Free speech advocates in the US are outraged that the media can do nothing about Trump’s threats and lawsuits. His attacks on the program “60 Minutes” for an interview with Zelensky are just the latest episodes.
Recently, the executive producer of the cult American news program “60 Minutes” resigned, explaining this by the “loss of editorial independence” due to political pressure.
Defenders of the right to free speech, enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution, are sounding the alarm over President Donald Trump’s brutal crusade against news agencies that he does not like.
CBS News producer Bill Owen said he is resigning because “it has become clear that I will not be allowed to run the program the way I have always run it. Make independent decisions based on what was right for 60 Minutes, right for the audience.”
Trump objected to an interview with Volodymyr Zelensky on “60 Minutes” earlier this month in the Ukrainian president’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih and called on his Federal Communications Commission to investigate the network’s activities.
In October 2024, then-presidential candidate Trump sued the network over another “60 Minutes” interview with his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris. He is seeking $20 billion in damages. The case is currently in mediation.
Trump accused the news program of “fraud,” airing “slanderous” segments, “illegal” interference in the last presidential election, “corruptly changing key interview answers,” and engaging in “illegal and unlawful activities” as a “political agent.”
He added that CBS should be stripped of its broadcasting license and forced to “pay a heavy price.”
Complicating matters is that CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global, is simultaneously trying to complete an $8.4 billion merger with Skydance Media, which by law requires administration approval.
American media outlets and free speech advocates have been vocal about the fact that Paramount’s chairman, Shari Redstone, has caved in to political pressure and sacrificed journalistic principles to get the merger approved and avoid lawsuits.
CNN anchor Jake Tapper said, “Shari Redstone will likely kneel before Trump and settle this supposedly frivolous lawsuit.”
“I hope the money is worth it, Shari,” he added.
Last March, Trump filed a defamation lawsuit against ABC News and its anchor George Stephanopoulos (a former White House communications director under Bill Clinton), claiming that Stephanopoulos had damaged Trump’s reputation in an on-air interview by saying that he had been found guilty of “raping” author E. Jean Carroll. His team’s legal argument was that under New York state law, Trump’s digital penetration of Carroll constituted “sexual assault,” not “rape.”
ABC News lawyers have agreed to an out-of-court settlement: $15 million for Trump’s presidential library, $1 million in legal fees, and a public apology from Stephanopoulos.
“Trump’s hostility to press freedom is also evident in his baseless defamation lawsuits, threats of regulatory action against broadcasters, and a pointless dispute with the Associated Press, which he has sought to expel from the White House because it has not fully adopted his new name for the Gulf of Mexico,” wrote Reason magazine.
A federal judge in the latter case ruled: “If the government opens the door to some journalists, it cannot then close the door to others because of their views.”
John Moretti,
an independent journalist and author who lives between Europe
and the United States, Kyiv Post
