Variety; CBS News Posts ‘60 Minutes’ Transcripts, Video Sought by FCC: ‘Not Doctored or Deceitful’

Story from Variety:

CBS News made public all materials tied to a “60 Minutes” interview with former U.S. Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris that have spurred a $10 billion suit from President Donald Trump and scrutiny from the Federal Communications Commission, saying in a release Wednesday that all the materials show that “consistent with 60 Minutes’ repeated assurances to the public — that the 60 Minutes broadcast was not doctored or deceitful.”

Filed in federal court in the Northern District of Texas in November, the suit alleges “60 Minutes” tried to mislead voters by airing two different edits of remarks made in an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris, then Trump’s rival for the White House. CBS sought to have the case thrown out in a subsequent filing.

CBS News at 4:55 p.m. on Monday provided the Federal Communications Commission with an unedited transcript of the Harris interview, complying with a letter of inquiry from the regulatory body. Already, one of the Democratic commissioners at the FCC, Anna Gomez, released a statement calling the inquiry part of a concerning pattern of implementing the will of the Administration on issues that go far beyond our core responsibilities. These actions disregard long-standing norms and ignore the mandate granted by Congress to the FCC to act as an independent agency.”

At issue is an excerpt of the interview that was screened during a broadcast of “Face The Nation” to promote a coming episode of “60 Minutes” that ran in the days before the 2024 presidential election. Harris’ response was edited differently for the “Nation” except, allowed to run more fully, while it was narrowed for the purposes of the actual interview so as to allow for the candidate to respond to a wider range of subjects.

“The issue here concerns one question from 60 Minutes’ interview with Kamala Harris: whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is listening to the Biden-Harris Administration. 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 CBS News release said. “Each excerpt reflects the substance of the vice president’s answer. 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. 60 Minutes’ hard-hitting questions of the vice president speak for themselves.”

The FCC also posted the transcript Wednesday, with one Democratic commissioner, Anna Gomez, noting in a statement: “The transcript and footage of this interview provide no evidence that CBS and its affiliated broadcast stations violated FCC rules. Having now seen these materials, I see no reason to continue pursuing this investigation. The FCC should now move to dismiss this fishing expedition to avoid further politicizing our enforcement actions.”

The suit and the FCC request have spurred intense concern in the West 57th Street offices of the venerable newsmagazine. Paramount Global, parent of CBS News, is mulling some sort of settlement, according to people familiar with the matter, in hopes of boosting an already-agreed-upon deal to sell itself to Skydance Media. Bill Owens, the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” has told staffers that Paramount’s decision-making process is beyond their grasp and to keep producing high-quality journalism. But he has indicated the the show will not apologize for its work.

Both Owens and Wendy McMahon, the CBS executive who oversees its news and stations operations, have told senior Paramount executives that there is no reason for the company to settle the suit, which many legal experts see as weak and ill-formed.