CBS publicly released the full transcripts and videos of the 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris Wednesday.
The release comes after the Federal Communications Commissions asked for a “full unedited transcript” and feeds from the interview. The FCC is currently in the process of reviewing the planned merger between Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS, with Skydance Media.
However, this particular interview, which was conducted in the lead up to the presidential election, has also been a focus of President Trump. While running for office, Trump filed a $10 billion suit against CBS alleging that the network edited the interview to try to help Harris win the election, targeting the inclusion of a longer section of her response to a question about the conflict in the Middle East.
In a tweet, FCC Chair Brendan Carr also said he would make the materials publicly available and would seek comment on the issues raised in the FCC complaint.
“We are posting the same transcripts and videos of our interview with Vice President Kamala Harris that we provided to the FCC. They show – consistent with 60 Minutes‘ repeated assurances to the public – that the 60 Minutes broadcast was not doctored or deceitful,” CBS said in a statement on its website.
“In reporting the news, journalists regularly edit interviews – for time, space or clarity. 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 statement continued.
“The issue here concerns one question from 60 Minutes‘ interview with Kamala Harris: whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is listening to the Biden-Harris Administration. 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. Each excerpt reflects the substance of the vice president’s answer. 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. 60 Minutes‘ hard-hitting questions of the vice president speak for themselves,” the statement says.
CBS included three full-length transcripts of the interviews with Harris as well as the corresponding videos, and had previously said it would comply with the FCC’s request for the same material.
Carr, a Trump appointee, has threatened to revoke broadcast licenses for stations owned by networks that’ve drawn the president’s ire under the agency’s authority to ensure that public airwaves operate in the public interest.
English (US) ·