CBS News’ defiant statement defending its controversial edit of its “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris earlier this month fell flat with critics, who have ramped up calls for the network to release an unedited transcript.
After weeks of staying silent despite growing criticism over the interview, CBS published a statement Sunday evening addressing the outrage that ensued after airing two different answers to the same question in the “60 Minutes” interview earlier this month with the Democratic nominee.
CBS News infamously aired Harris offering a widely mocked, rambling answer to a critical question about Israel when promoting the interview, but a shorter answer to the same question was shown instead in primetime on “60 Minutes.”
CBS News’ statement said former President Trump’s claim the “deceitful editing” was used is “false,” and explained that producers used a “more succinct” portion of Harris’ answer.
“Instead of releasing the full 60 Minutes interview and transcript, CBS released a statement somehow blaming Donald Trump,” Media Research Center founder Brent Bozell told Fox News Digital.
“Is CBS a news organization or a Democrat Super PAC?” Bozell added. “If CBS has nothing to hide, it should stop hiding.”
Fox News contributor Joe Concha noted that it took 14 days for CBS News to put out a statement.
“This statement ’60 Minutes’ issued is absolutely meaningless,” Concha said Monday on “FOX & Friends First.”
“The only resolution here is for the program to release the full transcript. Release the hounds, release the interview in its entirety from start to finish, but the network won’t do that,” Concha continued. “You know why they won’t do that?”
Concha believes there are two reasons why CBS won’t oblige.
“One, the people that run the network want Kamala Harris to win and Donald Trump to lose. This ain’t about journalism, it’s about activism,” Concha said.
“Two, they know by releasing the transcript, or the unedited video, it will likely show that on multiple occasions, this interview cut the guts out of the various word salad the vice president again served up,” he added. “Her campaign now is only reduced to talking about Trump. It’s not working.”
Former President Trump dramatically called it possibly the “biggest scandal in broadcast history” in a message posted to X.
Trump also sent a letter to CBS News demanding it release the unedited transcript. In a copy of the letter obtained by Fox News Digital, Trump’s legal counsel Edward Andrew Paltzik, writing on behalf of Trump, said that CBS News “intentionally misled the public by broadcasting a skillfully edited interview transcript… aimed at causing confusion among the electorate regarding Vice President Kamala Harris’s abilities, intelligence, and appeal.”
OutKick’s Dan Zaksheske said CBS could “release the entire interview or the transcript” and put this ordeal to bed.
“It’s 2024. It’s not like CBS has to air the interview on network television. Put it on YouTube. It would probably get 10 million views. It should be easy and generate additional viewership for the interview,” Zaksheske wrote.
“The only reason they wouldn’t do that is if they don’t want people to see the entire interview,” he added. “That’s what makes people suspicious.”
Cornell Law School professor William A. Jacobson believes releasing the full transcript is “essential since on its face there seems to be an inconsistency between the two answers aired” by the network.
“If in fact CBS News cherry picked different segments of a longer answer, as it claims, then the public still should see the full answer and context. If CBS News has nothing to hide, then why is it hiding the full transcript?” Jacobson told Fox News Digital.
The Trump campaign released a scathing comment in response to CBS News’ explanation, and the “60 Minutes” statement was quickly blasted on social media.
“The way you know that 60 Minutes is 100% guilty and just pissed off about being caught is they released this pathetically defensive statement that almost immediately goes ‘but Trump’ instead of releasing the full transcript of Kamala’s interview,” conservative influencer Greg Price responded.
NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck asked, “What are you all hiding?”
“Publish. The. Transcript,” Article 3 Project senior counsel Will Chamberlain responded while celebrity chef Andrew Gruel said, “This just made it worse.”
Fox News contributor Mollie Hemingway continued calls for CBS to release an unedited transcript.
“60 Minutes continues to conceal the unedited transcript of its interview with Kamala Harris. Here, they also lie about the controversy surrounding that transcript. The extent of their deceptive edits must be SIGNIFICANT for them to refuse to release the actual transcript,” Hemingway wrote.
Hemingway added in a separate post, “RELEASE THE UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT. How bad is what you’re hiding?”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., agreed and called for CBS News to “release the FULL transcript and video.”
“When you’re explaining… you’re losing,” comedian Tim Young added.
“Seems like it would be a lot easier to just publish the transcript… Something that btw should be standard procedure for all news organizations for interviews with political candidates,” AG Hamilton reacted.
Others have mocked CBS News over the explanation:
CBS News’ statement insisted the two soundbites of Harris were both in response to correspondent Bill Whitaker asking why it seemed like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wasn’t listening to the U.S.
“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 statement began.
“’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.”
The statement then said that Trump “pulled out of his interview with ‘60 Minutes’ and the vice president participated.” The Trump campaign denied that it had ever formally accepted the invitation for the interview.
“Our long-standing invitation to former President Trump remains open,” the statement continued. “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.”
DePauw University professor Jeffrey McCall said that CBS “may not know it” but a key issue in the campaign is whether Harris can coherently express her positions and thoughts and the statement “hardly puts the matter to rest.”
“She has developed a reputation as someone who has trouble articulating her rhetorical points, and sometimes ends up speaking in ‘word salads.’ So, when CBS engages in any kind of editing of a news interview with Harris, it is in effect manipulating and altering the content. Given that it is CBS doing the editing, most Americans would presume the editing is being done to help Harris come off as more articulate than she otherwise would,” McCall told Fox News Digital.
CBS News did not immediately respond on Monday when asked if it would release the transcript.
The network has ignored calls to release the transcript or the unedited footage since the controversy began.
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