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Shari Shrugged

Apparently, Shari Redstone has waited too long and stands to make too much on the sale of her declining family business to get tripped up in a journalistic ethics debate or public spat with the new president. Why not just cave? These days, everybody’s doing it.

Shari Redstone
From Shari’s vantage point, the practical concerns likely outweigh the ethical. She is on the cusp of closing a tortured $8 billion deal to sell Paramount to Skydance—a deal that Trump’s Federal Communications Commission can block, or at least delay. Photo: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images
Dylan Byers
February 1, 2025

Barring some unforeseen twist of fate, Shari Redstone will likely soon announce that Paramount Global has agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by President Trump against CBS News’s 60 Minutes—the latest in a string of settlements brokered by media organizations with the ostensible hope of avoiding protracted public legal battles with the White House or unwanted federal intervention in their business dealings. As has been the case with Disney and Meta, Paramount will likely pay tens of millions of dollars to the Trump Presidential Library. And while initial reports suggest the settlement talks may not result in a deal, I am reliably told that Shari has already made up her mind.