CBS News’ John Dickerson Delivers Searing Monologue on Parent Company’s Settlement With Trump: ‘Can an Audience Trust You?’

CBS Evening News anchor John Dickerson delivered a searing monologue about the settlement CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global, reached with President Donald Trump regarding the network’s interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris on 60 Minutes during the 2024 election.

“Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS News, settled a suit with President Trump today. Journalists don’t like to report on themselves. Sometimes that’s false humility. Mostly, it’s a practical limitation. Reporters try to find order in chaos. We prefer to explain the cause of a bombing, the intent of a bill, the marvel of a new discovery. Putting chaos in preliminary order helps viewers make sense of their world. They tell us this at airports, restaurants, and at church. The audience brings us their fears, their questions, their good faith view of things. It reminds us that we are stewards of that concern. It’s a grace to receive another’s trust, but also to have a mission that shapes your work,” began Dickerson toward the end of Wednesday’s edition of his program.

“Mission — that can sound grandiose. We are not all that. Public figures have taught us that misguided mission can do more harm than brute force. We pride ourselves on our BS detector, so it ought to work on ourselves, too. When it doesn’t, the stakes are real, a loss of public trust, the spread of misinformation,” he continued. “A visitor to our newsrooms might wonder why we debate a single word for so long, why it takes hours to answer the simple question, what is this story about, why there’s a cry of frustration when a detail is off by an inch. That is what it work looks like when it is deeply felt, when the audience’s concerns become ours, passed by bucket brigade from the subjects of our stories to correspondents, to producers, to editors, fact checkers, and writers. The obstacles to getting it right are many. The Paramount settlement poses a new obstacle. Can you hold power to account after paying it millions? Can an audience trust you when it thinks you’ve traded away that trust? The audience will decide that. Our job is to show up, to honor what we witness on behalf of the people we witness it for.”

“The network’s first heroes ran to rooftops during the bombing of London. Its current ones carry that same instinct,” concluded Dickerson. “But another story from CBS’s early days also captures this spirit. The young correspondent was filing a story when it started to rain. The takes they’d already filmed were fine, everybody could have just gone inside. But she persisted. The rain turning the notes in her hand to pulp. Again and again, she worked to get it right. This wasn’t London under the fire. It was just a regular story. That’s the point. So the rain has picked up, but we’ll stay at it. We hope you will too. See you tomorrow.”

Paramount has agreed to pay $16 million to cover Trump’s legal fees pertaining to the suit, the balance of which will go toward building his presidential library.

It has been widely speculated that it sought a settlement rather than litigating because Paramount is seeking FCC approval for an $8 billion merger with Skydance.

Watch above via CBS Evening News on YouTube.