FCC and CBS release unedited ’60 Minutes’ Kamala Harris interview amid Trump lawsuit
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The Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday took the unusual step of releasing raw transcripts and video footage of CBS News’ “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, which has sparked heated debate over the network’s credibility and press freedoms.
Paramount Global-owned CBS followed FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s move by separately publishing its interview transcripts and footage from the October interview. CBS turned over the same material to the government Monday night, following a demand by Carr, who was appointed to the post by President Trump.
Carr said that publishing the previously unreleased footage and opening up a case file would “serve the public interest.” The FCC now plans to accept public comment.
“The people will have a chance to weigh in,” Carr wrote on social media site X.
The FCC inquiry has raised the stakes in a separate dispute between Trump and CBS and has also tested the limits of journalists’ 1st Amendment rights.
Trump backed out of a scheduled sit-down with “60 Minutes,” but the network went forward with an interview of Harris in the closing weeks of the presidential campaign. CBS broadcast a clip from the Harris interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation” public affairs program. The following night, a longer version of the Harris interview ran as part of a special “60 Minutes” episode.
Trump and his supporters cried foul, pointing to discrepancies between Harris’ answers in the two interview segments. Trump sued CBS for $10 billion, alleging that the network had engaged in deceptive editing practices in an effort to tip the scales in Harris’ favor by casting her in a more favorable light with viewers.
CBS has denied the allegation, and that court case is pending in Texas.
Brendan Carr has been outspoken critic of tech companies and has criticized broadcasters on behalf of Trump.
Carr’s separate inquiry was sparked by a complaint lodged with the FCC last fall by a conservative legal nonprofit group, Center for American Rights, that also accused CBS of news distortion and political bias. Carr’s predecessor had dismissed the complaint, along with three others filed against major broadcast news organizations. However, in his first week, Carr reopened the CBS “60 Minutes” case and two other election season bias complaints.
Trump’s complaint and the FCC action have stoked fears by some journalists and 1st Amendment experts that Trump and his team could use levers of power to try to chill news coverage unflattering to the president.
The FCC’s release of CBS’ raw transcript and interview drew a sharp rebuke by one of the two Democrats serving on the commission.
“It is unprecedented and reckless for the FCC to disclose the status of an active investigation and publicly share materials before its conclusion and before they’ve been shared with other members of this independent body,” FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez said in a statement. “This action sets a dangerous precedent that threatens to undermine trust in the FCC’s role as an impartial regulator.”
In a separate online statement, CBS said it was taking the rare step of publishing “the same transcripts and videos of our interview with Vice President Kamala Harris that we provided to the FCC.”
The unedited portions of the interview proved that the edited version broadcast in October was “consistent with 60 Minutes’ repeated assurances to the public — that the 60 Minutes broadcast was not doctored or deceitful,” producers of the CBS program said.
“In reporting the news, journalists regularly edit interviews — for time, space or clarity,” the CBS News producers said. “In making these edits, 60 Minutes is always guided by the truth and what we believe will be most informative to the viewing public — all while working within the constraints of broadcast television.”
The latest development comes as Paramount Global lawyers engaged in preliminary talks to settle the lawsuit Trump filed in October over his objection to edits to the ’60 Minutes’ interview with Harris.
As part of the newly released footage, CBS cameras show CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker greeting and engaging in polite banter with Harris at her residence. The four-minute segment was part of a “walk and talk” visual to accompany the interview.
“This must feel to you like an especially perilous time for the U.S. and for the world,” Whitaker says to open the interview.
“I think the stakes couldn’t be higher in this election cycle,” Harris said, ticking off political tensions around the world, including in Ukraine.
The portion of the “60 Minutes” interview that drew controversy came during Harris’ answer to a question about the Israel-Hamas war. Whitaker asked the Democratic nominee for president whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been listening to the Biden-Harris administration during the war in Gaza.
During the “Face the Nation” clip, Harris gave a wordy response.
In the “60 Minutes” broadcast, her answer was more succinct: “We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States, to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”
CBS has defended its edits.
“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 “60 Minutes” producers wrote.
“Each excerpt reflects the substance of the vice president’s answer,” they wrote. “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.”
The network also said the transcripts show that CBS did not pull any punches in the Harris interview.
The network’s “hard-hitting questions of the vice president speak for themselves,” the CBS News producers said in the statement.
Gomez, the Democratic FCC commissioner, chastised her colleagues for digging into the issue. The transcripts, Gomez said, provided “no evidence that CBS and its affiliated broadcast stations violated FCC rules.”
“The FCC should stop trying to keep up with this administration’s focus on partisan culture wars and return to its core focus of protecting consumers, promoting competition, and securing our communications networks,” Gomez said.
The FCC set a March 7 deadline for public comments.
For weeks, Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, had been agitating for her team to settle Trump’s lawsuit to facilitate her family’s sale of Paramount to David Ellison’s Skydance Media.
That deal needs the approval of the FCC because of the transfer of CBS station licenses to the Ellison family.
The debate over whether the company would defend “60 Minutes” revealed deep divisions within CBS, a division of Paramount Global. Journalists decried the potential move, which they said seemed designed to placate Trump at the expense of the reputation and legacy of “60 Minutes.”
The action by FCC Chairman Brendan Carr shines a spotlight on fears that President Trump will use his power to threaten media outlets that don’t support him.
The issue put Redstone and some high-level executives at odds with journalists, who expressed dismay that the company did not appear willing to go to bat for one of the network’s premier brands.
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