U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday reiterated his call for the owner of CBS News' parent company to stand up to President Donald Trump following news that the outlet's CEO was forced to step down from her post.
"Bill Owens, the producer of CBS's '60 Minutes,' resigned in protest. Wendy McMahon, the head of CBS News, has now resigned," Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote on social media. "I say to Shari Redstone: Enough is enough. Do not capitulate to Trump's attack on a free press. Do not settle Trump's bogus lawsuit against '60 Minutes.'"
Redstone is the controlling shareholder of Paramount Global, which is currently in talks to settle Trump's lawsuit against CBS News. The suit, which experts have criticized as baseless and a threat to press freedom, accuses the outlet of deceptively editing an interview it conducted ahead of the 2024 election with then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
Redstone has advocated settling the Trump suit as she seeks federal approval of a merger deal between Paramount and the entertainment company Skydance. Semaforreported last month that Redstone, whose family stands to reap a large windfall if the deal goes through, had been keeping close tabs on "60 Minutes" segments to supervise coverage of Trump.
Redstone's monitoring triggered "a series of events that ended with the Tuesday resignation of the show's longtime producer," Bill Owens.
The New York Timesnoted Monday that "at the time, Ms. McMahon took pains to signal her support for Mr. Owens, saying that 'standing behind' the producer 'was an easy decision for me.'"
"Her embrace of Mr. Owens and '60 Minutes' put Ms. McMahon at odds with Paramount executives who were anxious about the show's reporting about the Trump administration," the Times added. "Within CBS News, some journalists expected Ms. McMahon to be gone within months. But the timing of her announcement, less than 24 hours after Sunday's season finale of '60 Minutes,' still raised eyebrows."
In a letter to Redstone earlier this month, Sanders and a group of Senate Democrats warned that settling the Trump lawsuit would "only embolden him to shake down, extort, and silence CBS and other media outlets that have the courage to report about issues that Trump may not like."
"Stand up for freedom of the press and our democracy," the senators urged Redstone. "Do not capitulate to this dangerous move to authoritarianism."
