an offer to settle a $15 million. Trump, however, says that's not enough. And he wants an apology. So this is a very perilous time at CBS. And I sat down last week to talk with a veteran of the network, Leslie Stahl, who reports for its premier news show, 60 Minutes. And she's been at CBS for over 50 years. Just think about something. Think about my pension. LAUGHTER

It's going to be huge. It's going to be huge. And as a young reporter, Leslie Stahl covered Watergate. I was brand new. I was an affirmative action hire in 1972. And they sent me to cover Watergate because nobody thought it was a story. You know, the first arraignment of the burglars, it was Woodward and me. Now, Leslie, obviously we're going to get to the present tense and the pressures on the press and CBS News in 60 Minutes.

But create a context here. How aware were you back then about the ownership of CBS News, pressures that the president might put on the owners, pressures from advertisers? We don't exist in an ideal vacuum. No, no. We were owned by William Paley back then.

And fairly early on, when most of the television networks and most newspapers weren't covering Watergate, it was the Woodward Bernstein story.

Walter Cronkite, our anchorman, decided that it was a very important story. And so he did a very, Walter did a very, very long piece, 14 minutes, which was more than half the broadcast. Five men apparently caught in the act of burglarizing and bugging Democratic headquarters in Washington. Walter's voice carried a lot of weight.

He was the most trusted man in America, and he was. So that he did the story, they didn't farm it out to someone else, also made the statement. Well, William Paley, President of the United States, picked up or had his right-hand man pick up the phone, call him, scream at him.

I don't know if you've ever had the White House scream at you. I have. It's no fun. It's terrible and frightening. And Paley succumbed. Walter ran the 14-minute piece. His plan was to come back the next night with another 14-minute piece, which was in the works. And Paley's pressure was now so intense on the CBS News division. Walter was squeezed.

He didn't pull the piece, but he did cut it in half. So, you know, these things have happened before. So Paley was no hero in this? Paley was a hero during the McCarthy time, but not during the Watergate time.

Now, you've interviewed Donald Trump a number of times. Four times. When was the first time? How far do you go back? Oh, the first time was when he became the nominee right before his convention. First time, 16. Yeah. And what was that like? He and Pence were sitting together side by side. Mike Pence, his vice presidential nominee. Correct. What was amusing was I was focused on their faces.

But I didn't see anything below their shoulders in my line of vision. But we had a wide shot. And in the edit room, we could see all three cameras going at the same time. And only then did I see Mr. Trump directing him with his hand, telling him when to be quiet, telling him when to talk. I thought that was hilarious. But that first interview was, by the standard of Trump interviews, reasonably civil? Yes.

All my interviews with civil. Well, but in 2020, it got hot. You didn't get hot. Well, he walked out on you. Yeah, but he didn't storm out on me. Oh, that's what counts as civil is walking out on you, but not storming out.

I mean, he said at one point, I wish you would interview Joe Biden like you interview me. He wasn't happy with you. You know he's in the middle of a scandal. He was referring to Hunter Biden. And then you said, he's not. And there was a back and forth. And you said, you know, this is 60 Minutes, and we can't put on things that we cannot verify. He didn't like this. There was an interesting sequence there.

He said at the end, you have enough. He wasn't doing that well. And he got up. He was calm and quiet. And I said, watch the wires. And he said, I'll see you later. He had agreed to do a walk after the interview outside. And he said, I'll see you for the walk. Like B-roll. Yeah, exactly. It's called a 60 minutes walk. I like it. And it was after, after he thought about it.

that he got angry and canceled the walk. But, Leslie, afterwards, he went on Facebook and accused you and CBS of bias, hatred, and rudeness. Afterward. He got angry afterward. Why? I don't know. In one of your encounters with Donald Trump, maybe it was off camera, he described to you how he behaves with the press in a very almost rational way. Can you tell me about that?

He'd been hammering away at us, meaning the press in general, at every rally. And his rallies were getting larger and larger. And it was becoming very clear that he was going to be the nominee. And I said, you know, you attack the press every time you speak. You use pretty much the same language. It's kind of getting boring. Why do you do this? Why do you keep at it?

And he said, I do it so that when you write or say negative things about me, no one will believe you. And it sent a chill through me because I thought, wow, he has thought this through. This isn't something that's a casual, angry that the press said something yesterday about me.

It was thought out. It was a strategy. It was something that clearly he'd worked through. And it was the first time, frankly, that I appreciated that he had a real serious agenda. And it became more sophisticated because now what he does is he pursues and sues

institutions of the press. And what he's discovering is those institutions buckle. He went after the Washington Post, and Jeff Bezos has buckled. He's gone after ABC, after George Stephanopoulos described the sexual assault case in language that Donald Trump didn't like, even though the judge used the same language. And ABC settled because Disney has other business to do.

Did you imagine that he would come after you this hard and with this kind of ammunition? No. And did you feel vulnerable? Did CBS feel vulnerable? 60 Minutes? Mm-hmm. I would say that we definitely feel under attack. I'm talking with Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes, and we'll continue in a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. ♪

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I'm Jon Favreau and Tommy Vitor, Jon Lovett and Dan Pfeiffer and I wade hip deep into the week's political news and fish out some political analysis you can trust. Yes, Tommy's shoes get ruined. Yes, he'll do it again tomorrow because the endeavor is worth it. And so is your sanity. Tune into Pod Save America wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick and I've been speaking with Leslie Stahl. Leslie Stahl was the first woman to serve as White House correspondent for CBS and

She was the moderator for the Sunday show Face the Nation. And since 1991, she's reported for 60 Minutes. We've been talking about the Trump administration's attempt to intimidate CBS and many other news outlets as well. CBS's parent company, Paramount, is attempting to settle a lawsuit from Donald Trump. The head of CBS News, Wendy McMahon, as well as the executive producer of 60 Minutes, Bill Owens, both resigned recently.

I spoke with Leslie Stahl last week, just days before Paramount offered a settlement to Donald Trump of $15 million, a settlement that he did not accept. And the negotiations are ongoing. Now, during the latter days of the campaign between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, 60 Minutes, as I understand it, wanted to interview both of them. Correct. Donald Trump refused. Correct.

Well, first he accepted, and then he changed his mind. What happened? We don't know. He said yes, and then he said no. And there was an interview with Kamala Harris, and what happened? You know, it wasn't my story, so it's hard for me to talk exactly about how the sequence went. And we start putting out snippets of our interviews on Thursday. So that's what we did, and we gave Face the Nation a clip.

Now, Bill Whitaker asked a question. I'm not sure what it was. Bill Whitaker, who did the interview with Kamala Harris.

to run on theirs. Now, we are under time constraints, and this was done for time. We had it to keep our pieces down to a certain length, and this is what Mr. Trump sued over. Well, what he said was, is that you reduced the... You made clear what was word salad. In other words, what he was accusing 60 Minutes of doing is trying to make Kamala Harris look better. But that isn't what we did.

We just ran two different halves of the same answer. What's behind the lawsuit in your estimation? And by the way, the lawsuit is for $20 billion. $20 billion. Well, I think what is really behind it in a nutshell is to chill us. Mm-hmm.

There aren't any damages. He accused us of editing Kamala Harris in a way to help her win the election. But he won the election. So why isn't this a frivolous lawsuit? It is a frivolous lawsuit. So why isn't CBS treating it as a frivolous lawsuit? As I understand it, Leslie, they're in negotiations to settle this lawsuit. And that's where the trouble begins. And if I can give the background for those who are not following yet,

It's against a corporate background. CBS is owned by Paramount. Paramount, run by Sherry Redstone, wants to make a deal with something called Skydance, run by the Ellison family, and in a sense sell itself to Skydance. And it's an enormous deal worth billions and billions of dollars. Larry Ellison, by the way, is very pro-Trump.

And Shari Redstone wants to unload you, wants to unload CBS and Paramount and be done with it, make a lot of money and walk away. But she sees trouble because she has to get FCC approval for this deal. And she's worried that the FCC might stand in the way of this deal because it's under Donald Trump. And she's willing to compromise. And I have to think that the newsroom at 60 Minutes...

must have been an incredible turmoil and be that way to this day. Turmoil is too strong a word. Is it? I think so. Turmoil suggests that the ship was so unsteady we weren't functioning, but that is not true. We just kept doing our jobs the same way. Why did Bill Owens step down? Because he was being asked to either work

not run pieces or to change parts of the stories. And he was standing up to that. I don't know, frankly, if there was one request that led to it or just accumulation, one after the next, after the next. Describe the day that Bill Owens came in front of the staff and stepped down. That was just painful, painful.

Everybody at 60 Minutes, I think everybody, most of us, really appreciated his standing up to the pressure and saw him in heroic terms. So when he announced that he was stepping down,

It was a punch in the stomach. It was one of those punches where you almost can't breathe. And then the head of CBS News did the same thing. Wendy McMahon stepped down. Yeah. Well, she was the intermediary between us and the corporation. And she sided with us, with CBS News. So when she stepped down, that was another blow because she was another barrier.

And, you know, I use that word, barrier. I have to say, Leslie, and with no relish at all, God knows, it looks pretty obvious at this point that they're going to settle that lawsuit just as ABC did so that they can be sold to Skydance. Yes. Are you angry at Sherry Redstone? Yes, I think I am. I think I am. What would drive you out?

What is your limit? Where do you say I, Leslie Stahl, who have been at this network for so long and have given so much to it, I cannot go this far? I haven't in my own mind drawn that line because there are many different lines. Bill Owens leaving was a line and here we all are.

He asked us not to resign. He explicitly asked us not to resign because it was discussed that we would leave en masse. Sherry Redstone has also made it known that she had problems with the coverage of the Israel-Palestine war and conflict. How did she make the...

that known, and what message does that send to you as a reporter? The message came down through the line, from Wendy McMahon to Bill. This is hard. Yep, it is hard. And it's big. It's not a small thing. Tell me about that. To have a news organization come under corporate pressure, to have a news organization told

by a corporation, do this, do that with your story, change this, change that, don't run that piece. I mean, it steps on the First Amendment. It steps on the freedom of the press. It makes me question whether any corporation should own a news operation. It is very disconcerting. And as I said, we have had pressure before

in earlier owners. Was it ever like this? I can't remember a lawsuit. Let's assume this deal goes through. Skydance buys you. And there might be other permutations too. You might end up joined to the hip with CNN and a deal with Warner. Who knows? But let's assume it's a simple sale. And suddenly CBS News in 60 Minutes is under Skydance, which is run by

Larry Ellison's family. Would you expect 60 Minutes to change quite radically? Well, why would we? Because your corporate overlord has told you you have to. Well, we haven't, and we've had a corporate overlord, to use your word, who has told us to change. You quietly have resisted the editorial pressures from Sherry Redstone. Correct. Correct.

And I'm just frankly, and this is being a little Pollyanna-ish, that word, that David Ellison and the people he brings in to run his organization hold the freedom of the press up as a beacon that they understand the importance of allowing us to be independent and do our jobs.

I'm expecting that. I'm hoping that. I want that. I'm praying for that. And I have no reason to think that won't happen. That would be the best outcome. That would be the best outcome. Is there a lot of optimism at 60 Minutes that that will be the outcome? No. But there's also not a lot of dark thinking either.

Perhaps, let me talk about me. I am perhaps being blind, you know? Maybe I should understand what's coming, but I'm not operating that way. I'm not optimistic. I am not. I'm pessimistic. I'm pessimistic about the future for all press today. The public doesn't trust us. The public has lost faith in us as an institution.

So we're in very dark times. How do you analyze that? I will tell you how I analyze that. We used to have the fairness doctrine. And people saw that we were very visibly presenting two sides in our stories. So we lost that. We then got, I don't know what the word is, advocacy journalism came along. Fox News was probably the beginning of it.

But now we have MSNBC and those outlets wear their ideology on their sleeves. Everybody knows that Fox News is right. Everybody knows that MSNBC is left. Nobody's making any bones about it. Here's the problem. They're called media. They're media. I'm called media. The New York Times is called media. No wonder the people, public, think we're all

you know, political. We're all in the salad bowl together. How do you resolve that lesson? We haven't been able to. And it's been a problem for a long time. It's not a problem that's propped up because Donald Trump is president. We've been having this issue of being tarred with that brush for as long as Fox has been around. And I don't know how to explain that we're different.

And maybe even if the public did understand that we're different, they wouldn't have faith in us. And that is a distressing thought to me. One of the problems you have now, I would say, is that independent of your politics, you've got half the country who acknowledges that Donald Trump is

is carrying out corrupt practices, meme coins, all kinds of things that are unprecedented in their scale of corruption, and just in general is pushing a much more authoritarian view of American political life. Now, is that ideology or is that factual reporting? Even Bob Woodward... This is a very good question. Even Bob Woodward will say this.

But I resist saying it. You do? I do. As a matter of professional practice or a matter of opinion? As a matter of professional practice. Let me close with this. What concerns me, finally, in our conversation is the fragility of these institutions.

the fragility of them that we thought would last forever. And a friend of mine pointed out, David Halberstam wrote a book in 1979 called The Powers That Be about the biggest institutions in the press in this country besides the New York Times. And those institutions were the Los Angeles Times, which is now in a terrible state, Time magazine,

which has practically disappeared or is in the process of it, I'm afraid, The Washington Post, which is going through its own drama with Jeff Bezos, and CBS News. Well, you had a good word there, in my opinion. Fragility. Here's the pain in my heart. The pain in my heart is that the public does not appreciate

the importance of a free and strong and tough press in our democracy, that we have a function to fulfill, and that the public doesn't seem to want what we do to be part of our public life. And the dilemma is that most of these places that I named, the New York Times is an exception,

But for most of these owners, the organ of the press that they own is small change compared to Disney under ABC, Amazon, which owns the Washington Post, and so on and so forth, so that they can be easily compromised. We're a headache. An expensive headache. We are an expensive headache. And that's part of the fragility. But I think the more important part is public attitude and understanding.

It hurts more than you can imagine, more than everything that's going on with us in our business. Lessa, you are the age you are, and you're a phenomenon. I am the age I am. And you show no signs of losing interest in this activity. But I get the sense that it would break your heart if this institution stopped.

60 minutes, really, either fell apart or became a shell of itself? No question. No question. I'm already beginning to think about mourning, grieving, but I'm holding out hope. I know there's going to be a settlement. I know there's going to be some money exchanged. I know that. And then we will

hopefully still be around turning a new page and finding out what that new page is going to look like. But you wouldn't walk away? Depends. You asked me where my line is. I'm not sure. I don't think I can express what it is, but there is a line. Of course there's a line. Leslie Stahl, thank you. Okay, thank you.

Leslie Stahl reports for 60 Minutes, and we should note that a CBS spokesperson denies that Paramount or CBS management has ever blocked stories on 60 Minutes. I'm David Remnick. That's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

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