Shell-Shocked at CBS

In the months since, the pressure from Shell and current Paramount boss Shari Redstone has not only persisted but intensified after Trump filed a $20 billion lawsuit over the Harris interview, according to people briefed on the matter. What began as a single troubling meeting has evolved into a sustained campaign of corporate meddling that McMahon and Owens see as a direct threat to the independence of CBS News. Last week, The New York Times reported that Redstone had made it clear to the Paramount board that she would like the company to find a way to resolve the suit, an outcome that McMahon and Owens have resisted.

Privately, McMahon and Owens have described feeling astonished, alarmed, and increasingly disillusioned by the mounting interference. McMahon, who initially signaled to associates that she had a positive working relationship with Shell, has since conveyed privately to associates that it has faced some friction. That's likely because McMahon and Owens have made it clear that they not only oppose settling the lawsuit, which legal experts have denounced as frivolous and ridiculous, but that they will not go along with any resolution that involves admitting wrongdoing.

Shell, on the other hand, has privately made clear to McMahon and Owens that they need to get on board with a settlement and such an admission—a red line the pair will not cross. In doing so, Shell has appeared to suggest that a settlement would only be a temporary setback for the news division. But it goes without saying that any settlement in which a monetary sum is paid to Trump, and especially one in which a statement of wrongdoing is included, would amount to a public surrender and forever stain the treasured reputation of “60 Minutes.”

Spokespeople for Skydance Media and Redstone declined to comment. A spokesperson for CBS did not respond to a request for one.

Shell's behavior, however, will raise questions about “gun jumping” and whether he has overstepped legal boundaries by influencing decision-making at CBS News before the Paramount-Skydance merger has closed. Antitrust regulators scrutinize pre-merger coordination to ensure that companies remain independent competitors until a deal is approved. By attempting to influence decisions at CBS News, Shell may have erred and potentially opened Paramount and Skydance up to regulatory scrutiny.

For McMahon and Owens, though, this isn’t just about executive overreach—it’s about a fundamental battle over journalistic integrity. They believe CBS News did nothing wrong and that conceding to the pressure would be a betrayal of the newsroom’s principles. Despite the weight of corporate influence bearing down on them, they have remained resolute. That has earned them the support of the journalists inside CBS News, many of whom have also privately expressed dismay at the notion that their network would consider settling the lawsuit with Trump.

The resistance from McMahon and Owens on the issue notably stands in contrast to how many other media and tech leaders have behaved. In recent months, the Bob Iger-led Disney moved to settle a lawsuit Trump filed against ABC News; Mark Zuckerberg's Meta did the same; and even Elon Musk's X paid Trump a reported $10 million to resolve a lawsuit he had filed against the company years ago. In addition, a number of media leaders have made various concessions to Trump, whether it is Patrick Soon-Shiong at the Los Angeles Times or Jeff Bezos at The Washington Post.

Of course, none of this would be happening in a normal world. But Trump has made it clear that he intends to wield the powers of government and weaponize them to punish his critics, a plain assault on the bedrock principles underpinning the country. Trump’s handpicked Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr, for example, immediately revived a complaint against CBS News when he took charge and opened it up for public comment—despite the fact that the unedited "60 Minutes" transcript turned over to him showed absolutely no wrongdoing by the network.

Media executives are now facing a choice: stand firm on principle or bend the knee in hopes of protecting their business interests. CBS News, Paramount, and Skydance are all at the center of this test. Will they hold the line and defend the journalistic independence of the network once home to the likes of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite? Or will they relent? The choice will not only be profound for the future of CBS News, but could have far-reaching consequences for society at large.

Lost in LA: The Los Angeles Times on Monday rolled out owner Patrick Soon-Shiong’s A.I.-generated “bias meter” on opinion-driven pieces, a promised move that ignited fierce blowback from the paper’s newsroom in recent months. Soon-Shiong, the Times’ red-pilled owner who has brazenly reoriented the paper under Donald Trump and courted MAGA personalities, celebrated the new “Insights” feature on X, writing: “Now the voice and perspective from all sides can be heard, seen and read —no more echo chamber.” A handful of articles viewed on the Times’ site Monday showed political ratings ranging from “center left” to “center right” generated by Perplexity AI, along with a disclaimer that the determination “was not created by the editorial staff of the Los Angeles Times.”

The move clearly didn’t sit well with the Times’ journalists. The LA Times Guild’s Matt Hamilton criticized the move in a statement, saying the “tool risks further eroding confidence in the news. And the money for this endeavor could have been directed elsewhere: supporting our journalists on the ground who have had no cost-of-living increase since 2021.” The launch comes just days after the last member of the Times’ editorial board accepted a buyout, capping a mass exodus after Soon-Shiong yanked an endorsement of Kamala Harris and swiftly moved to block editorials criticizing Trump in what was widely seen as an act of “anticipatory obedience.”

• Marty Baron zinged Jeff Bezos again, this time in an interview with Aidan McLaughlin, telling the Mediaite editor in chief he was "disturbed" by the billionaire's new edict for The WaPo's opinion division. [Mediaite]

  • Baron also wrote a piece for The Atlantic: "Now we know that Bezos is no Katharine Graham." [The Atlantic]

  • Speaking of Graham: "Becoming Katharine Graham" premiered Sunday evening at the Kennedy Center. Hosted by Warren Buffett, the event drew a crowd made up of Bill Gates, Amy Klobuchar, Elaine Chao, Andrea Mitchell, Judy Woodruff, Kaitlan Collins, and other power players. [NYT]

  • 🔌 I spoke with Kara Swisher for the latest episode of “On,” which was all about all The WaPo turmoil. [Apple Podcasts]

• New worrisome research from TollBit found that A.I. search engines send 96% less referral traffic to publishers than traditional Google search. [Forbes]

• Katie Robertson profiled Eugene Daniels, who has found himself having to battle the White House on First Amendment issues as WHCA chief. [NYT]

• Status Scoop | Evident, a new nonprofit news organization dedicated to investigative documentary-style storytelling, will launch this week. The organization boasts a team of award-winning journalists from Scripps, VICE News, and PBS. “As the media landscape fractures and profit incentives increasingly clash with the journalistic mission, we believe documentary journalism can flourish in the nonprofit news model,” founder Zach Toombs told me in a statement. The org will officially announce its launch Tuesday, but you can check out a preview of what’s to come here. [YouTube]

• MSNBC formally announced it had hired Eugene Daniels as senior Washington correspondent and co-host of "The Weekend" show. [Deadline]

• Business Insider tapped ex-Daily Beast editor-in-chief Tracy Connor as standards editor. [BI]

• The NYT announced Manny Fernandez as California editor at large and Shawn Hubler as Los Angeles bureau chief. [NYT]

• The Associated Press hired Nancy Benac as a White House reporter. [TBN]

Stream of Foxsciousness: Lachlan Murdoch said Monday that Fox Corporation is working to launch its new streaming platform by the time fall football is back. Speaking at the Morgan Stanley TMT conference, Murdoch, however, again stressed that the company does not wish to cannibalize the audience of linear television—something the company also stressed when it attempted to launch the ill-fated Venu Sports with Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney. Instead, Murdoch said Fox wants to attract "new subscribers that are outside of the bundle." Of course, the reality is that offering such a service poses the risk of cannibalization, so it will be interesting to see how Fox walks that tightrope.

► In other news, Murdoch said that the company’s other streamer, Fox Nation, has amassed between 2 million and 2.5 million subscribers since its 2018 launch.

RFK Gets Jabbed: Notorious anti-vaccine activist-turned-Trump Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was hit with a one-two punch in recent days after he publicly endorsed the MMR vaccine amid the deadly measles outbreak in Texas. The move, from the nation’s most prominent vaccine denier who has long (falsely) claimed the shots are linked to autism and other health issues, infuriated his one-time “Make America Healthy Again” allies, who called him a fraud and leveled other insults. “Vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons,” Kennedy wrote in an op-ed over the weekend for Fox News, though he stopped short of explicitly urging vaccinations, calling it a “personal” decision. Then on Monday, top HHS spokesperson Thomas Corry quit after clashing with RFK and his close aide Stefanie Spear over their management of the agency and Kennedy’s downplaying of the measles outbreak. All in all, it appears to be a very unhealthy time at the nation’s top health agency.

• While The WSJ might be blasting Donald Trump's media allies for defending him over his disastrous Oval Office meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky, on Fox News, viewers are hearing hosts like Greg Gutfeld call the Ukrainian president a "criminal" who "had it coming" and "deserved" the verbal lashing. [MMFA]

• MAGA on MAGA violence: Andrew Tate, now in the U.S., leveled a series of vile attacks against Ben Shapiro, Dave Portnoy, and Megyn Kelly. [MMFA]

• News Corporation boss Robert Thomson said he believes the "early Trump 2.0 turmoil" will dissipate: "This is not a permanent revolution." [Deadline]

• Remember when conservative media figures wrapped themselves in the Constitution? Speaking to Benny Johnson, Rick Scott suggested Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez should actually be prosecuted for helping undocumented immigrants. [Mediaite]

• Meanwhile, Twitch booted Hasan Piker from its platform after he went viral for a "kill Rick Scott" comment. [The Wrap]

• 👀 Candace Owens revealed she's been talking with Harvey Weinstein, recording interviews with him since 2022. [THR]

A Golden Snooze: The Oscars drew an average of 18.1 million viewers across ABC and Hulu, marking a 7% decline from the previous year. A probable factor? The absence of blockbuster nominees. Last year’s ceremony benefited from the widespread popularity of "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer," while this year’s biggest winners—"Anora," "The Brutalist," and "Emilia Pérez"—were largely unfamiliar to mainstream audiences. Hulu’s technical issues also likely played some role, with glitches disrupting the broadcast and even cutting the stream before the final two awards. Yikes! Finally, the ceremony was controversy free, which certainly didn't lead to more buzz. Host Conan O’Brien avoided political jabs and most attendees followed his lead, contributing to a tame broadcast that did not serve as a major viewer magnet.

• Karla Sofía Gascón thanked the Academy after the show and congratulated the winners. [THR]

• Zoe Saldaña apologized after "many Mexicans felt offended" by "Emilia Pérez." [Variety]

• Hulu said "Anora" will stream on the platform, starting March 17. [Deadline]

• Jay-Z sued the anonymous person who accused him of rape after she dropped her VMAs accusations. [The Wrap]