CBS came under fire after airing two different answers to Harris’s 60 Minutes interview, with the second version offering a much more flattering and succinct answer to Whitaker’s question about Israel, muddying the waters about what Harris actually said in real time.
Following public backlash, a member of the Federal Communications Commission requested the chair take action, though some familiar with the Commission believe party lines will influence the decision.
The Daily Caller reports:
A member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has asked the body’s chair to take up a complaint filed with the FCC to compel CBS to release the full transcript from its “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, the Daily Caller News Foundation learned first.
CBS aired two different broadcasts with separate answers from Harris in response to the same question from “60 Minutes” interviewer Bill Whitaker on whether Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “listening” to the Biden-Harris administration. FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington told the DCNF that while the commission often receives frivolous complaints alleging news distortion, the complaint lodged on Oct. 16 by the Center for American Rights (CAR) against WCBS, CBS’ New York subsidiary, is substantively different and should not be dismissed at face value.
Simington made it clear that this complaint wasn’t about partisan bias — which the FCC makes a point of avoiding — but factual reporting and journalistic integrity.
Simington wrote in a statement, “The FCC does not regulate, or really even respond to, allegations of politically unfavorable coverage or legitimate editorial discretion. The recent complaint regarding WCBS-TV raises a fully different set of issues regarding whether or not coverage was intentionally distorted: reporting that something was said in response to a question that literally was not. I don’t know whether that’s true, but it’s a different issue.”
A source suspected that the FCC’s chair would ignore the complaint based on her political allegiances, but a change of administration could mean it would be pursued.
The Daily Caller continued:
A person familiar with the FCC told the DCNF that while CAR’s complaint could potentially move forward, the Democratic chair of the commission, Jessica Rosenworcel, is unlikely to act on the complaint, especially 18 days before the presidential election. In the event former President Donald Trump returns to the White House, the commission could be given a green light to act on the complaint with a Republican commissioner appointed as chair, the person told the DNCF.
CAR’s complaint alleges that because WCBS aired two distinct broadcasts of the Harris interview — one on “Face the Nation” and the other on “60 Minutes” — with different responses from the Democratic candidate, the conflicting answers “amount to deliberate news distortion.”
The complaint asserts, “CBS crosses a line when its production reaches the point of so transforming an interviewee’s answer that it is a fundamentally different answer. This, CBS may not do. Here, CBS has taken a single question and transformed Harris’ answer such the general public no longer has any confidence as to what the Vice President actually said in response to the query.”
CAR president Daniel Suhr wrote, “This isn’t just about one interview or one network. This is about the public’s trust in the media on critical issues of national security and international relations during one of the most consequential elections of our time. When broadcasters manipulate interviews and distort reality, it undermines democracy itself. The FCC must act swiftly to restore public confidence in our news media.”
