Remember the scandal over the infamous CBS "60 Minutes" interview of Kamala Harris before the 2024 election that was edited so that they cut out a lot of her word salad in response to a question about the Israel-Hamas war?
It went from something that was basically incomprehensible to something that sounded a bit better, albeit was still pretty empty.
Remember Kamala’s word salad answer about Israel on 60 Minutes? It’s gone.
— MAZE (@mazemoore) October 8, 2024
This is what many Americans will now see. pic.twitter.com/H4w7btDv6x
Then when people realized that it had been edited, CBS faced huge blowback, with people like former CBS journalist Catherine Herridge calling for the full transcript to be released. Others called for release of the full footage, to see if anything else may have been changed. But CBS refused, basically sticking a fork in whatever legitimacy they claimed to have as a news organization.
Now, CBS staffers are reportedly fuming that their parent company Paramount may settle with President Donald Trump in the $10 billion lawsuit he filed in the matter:
Journalists at the Tiffany Network’s news division are up in arms as Paramount chairwoman Shari Redstone green-lighted talks with the president’s representatives over a payout, the Status newsletter reported on Friday.
According to Status, both CBS News president Wendy McMahon and “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens don't want to settle, claiming press freedom. The report alleged Redstone may want to settle because she wants Trump administration approval of a merger between Paramount and Skydance. But the report also said she is worried about bias at CBS.
They're concerned about "press freedom," but they don't seem to be very concerned about basic transparency with their audience about what they are presenting. They want to act like they're being put upon by Trump when it's their editing that was in question.
On top of that, now the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has demanded the transcript and the footage of the interview from CBS:
The commission requested “the full, unedited transcript and camera feeds” from the interview with Ms. Harris, which aired on “60 Minutes” in October.
“We are working to comply with that inquiry as we are legally compelled to do,” a CBS News spokesman said on Friday.
So, one way or another, that transcript/footage is going to come out, and we're likely to see if there was anything else changed. It sounds like they're going to be paying out something to Trump, if they follow through on a settlement.
This is only the latest case that has turned in Trump's favor. The most recent one before this one involved Meta paying out $25 million in a settlement over banning Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts in 2021.
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