Tipsheet

What Is CBS News Hiding?

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  October 23, 2024 2:01 PM

As we recently outlined, it has been a damaging, credibility-harming few weeks for CBS News.  The network violated its own debate rules with a disputed-to-misleading 'fact check' of JD Vance at the Vice Presidential debate, then cut off his microphone as he calmly picked apart their assertion.  Their morning show was thrown into chaos when some employees melted down over an anchor asking pointed, tough questions of an anti-Israel zealot, resulting in angry recriminations, tears, and a series of embarrassing leaks.  Then there was the curious 60 Minutes edit of Kamala Harris' answer regarding US-Israeli relations, which looked completely different in a teaser clip, compared to what aired on the broadcast itself.  As a refresher, here's the side-by-side juxtaposition:


What 60 Minutes viewers saw was more succinct and far less rambling and vacuous than the answer that was released ahead of the broadcast.  It is true that news organizations will sometimes cut down longer answers due to time constraints. But snipping out her word salad, which had been ridiculed online, was a suspicious choice to some people.  The best way to examine and determine whether the second, 'for-air' CBS edit was journalistically defensible is to look at the full exchange, then consider how the program cut it down.  If the full video isn't forthcoming, for whatever reason, then the unedited and un-redacted transcript would suffice.  But for reasons that are inexplicable to me, 60 Minutes has been withholding the transcript for more than two weeks.  As former CBS correspondent Catherine Herridge keeps pointing out, publishing entire transcripts of major or significant interviews has been a common practice, including in her own experience:

Releasing the full unedited transcript is consistent with journalistic transparency and it stands behind the integrity of the entire Kamala Harris edit, not just the clips under scrutiny. CBS has the ability to immediately settle these questions and address merits of FCC complaint alleging “news distortion.” There is ample precedent at CBS News for releasing full, unedited transcripts. 2019 interview, Attorney General Bill Barr [with Jan Crawford].  2020 interview, President Trump [with Herridge].  60 Minutes released its full interview transcript with Fed Chair Jerome Powell.

On Sunday, the program released a statement addressing the controversy.  Remaining silent would have been better than this deeper-hole-digging exercise, in my view:

Former President Donald Trump is accusing 60 Minutes of deceitful editing of our Oct. 7 interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. That is false. 60 Minutes gave an excerpt of our interview to Face the Nation that used a longer section of her answer than that on 60 Minutes. Same question. Same answer. But a different portion of the response. When we edit any interview, whether a politician, an athlete, or movie star, we strive to be clear, accurate and on point. The portion of her answer on 60 Minutes was more succinct, which allows time for other subjects in a wide ranging 21-minute-long segment. Remember, Mr. Trump pulled out of his interview with 60 Minutes and the vice president participated. Our long-standing invitation to former President Trump remains open. If he would like to discuss the issues facing the nation and the Harris interview, we would be happy to have him on 60 Minutes.

They are pushing back against accusations from Trump, which are fueled by their own opacity. If their edits are ethical and representative, transparency would vindicate them and put and end to all of this. Their continued refusal to just show America the complete transcript is suspicious. They only aired a fraction of what was reportedly a 45-minute interview. It would be a massive scandal if 60 Minutes were hiding something, in order to help their preferred candidate. I'm not alleging that's what is happening here, but as I said on Fox, the longer they play these games and decline to clear things up by publishing the video or transcript, the worse it looks for them: 


There is no acceptable rationale against letting the public at least read the full interview between a CBS News journalist and one of the two people who will be the next President of the United States. By the way, here's a reminder of why Trump eschewed tradition and nixed his 60 Minutes sit-down:

Recommended

Why Again Do We Still Have a Special Relationship With the Tyrannical UK? Kurt Schlichter
Trump's Border Czar Issues a Warning to Dem Politicians Pledging to Shelter Illegal Aliens Matt Vespa

During the interview [with Trump] — which aired on Oct. 25, the week before the 2020 election, and garnered nearly 17 million views — longtime anchor [Leslie Stahl] flat-out denied that the Biden family was under any sort of scandal at all. The interview was so combative that the Trump campaign released the full raw footage before network publication. “He’s in the midst of a scandal,” Trump said in reference to emails from the laptop revealing Joe Biden was lying about involvement with Hunter’s overseas business ventures. “He’s not,” Stahl said, interrupting the president to outright dismiss the criticism. “He’s not, no.” Stahl went on to deny that then-Vice President Joe Biden spied on the Trump campaign in 2016, and claimed Hunter Biden’s laptop couldn’t be verified.

I think it would have still been a good idea for Trump to have done the CBS interview, but it's clear that he felt like 60 Minutes had wrongly put its finger on the 'misinformation' scale in helping to cover up the Hunter Biden laptop saga. The supression of that accurate prior to a major election was disgraceful, and involved a shocking array of collusion. Whether or not Trump just wanted an excuse to bypass 60 Minutes, it's not unreasonable for someone to demand some measure of accountability for how the Big Tech/'news' alliance handled that situation.  Why reward outlets that haven't earned trust?  I'll leave you with another news organization's attempt to 'fact check' Donald Trump's trolling over whether Kamala Harris ever worked at McDonald's:


I have no idea what's true about Harris' employment history with the fast food giant, but it does seem odd that there's no proof of it whatsoever beyond the say so of her campaign and some vague recollections of one friend.  It's also strange that she apparently never mentioned this relatable biographical detail in her public life or political career before she started running for president in 2019.  Regardless, Trump's stint at the Golden Arches over the weekend was a political masterstroke and a viral sensation that worked on several levels.  Which is the real reason that critics are upset:


UPDATE - CBS continues to cover itself in glory, on multiple fronts: