Katie Couric “Mortified” Paramount Settled Donald Trump’s ’60 Minutes’ Lawsuit

Katie Couric, former anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News, said she was “mortified” that President Donald Trump “basically extorted CBS and was successful because they wanted a merger to go through. This is such a dangerous time for a free and independent press and I do really, really worry about that.

“I’m worried about the corporate ownership of a lot of these media companies, the fact that they are capitulating to the administration. They’re paying Donald Trump millions of dollars for things that they should never have agreed to. There was nothing wrong with the editing of the Kamala Harris interview on 60 Minutes,” she said at the Gracies Leadership Awards in New York, an annual event presented by the Alliance for Women in Media.

CBS parent Paramount settled the suit for $16 million in July as the company’s deal to sell itself to David Ellison’s Skydance Media languished at the FCC. The commission approved the merger shortly after the settlement of the suit over the popular newsmagazine’s editing of an interview with Harris during the presidential campaign. Many considered the litigation without merit.

Disney settled a Trump defamation lawsuit for $15 million in late 2024 over remarks by ABC’s This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos.

“You know, there’s a chilling effect, when you worry that the owners of a media organization don’t want to piss off the administration. I mean, that’s our jobs to piss off administrations and it always has been, and to speak truth to power, said Couric, who was the first woman to solo anchor a network evening newscast from her perch at CBS from 2006 to 2011 following 15 years as co-anchor of NBC’s Today show. In 2017, she launched the multiplatform Katie Couric Media and has recently been outspoken in her view of the administration.

“I’m so glad that I have this opportunity with disintermediation that I can talk directly to consumers and to my audience. Because if I didn’t have it, I would be what Donald Trump calls me – a ‘has been’. And so I’m so excited that I can still do this. I can be an independent journalist and speak my mind and speak truth to power and call out people and challenge authority at a time when we desperately need it,” she said in an interview with Today co-host Sheinelle Jones at the awards, which are named for the late Gracie Allen.

Couric’s “also concerned about the belittling of journalists, which is so frustrating to me, that people mock reporters at the White House. I think the president of the United States called a reporter “piggy” yesterday on Air Force One. It’s disgusting. Let’s be honest. It’s absolutely appalling.”

Video surfaced yesterday of a female journalist from Bloomberg News trying to ask Trump a follow-up question on Jeffrey Epstein when he turned to her and said, “Quiet. Quiet, piggy.”

Couric excoriated the “lack of decency and the lack of manners and the lack of respect. There’s a reason why fake news became an earworm, because it was used over and over again, and very successfully sowed distrust in the media. And I’m really worried about that because I think most reporters are really trying to search for the truth and share it with the American people. And as long as they’re demeaned and it’s okay for the person who has the most important job in the country to belittle them and trash them publicly … It’s just not okay.”

Asked about favorite interviews, she recalled an infamous one with Sarah Palin, the late Sen. John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 presidential election. Couric famously asked the aspiring veep what newspapers and magazines she read regularly to stay informed. Palin said she’d read “most of them … all of them. Any of them that have been in front of me over all these years” but declined to name specific publications.

That “had a big impact on the election and made people wonder, appropriately, if she should be a heartbeat away from the presidency,” Couric said today. “You’re welcome.”

The Gracies also honored an eclectic group of women leaders including Rita Ferro, Disney’s President of Global Advertising; Connie Orlando, EVP, Special, Music Programming, Music Strategy and News, BET; Jenna Weiss Berman, Head if Audio & Podcasts, Paper Kite Productions; Valari Dobson Staab, Chairman, NBCUniversal Local; Martha Benyam, COO, Kino Lorber Media; Alissa Pollack, EVP of Global Music Marketing, iHeart; and Michelle Duke, President NAB Leadership Foundation and Chief Impact Officer, NAB.