Lesley Stahl revealed that she and her fellow 60 Minutes correspondents came close to quitting “en masse” after their boss left the show with a dire warning about Donald Trump.
The 33-year 60 Minutes veteran admitted she was “angry” with Paramount head Shari Redstone on the Friday episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour.
“It is a frivolous lawsuit,” Stahl said of Trump’s $20 billion legal action against CBS News. When host and New Yorker editor David Reminick asked Stahl whether she was “angry” with Redstone, Stahl admitted, “Yes, I think I am. I think I am.”
Stahl also offered a theory for why Trump pursued the lawsuit against CBS News, in which he is accusing 60 Minutes of “deceptively editing” Harris’ interview to make her look better, in the first place.
“What is really behind it, in a nutshell, is to chill us,” Stahl said. “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.”
Settling the lawsuit would pave the way for Paramount’s planned merger with Skydance Media, which would reportedly result in a $530 million personal payout for Redstone—and has to be approved by Trump’s FCC officials.
Paramount offered Trump $15 million to settle the lawsuit this week, but the president turned it down, citing “mental anguish” over the Harris interview. He now wants $25 million and an apology to put his complaint to rest.
The attempt to settle with Trump over the interview, which staffers have insisted was edited according to its usual standards and was not politically motivated, has caused internal tension at the network, culminating in the shock exits of 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens and CBS News President Wendy McMahon.
Stahl said Owens’ resignation “was one of those punches where you almost can’t breathe,” calling Owens and McMahon “barriers” between “us and the corporation.” Those barriers were tested even before Trump’s lawsuit, Stahl recalled Friday.
As for what 60 Minutes will be like once out of Redstone’s hands at Paramount, Stahl said she’s “Pollyannaish” that Skydance will “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,” Stahl said. “And I have no reason to think that won’t happen.”
Reminick asked Stahl to consider what happens if it doesn’t, and what it would take for her to follow Owens and McMahon out of the CBS News door.
“It depends,” she said. “You ask 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 is a line.”
Stahl said that Owens resigning was one of those “lines” and she and her fellow correspondents actually considering quitting “en masse.” But their outgoing boss talked them out of it.
“It is hard” 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,’” Stahl explained, recounting what it was like to “quietly resist” Redstone’s complaints about 60 Minutes’ Gaza coverage. “The message came down through the line, through Wendy McMahon to Bill,” Stahl said, which she found “very disconcerting.”
“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,” she continued.
