The Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday took the unusual step of releasing raw transcripts and video footage of CBS News’ “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris, which has sparked heated debate over the network’s credibility and press freedoms.
Paramount Global-owned CBS followed FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s move by separately publishing its interview transcripts and footage from the October interview. CBS turned over the same material to the government Monday night, following a demand by Carr, who was appointed to the post by President Trump.
Carr said that publishing the previously unreleased footage and opening up a case file would “serve the public interest.” The FCC now plans to accept public comment.
“The people will have a chance to weigh in,” Carr wrote on social media site X.
Carr’s inquiry was sparked by a complaint lodged with the FCC last fall by a conservative legal nonprofit accusing CBS of political bias. Carr’s predecessor had dismissed the complaint, and three others filed against news organizations. However, in his first week, Carr reopened three of the cases that alleged liberal media bias, including the CBS “60 Minutes” complaint.
In a separate online statement, CBS said it was taking the rare step of publishing “the same transcripts and videos of our interview with Vice President Kamala Harris that we provided to the FCC.”
The unedited portions of the interview proved that the edited version broadcast in October was “consistent with 60 Minutes’ repeated assurances to the public — that the 60 Minutes broadcast was not doctored or deceitful,” the producers of CBS said.
“In reporting the news, journalists regularly edit interviews — for time, space or clarity,” the CBS News producers said. “In making these edits, 60 Minutes is always guided by the truth and what we believe will be most informative to the viewing public — all while working within the constraints of broadcast television.”
The Harris interview provoked the ire of Trump, who filed a $10 billion lawsuit against CBS a few weeks after the interview was broadcast. Trump alleged that CBS had engaged in deceptive editing practices, which CBS has consistently denied.
That case is pending, and not directly related to the FCC probe.
However, Carr’s FCC inquiry raised the stakes in the dispute, which has stoked fears by some journalists and 1st Amendment experts that Trump and his team would use levers of power to try to chill news coverage unflattering to the president.
The portion of the “60 Minutes” interview that drew controversy came during Harris’ answer to a question posed by CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker. He asked the Democratic nominee for president whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been listening to the Biden-Harris Administration during the war in Gaza.
“We broadcast a longer portion of the vice president’s answer on Face the Nation and broadcast a shorter excerpt from the same answer on 60 Minutes the next day,” the “60 Minutes” producers wrote.
“Each excerpt reflects the substance of the vice president’s answer,” they wrote. “As the full transcript shows, we edited the interview to ensure that as much of the vice president’s answers to 60 Minutes’ many questions were included in our original broadcast while fairly representing those answers.”
The network also said the transcripts show that CBS did not pull any punches in the Harris interview. Trump has maintained that CBS was trying to use a portion of the interview that put the former vice president in a more favorable light, and in effect trying to steer the outcome of the election.
The network’s “hard-hitting questions of the vice president speak for themselves,” the CBS News producers said in the statement.
For weeks, Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, had been agitating for her team to settle Trump’s lawsuit to facilitate her family’s sale of Paramount to David Ellison’s Skydance Media. That deal needs the approval of the FCC because of the transfer of CBS station licenses to the Ellison family.
The debate over whether the company would defend “60 Minutes” revealed deep divisions within CBS, a division of Paramount Global. Journalists decried the potential move, which they said seemed designed to placate Trump at the expense of the reputation and legacy of “60 Minutes.”
The issue put Redstone and some high-level executives at odds with journalists, who expressed dismay that the company did not appear willing to go to bat for one of the network’s premier brands.
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