Tonight’s CBS Evening News offerings presented viewers with an amazing split screen as it fell upon John Dickerson to deliver the news that Paramount Global entered into a settlement agreement that would terminate the lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump.

On the CBS Evening News, the actual report of the settlement to close out the newscast. Watch below in its entirety:

CBS EVENING NEWS

7/2/25

6:56 PM

JOHN DICKERSON: Finally, tonight: Paramount Global, owner of CBS News, has settled a lawsuit filed by President Trump. The case began when the president alleged that 60 Minutes deceptively edited an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris to aid her candidacy. Which Mr. Trump said amounted to election interference and caused him mental anguish. Under the terms of the settlement worked out with a mediator, Paramount will pay $16 million to cover Mr. Trump's legal costs. Whatever's left will go to his presidential library. No money will be paid directly to the president. The settlement does not require an apology or expression of regret for the editing of the interview, which was done in accordance with long-held CBS News standards and widely accepted journalistic practices. CBS News’ Face the Nation ran a promotional clip of the interview which included a portion of Harris' answer to a question. The 60 Minutes broadcast used a different portion of the answer to the very same question. The president alleges this was done to make Harris look better. CBS News has denied this. Mr. Trump has also claimed that after correspondent Bill Whitaker asked the question, 60 Minutes showed Harris' response to a different question. The full transcript released by 60 Minutes shows that this is not true. Today, a senior Paramount executive told stockholders the deal allows the corporation to avoid what he called the high and somewhat unpredictable costs of legal defense. Paramount is attempting to close an $8 billion merger with Skydance Media. That deal needs Trump administration approval. The corporation said the settlement of the Trump lawsuit is completely separate from and unrelated to the merger. In the end, Paramount decided to settle a suit it said is without basis in law and fact, and an affront to the First Amendment.

If you listen closely enough, you can hear the chagrin in Dickerson’s voice as he looks to the teleprompter and reads what up to this moment must have been inconceivable at the former Tiffany Network. Dickerson slogged through it without sounding pompous until the very end, with the little flourish on the First Amendment. 

But as is always the case when reviewing ANY legacy media news product: the most important thing in any given report is often that which is left out. Pay close attention to Dickerson’s disclosure of the terms of the settlement:

Under the terms of the settlement worked out with a mediator, Paramount will pay $16 million to cover Mr. Trump's legal costs. Whatever's left will go to his presidential library. No money will be paid directly to the president. The settlement does not require an apology or expression of regret for the editing of the interview, which was done in accordance with long-held CBS News standards and widely accepted journalistic practices.

Everything about this disclosure was accurate, except the part about standards and practices. This is because CBS’s standards and practices are changing pursuant to the settlement. Per The Hollywood Reporter:

Under the deal, announced Tuesday evening, the money will go to Trump’s presidential library. It involves an agreement from Paramount, which will not apologize as part of the settlement, to release 60 Minutes transcripts of interviews with presidential candidates after they’ve aired, according to a statement from the company.

I helpfully bolded out the editorial change made by CBS pursuant to the settlement agreement, known henceforth as the Trump Rule, made necessary by those vaunted standards for which there can be no apology. It was those vaunted standards that led CBS News to cut videos with two different responses to the same question from Bill Whitaker.

Over on Plus, the tone was far different, and dare I say it sounded almost apologetic:

CBS EVENING NEWS PLUS

7/2/25

7:26 PM

JOHN DICKERSON: 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, 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. “Mission”, that- 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. 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 witnessed it for. The network's first heroes who ran to rooftops during the bombing of London. Its current ones carry that same instinct. But another story from CBS's early days also captures this spirit. A 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.

Viewers at Plus got the pomposity we are all used to. Here, there is no description of the settlement beyond its disclosure in the very first sentence. What follows next is a tour-de-delusion that gives us a glimpse at the sort of insular newsroom culture that allowed things to get out of control in the first place .

Rather than giving viewers a full accounting of the terms of the agreement, Dickerson delved into lyrical soliloquy about the sacred role of journalism, the importance of getting it right, and on working to regain lost trust. Dickerson sounded legitimately apologetic over the settlement, notwithstanding CBS’s lack of an actual apology over its standards and practices.

If we can learn anything from these twin segments, it is that there is still shock and denial over the settlement. One hopes that CBS News (and, by broader extension, the media) learned something from the 60 Minutes fiasco at the heart of the suit. Sadly, it appears that they haven't.