Lesley Stahl Engages in Anti-Journalism on California Voting

If CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss lived up to the Cruella de News caricature of hostile media reporters, Lesley Stahl would have been kicked out of "60 Minutes" right after pompous Scott Pelley. That might look like moving CBS to the sensible center.

Instead, "60 Minutes" is still engaged in its traditional bomb-throwing activism, making Democrat propaganda films during fall election season. On Oct. 17, Stahl was predictably trashing Trump: "The midterms are just two weeks away, and President Trump is using his power to intimidate the people who run our elections, putting the voting system under remarkable stress."

Inside Stahl's leftist bubble, no Democrat supervisor of voting can ever be accused of bending the election rules to favor Democrats. Merely lobbing accusations at Democrats threatens democracy.

Trump filed suit against California, seeking to bar the state from counting mail-in ballots from people the federal government has identified as "likely" noncitizens until their immigration status can be confirmed.

CBS is taking the position that trying to stop noncitizens from voting is a nefarious attack on election integrity. Stahl claimed, "It's the latest in a sequence of actions that has bred an erosion of faith in the integrity of our elections."

The media have acknowledged that elections in some hard-fought California districts could determine which party will control the House of Representatives. But journalists don't want anyone scrubbing noncitizens from the voter rolls. They like California exactly the way it is, with no voter ID required and no one scrutinizing the voting records.

Stahl continued: "President Trump defied history and the Constitution with a shocking statement on a podcast." He said, "The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting." Stahl lectured that elections are local, according to Article I of the Constitution. She avoided the inconvenient truth that Democrats have been seeking to nationalize the voting system.

Then Stahl grilled Harmeet Dhillon, who runs the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, which is probing the voting issues: "There are people who feel that the point is to sow distrust about the whole election system. There are very few people who are noncitizens who end up voting. Very, very few! And so, therefore, what's the purpose?"

Dhillon rebutted: "The point is actually the opposite of what you were saying. It's not to sow distrust. The distrust is there. And so all of these kinds of crimes are being prosecuted now for the first time really in volume. And look, even the Biden administration prosecuted 13 people for noncitizen voting." Stahl shot back: "The numbers are tiny!" Dhillon said they're looking at "literally thousands."

Stahl signaled that there should be no Trump investigations of this subject at all. It's far too small to ask questions about. This is where you have to wonder if what Stahl is engaged in here is journalism. It sounds like the opposite of journalism. Don't investigate! Don't look into anything! Don't try to undermine America with your questions!

The assumption is that whatever conservatives want to prove cannot be proven. It sounds a lot like Stahl lecturing Trump right before the 2020 elections, as he bemoaned the media coverage of Hunter Biden's book-raking, as proven on his laptop. Stahl told Trump, "All these things have been investigated and discredited. ... It can't be verified! ... It can't be verified!"

Eventually, Catherine Herridge at CBS News verified the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop. But she was terminated by CBS News — and Stahl is still there. That paints a picture. Journalism that investigates the Democrats will not be welcome inside CBS News.

Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org.

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