by WorldTribune Staff, October 24, 2024 Contract With Our Readers
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is likely to open an inquiry into CBS's selective editing of a "60 Minutes" interview with Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris where her word salad response to a question was replaced with a less incoherent answer.
“Our precedent provides that the Commission may investigate an intentional, substantial, and material distortion of the news, where, as arguably here alleged, ‘outtakes’ from a news segment appear to substantiate genuine concerns around ‘splicing’ answers of an interviewee,” FCC member Nathan Simington said in a statement to The Federalist. “A complaint need not fully factually prove an allegation of news distortion; it need only raise a substantial and material question of fact.”
The complaint over the CBS editing was filed by the Center for American Rights, which argued the issue is deeply concerning because “the general public no longer has any confidence as to what the Vice President actually said in response to the query.”
Simington said: “The application of our news distortion policy is intentionally narrowly-specified. But that does not mean that nothing a licensee does can ever trigger it. The Commission can and should take the complaint seriously. That might, and probably does, mean opening an inquiry.”
Will Scharf, Of Counsel to the James Otis Law Group and an attorney for GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, wrote for The Federalist: “CBS News now stands accused of deliberately distorting its news coverage for nakedly political purposes, to prop up Kamala Harris’ flailing presidential campaign by attempting to hide her inability to answer even simple questions about her policy positions and how she would act if elected president.”
Amid calls to release a full transcript of the interview and serious questions about corruption to benefit the Harris campaign, CBS released a statement on Oct. 20 "where it both defended the decision and openly took a swipe at Trump — leading to further concern that the outlet is fully in the bag for Harris," Breccan F. Thies wrote for The Federalist.
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“Former President Donald Trump is accusing 60 Minutes of deceitful editing of our Oct. 7 interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. That is false,” the CBS statement said, adding, “Remember, Mr. Trump pulled out of his interview with 60 Minutes and the vice president participated.”
In response to CBS’s statement, the Trump campaign said: “60 Minutes just admitted to doing exactly what President Trump accused them of doing. They edited in a different response — from another part of her answer — to make Kamala Harris sound less incoherent than she really was.”
Simington told The Federalist he hopes Congress will dissolve the agency. Until then, he said the rules executed by the FCC should be applied to any who violate them.
“Don’t get me wrong: the Commission’s application of media regulatory authority has recently been an exercise in overreach. But we are either in the media business or we are not,” Simington said. “If we are, and if we have acted as we have recently, we should apply our rules fairly and without favor. While I look forward to the day that Congress, so to speak, ‘takes the keys away’ from the Commission, our rules as they exist today must be applied even-handedly if they are applied at all.”
