In media news, the Paramount Skydance Corporation has more than doubled the proposed breakup fee in its offer to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, as it seeks to outbid rivals looking to acquire the media conglomerate. The proposed merger comes just months after Skydance completed its acquisition of Paramount, the parent company of CBS, and after Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit brought by President Trump, who objected to how “60 Minutes” edited an interview with Kamala Harris. Paramount board chair and controlling shareholder Shari Redstone reportedly sought the settlement to ensure the FCC approved Paramount’s merger. On Wednesday, Redstone defended the settlement during the Reuters NEXT summit in New York City.

Shari Redstone: “I do believe it was the right decision. I think the trial had been set for two years out. The chaos that would have been created over the next two years, I’m not sure the company could have survived, the internal distractions, the external distractions, in spite of everything that we were doing in the company. And during those months we became the number four streaming service. Nobody was talking about that. All people were talking about was the, you know, distraction of the Trump litigation.”