FCC calls for CBS News to release ’60 Minutes’ interview amid Trump lawsuit


CBS and its “60 Minutes” have lengthy stood as shining beacons of broadcast information.

The Sunday evening newsmagazine, with its ubiquitous ticking clock, earned a popularity for not backing down from a struggle. For a half-century, the present established the usual for TV investigative reporting with its no-holds-barred questioning of U.S. presidents and others in energy.

But a unique clock is ticking.

President Trump’s new Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan Carr, this week demanded CBS flip over the complete, unedited transcript of its “60 Minutes” interview in October with former Vice President Kamala Harris, together with movie footage from the completely different digicam angles.

That interview provoked the ire of Trump, who filed a lawsuit towards CBS alleging the community was engaged in misleading modifying practices.

“We are working to comply with that inquiry as we are legally compelled to do,” Paramount Global-owned CBS mentioned Friday in an announcement.

The newest growth comes as Paramount Global legal professionals have interaction in preliminary talks to settle the lawsuit Trump filed final yr over the “60 Minutes” interview. Trump alleged the community “deceptively” edited the interview to current Harris extra favorably within the closing weeks of the election.

Lawyers for Trump on Friday requested a Texas decide to increase a key deadline within the courtroom case. Paramount’s legal professionals went together with the request, which might give the 2 sides extra time to attempt to hammer out a truce.

The FCC inquiry raises the stakes within the dispute, which has stoked fears that Trump and his workforce are utilizing levers of energy to relax unflattering information protection. Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, has been agitating for her workforce to settle Trump’s lawsuit to facilitate her household’s sale of Paramount to David Ellison’s Skydance Media, in line with folks conversant in the matter who weren’t approved to remark.

Paramount wants FCC approval for the Skydance deal to advance. The company’s signoff is required for the switch of CBS tv licenses to the Ellison household.

The firm’s seeming willingness to placate Trump has roiled journalists, together with inside CBS News. First Amendment specialists initially interpreted Trump’s “60 Minutes” lawsuit, which seeks $10 billion in damages, as a political stunt. They mentioned settling the case with Trump would ship a crushing blow to CBS News’ legacy.

“This is an act of pure cowardice for short-term gain that corrupts every journalistic value imaginable,” mentioned USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism professor Gabriel Kahn.

“It is a sad day,” 1st Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams wrote Friday in an e mail to The Times. “It’s heart-breaking that CBS —say it again, CBS — seems ready to pay big bucks for its own editing decisions.”

The storied information division has maintained “60 Minutes” because the gold normal in tv journalism for greater than 5 a long time. People inside the corporate, who weren’t approved to debate the matter publicly, mentioned they concern the transfer is not going to solely tarnish the “60 Minutes” model but additionally set a harmful precedent that might weaken journalism establishments.

“You think in the next four years we’re not going to say something that’s going to get him riled up again and he’ll do this again?” mentioned one veteran journalist within the division.

Trump filed the lawsuit on Oct. 31, accusing CBS of “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference through malicious, deceptive and substantial news distortion calculated to … tip the scales in favor of the Democratic Party,” in line with his criticism.

He filed the lawsuit in Texas, making certain that one in all his judicial appointees would oversee the case.

In courtroom filings final month, CBS attorneys argued that the Texas venue was not correct. Trump was a resident of Florida when the lawsuit was filed. Some authorized specialists dismissed the maneuver as “judge shopping.” CBS attorneys argued in courtroom filings that the case ought to be dismissed or moved to New York, the place CBS is predicated.

The “60 Minutes” broadcast was edited in New York, and the phase didn’t pertain to Texas and even Trump, the CBS legal professionals wrote. Trump’s attorneys on Friday requested for a week-long extension to file their response.

“60 Minutes” producers denied Trump’s allegations that they doctored one in all Harris’ solutions to take away her extra wordy response to a query. Harris was responding to a query from CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker in regards to the Biden administration’s dealing with of the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Conservatives shortly seized on an obvious discrepancy in Harris’ remarks after CBS ran an excerpt of the interview throughout its public affairs present “Face the Nation,” which included Harris’ longer reply.

The following day, a particular version of “60 Minutes” aired with extra of the Harris interview. That program used a unique, and far shorter, a part of Harris’ response.

Anger over a attainable settlement runs so deep that CBS News might expertise an exodus of journalists and even executives if the corporate caves, some mentioned.

“This is essentially a crack in the foundations of our free press,” Kahn mentioned.

George Cheeks, co-chief govt of Paramount Global, has been made conscious of the information division’s considerations over how a settlement could be perceived within the trade and its broader influence on press freedom. Paramount Global board members even have acquired pleas from contained in the information division to struggle the Trump lawsuit, sources mentioned.

Cheeks spent months attempting to navigate uneven waters amid Redstone’s growing unhappiness with CBS News and “60 Minutes” over its protection of the conflict in Gaza.

Redstone has not publicly opined on the settlement talks. A Redstone spokesperson declined to remark.

The Redstone household is within the means of unwinding its Paramount holdings by promoting its funding automobile to the Ellison household for greater than $2 billion. The Skydance transaction would see the fractious Redstone household exiting Hollywood after 4 a long time.

Shari Redstone has targeted her philanthropic work on preventing antisemitism. She publicly backed CBS anchor Tony Dukoupil after the morning present co-host was known as out by his bosses over an aggressive interview with creator Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose most up-to-date e-book compares Israel’s remedy of Palestinians within the West Bank to the Jim Crow period of segregation within the U.S.

Redstone additionally was sad over a current “60 Minutes” story about dissent within the State Department over the Biden administration’s dealing with of the conflict, in line with two educated sources. After the phase aired, Cheeks named former CBS News president and veteran producer Susan Zirinsky as requirements editor to supervise “highly complex, sensitive issues like the war in the Middle East,” in line with a memo.

People near the lawsuit describe the settlement talks within the Trump lawsuit as preliminary. Some executives privately instructed that settling the lawsuit was the worth of doing enterprise in Trump’s second administration. These folks considered a settlement as an environment friendly means to maintain CBS out of courtroom and expedite the completion of the Skydance deal.

Paramount and Skydance Media additionally declined to remark.

Carr’s FCC inquiry comes after his company final week revived a criticism filed by the Center for American Rights, which additionally took subject with CBS producers’ edits of the Harris interview.

“There is a line between editorial discretion, which is protected, and news distortion or news manipulation, which is not,” Daniel Suhr, president of the nonprofit group, mentioned in an interview earlier this week.

“When there are serious concerns raised, typically, the regulator investigates and resolves it based on what the investigation finds,” Suhr mentioned. “That’s what we are hoping for here.”

FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez, a Democrat, objected to the company’s transfer.

“This is a retaliatory move by the government against broadcasters whose content or coverage is perceived to be unfavorable,” Gomez mentioned in an announcement. “It is designed to instill fear in broadcast stations and influence a network’s editorial decisions.”

CBS News executives had mentioned releasing a full transcript of the Harris interview earlier than the FCC inquiry. But they noticed that as a harmful precedent as a result of uncooked transcripts of edited interviews are usually launched to handle points associated to attainable defamation. Trump’s lawsuit isn’t a defamation case.

“If I were CBS, I would not settle it,” mentioned Jeff McCall, media research professor at DePauw University. “I would fight it and just go totally down the path that this is editorial discretion. The free press has every right to make judgments as it sees fit, including if they want to take sides in an election.”



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