ANGELO LYNN

As Paramount Global Chair Shari Redstone ponders whether to sign a devil’s pact with President Trump over his bogus lawsuit against CBS News, it’s clearer than ever that large corporations that don’t have solid journalistic principles are not worthy owners of newspapers or other media that’s vital to the public’s understanding of domestic or world news.

That realization comes after several national media outlets compromised their integrity in deference to Trump’s potential influence over other far more lucrative aspects of their businesses. To wit: Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, and Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of the Los Angeles Times, sold out the credibility of those two newspapers’ editorial pages in deference to Trump’s campaign; ABC News, owned by Disney, needlessly conceded a $15 million settlement (a donation to Trump’s future presidential library) over a defamation suit that legal experts said was easily winnable; Facebook owner META made a $22 million check out to Trump’s future presidential library, plus $3 million in legal fees, all because the company locked his Facebook and Instagram accounts for promoting violence during the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, as per its internal policy to ban the promotion of violence on its platform. Even though Meta restored his accounts in early 2023, the lawsuit continued, and META settled in a matter of a few days after the inauguration. (The gall of the president to claim his First Amendment rights were violated even as he imprisons foreign college students for expressing their opinions in student newspapers over the Gaza-Israeli War is vintage Trump — completely devoid of equanimity.)

Paramount’s discussions with Trump reportedly began soon after he sued CBS News and 60 Minutes at the end of October 2024. At the time, Trump alleged the news program had engaged in “election interference” by deceptively editing clips of its interview with Democratic presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris. The allegation was disputed, and legal experts said Trump’s claims have no basis in fact. CBS even released the transcript and interview to prove their case but talks continued. Why? Because Paramount’s Redstone is seeking federal approval for a proposed merger with Skydance Media, a deal that could earn Redstone billions of dollars if completed.

In short, none of the cases against these media outlets have a winnable argument, but they’re settling because Trump could wield the powers of the federal government against the owners in other ways that are far more costly to them than the settlement price.

The news media, writ large, is the loser.

That’s because the public trust in media is diminished when it needlessly bows to political pressure, and because it gives Trump supporters justification to believe these outlets wronged the president in the first place.

Vermont’s Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Peter Welch recently joined seven other prominent Democratic senators in urging Paramount’s Redstone not to capitulate to Trump’s demands in a joint statement released this Wednesday that lays out what’s at stake.

“This lawsuit is an attack on the United States Constitution and the First Amendment. It has absolutely no merit… In the United States of America, presidents do not get to punish or censor the media for criticizing them. Freedom of the press is what sets us apart from tin pot dictatorships and authoritarian regimes.” According to the senators, Redstone had also asked the CEO of CBS to “delay sensitive stories about Trump” until after the Skydance merger was completed. Such requests by any owner of a journalistic enterprise is shocking.

In a story in Vanity Fair, reporter Paul Farhi summed up his piece on media capitulating to Trump with a comment by Sonja West, a University of Georgia law professor who specializes in First Amendment issues. For decades, West said, confident and well-funded news organizations fought off legal battles to defend their reporting and protect their First Amendment rights. “What we’re seeing today is a concerning shift in that dynamic. Our democracy depends on the press to serve as a check on powerful people, not just to cut them checks for millions of dollars.”

Taking the powerful to account is not likely to happen when the owners of news media have billions at stake in other non-related businesses that a rogue president like Trump can influence.

**********

In a parallel argument, the 2^nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this Wednesday that the Trump administration must comply with a Vermont judge’s ruling to transfer Tuft graduate student Rümeysa Oztürk from a prison facility in Louisiana to Vermont where she would await trial. The foreign-born graduate student, who was in America legally with a Green Card, was nabbed off the street of her hometown in Massachusetts by masked and plainclothes immigration enforcement officers and whisked off to Vermont then Louisiana without any charges filed against her and without any ability to defend herself in court. Such a total abdication of due process violates every citizen’s right to habeas corpus — a key provision of America’s rule by law. Oztürk’s arrest appears to have been prompted by an opinion piece she wrote in the student newspaper at Tufts in which she criticized Israel’s war on Gaza.

“No one should be arrested and locked up for their political views,” said a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who is representing her. Fortunately, the court system has rejected Trump’s effort to deport her and others. It’s an outrage for all Americans who believe in the rule of law, freedom of speech, and the right to due process.

**********

The solution calls for a reasonable Congress (after 2026, we hope) to grant stronger measures to protect the media’s and the public’s First Amendment rights, and, if anything, strengthen the individual’s right to due process, and allocate more public funding to public media like PBS and NPR, not less.

Once again, Trump is doing what he can to destroy our democracy and to reshape America into a land of citizens who toe the line (like in Russia) — but definitely not a nation free to speak its mind without fear of retribution.

Angelo Lynn