The 46th News & Documentary Emmy Awards nominations are out, and it seems that everyone is talking about just one of them. The “Outstanding Edited Interview” category is hardly a common draw for public or even industry attention. However, one of this year’s nominees is CBS for its primetime special featuring then-Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. The interview is the basis for a $20 billion lawsuit by President Donald Trump against CBS News and its parent company, Paramount Global, alleging election interference due to the biased editing out of an embarrassing answer by Harris.
The nomination seems clearly designed to push back at Trump and rally around CBS. (For the record, I opposed this lawsuit on both legal and policy grounds.) However, it sends precisely the wrong message for the media at this time.
Many have criticized CBS for its editing of the interview with journalist Bill Whitaker after the network shortened portions of Harris’s answer to a question about the war in Gaza in its initial broadcast. It later provided a full transcript of her remarks online. (For full disclosure, I worked twice under contract with CBS as a legal analyst.)
While I have great reservations about the legal action, I agree with Trump that the interview showed bias and an effort to protect Harris. CBS has been repeatedly accused of such bias, including criticism of the performance of Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan as moderators in the presidential debate. That included reneging on a pledge not to “fact check” and showing manifest bias in their treatment of the candidates.
In the interview, Harris had one of her signature verbal pileups, an incomprehensible effort to explain the U.S. position in the Middle East. The word salad was played on the Sunday show but the primetime interview on 60 Minutes featured only the second half of the answer.
The “Face the Nation” clip showed Harris saying that
“The work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by, or a result of, many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region.”
The “60 Minutes” clip showed Harris saying more concisely that “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.”
This interview, shortly before the election, was considered one of the most important of the campaign. Harris avoided spontaneous exchanges or interactions with the media and only agreed to a few interviews with favorable outlets. One of the issues in the campaign was Harris’s embarrassing answers, particularly while representing the United States abroad. These include:
“I am here. Standing. Here. on the northern flank, on the eastern flank, talking about what we have in terms of the eastern flank and our NATO allies, and what is at stake at this very moment.”
“Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine, So basically that’s wrong.”
The word salad moments were common and Harris was kept on a tightly scripted agenda where the press was kept at a distance. Thus, the CBS interview was viewed as one of the few opportunities to see how Harris would do in an actual prolonged interview.
In other words, it was news that Harris struggled again when asked to speak for any length of time with a reporter.
60 Minutes decided that viewers did not have to see that part of the answer in primetime, even as part of an answer in which Harris claims that they want to be “clear” on where they stand on the issue.
CBS was wrong in the editing. Moreover, the suggestion that it should be given an award for such biased editing says much about the state of American journalism. No doubt many in the media approved of the network cleaning up Harris, yet again, for public reviewing.
None of this changes my view of the underlying litigation. Paramount Global’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, is believed to want to close the lawsuit to clear the way for a multibillion-dollar merger with Skydance Media. It also wants to avoid continuing tensions with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which can delay or halt the purchase.
However, this lawsuit would ultimately fail. The media is allowed to engage in such editing. Indeed, bias itself is not generally actionable. Moreover, there were moments when Whitaker did press Harris, in sharp contrast to most of her interviews on shows like The View, Howard Stern’s SiriusXM show, and Late Night with Stephen Colbert.
I have been a vocal critic of the mainstream media for embracing what I call “advocacy journalism” in my book, The Indispensable Right. Many in this country view mainstream media as a de facto state media due to the bias shown against Trump and for Democratic talking points. Indeed, the mantra “Let’s Go Brandon!” was embraced by millions as a criticism of the media as much as it was a criticism of President Biden.
However, the threats of harassing lawsuits destroy any moral high ground for Trump. It is also entirely unnecessary. As I will address this week at the Library of Congress, the public is leaving mainstream media en masse in favor of new media. Revenue and readers/viewers are dropping for many media outlets. That includes CBS, which has continued to struggle with ratings while refusing to offer more balanced coverage, including a recent controversy over pushing the “baby hoax.”
CBS was wrong in the editing of the interview and the nomination of the network for the interview only magnifies that error. However, the Administration should leave this matter to the public and the market to sort out.