President Donald Trump called on CBS to cancel its long-running newsmagazine, “60 Minutes,” the latest maneuver in a legal battle he started against the program last year.
A $10 billion lawsuit, filed by Trump in federal court in the Northern District of Texas in November, alleged “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 and 60 Minutes defrauded the public by doing something which has never, to this extent, been seen before,” Trump said in a social-media post. “They 100% removed Kamala’s horrible election changing answers to questions, and replaced them with completely different, and far better, answers, taken from another part of the interview. This was Election changing “stuff,” Election Interference and, quite simply, Election Fraud at a level never seen before. CBS should lose its license, and the cheaters at 60 Minutes should all be thrown out, and this disreputable “NEWS” show should be immediately terminated. With the new Democrat scandal that just arose with respect to USAID illegally paying large sums of money to Politico and other media outlets, the question must me asked, was CBS paid for committing this FRAUD??? Many other questions to come! This will go down as the biggest Broadcasting SCANDAL in History!!!”
Of course, CBS does not have a license. Those are granted to local stations.
CBS News said in a Wednesday statement, after releasing unedited transcripts of the interview, that materials show that “consistent with 60 Minutes’ repeated assurances to the public — that the 60 Minutes broadcast was not doctored or deceitful.”
Pressure over the matter has only intensified, with the FCC this week asking for copies of tapes and transcripts tied to the interview. CBS News used different edits of Harris’ response to dynamics in Gazas one shown during a short promo on CBS’ “Face The Nation” and one that aired on the newsmagazine itself, and those discrepancies are at the heart of accusations levied by Trump and the new Republican head of the FCC, Brendan Carr, about deceptive practices. Legal experts, however, believe the suit has little actual legal merit.
“This is a rare situation where we have extrinsic evidence that CBS had played one answer or one set of words and then swapped in another set,” Carr said on Fox News Channel Thursday morning. “And CBS’s conduct through this, frankly, has been concerning.”
But a Democratic FCC commissioner, Anna Gomez, has said the effort is less about prosecuting wrongdoing and more about politics. “The transcript and footage of this interview provide no evidence that CBS and its affiliated broadcast stations violated FCC rules,” she said in a statement Wednesday. “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
