OPINION:
It appears that “60 Minutes” has again been caught in a blatant act of creative editing for political purposes, this time in an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris.
The popular Sunday program on CBS regularly does camera cuts that show questions and answers that may not necessarily match up but make good “gotcha” TV. Once in a while, however, they do something so transparently partisan that it ignites pushback.
Along the same lines, Dan Rather helmed a famous segment on the show two months before the 2004 presidential election. The former “CBS Evening News” anchor asserted that President George W. Bush had gone AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard in the 1970s and had received special treatment.
Mr. Bush, who was running for reelection against Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, denied the allegations. After the network was unable to verify the damning document, Mr. Rather and several other staffers were shown the door. Mr. Bush went on to win his second term.
On Oct. 6, four weeks before the Nov. 5 election, “60 Minutes” featured an interview of Ms. Harris by Bill Whitaker. The editors went beyond the usual media airbrushing. They not only cleaned up Ms. Harris’ rambling sentences but also rearranged statements by both Mr. Whitaker and Ms. Harris for effect.
How do we know this? Because unedited portions became available. In an earlier broadcast of CBS’ “Face the Nation,” a two-minute teaser aired that was not featured on “60 Minutes.” That segment was replaced by two minutes of differently edited tape.
Someone had cut a large portion in which Ms. Harris explained why Israel had a right to defend itself against enemies such as Iran-backed Hamas and Hezbollah. Instead, the edited version of “60 Minutes” leaves out Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran and emphasizes the administration’s tensions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the war in the Gaza Strip.
For a full comparison, check out the “Versus Media” podcast with Stephen L. Miller, who breaks it down by running unedited clips alongside what appeared on “60 Minutes.”
Why did “60 Minutes” do this? Democrats are concerned about Muslim voter turnout in Michigan, a swing state, and Minnesota, both of which have large Muslim communities. Someone at “60 Minutes” could have been protecting the Democratic nominee’s Islamic flank.
A less savory reason might be growing antisemitism among American progressives, including mainstream news outlets such as CBS.
Mr. Miller acknowledges that he is no fan of Ms. Harris. But he says he found her clear statement about Israel and its enemies compelling. He concludes that CBS is harboring anti-Israel sentiment.
According to the New York Post, CBS News’ senior director of standards emailed all CBS News employees in late August with a list of problematic terms, including Jerusalem: “Do not refer to it as being in Israel.”
Former President Donald Trump and others are calling on CBS to release the original, unedited transcript of the Harris interview. Sounds fair to me. Let’s see what they had to work with.
Editing to make something clearer is not nefarious. It’s Journalism 101. Editing to distort for political purposes is something else entirely.
Liberals benefit from protective editing by like-minded journalists. Conservatives, in most cases, fare better in live interviews, where statements can’t be taken out of context by the reflexively hostile media.
Bias can take the form of bad lighting, weird camera angles, “gotcha” questions and deceptive edits that alter the meaning of a person’s words. The final product often omits a conservative’s most compelling and persuasive statements.
In a study released just before the vice presidential debate, the Media Research Center reviewed more than 340 hours of coverage in 161 stories on the “CBS Evening News” and its Saturday-Sunday twin, the “CBS Weekend News,” from July 21 to Sept. 27. The study found that coverage of Ms. Harris was 84% positive, contrasted with coverage of Mr. Trump, which was 79% negative.
The same held for the vice presidential candidates, with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, getting 89% positive coverage and Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, a Republican, getting 89% negative coverage.
In the Oct. 1 vice presidential debate on CBS, Mr. Vance was confronted with hostile queries, mini editorials and even a fake fact check by moderators Margaret Brennan and Norah O’Donnell.
But he didn’t let it rattle him, and he pointed out that the “fact check” itself was bogus. They turned off his microphone, but they couldn’t edit out the exchange because it was on live TV.
As Elon Musk has shown by buying Twitter and converting it into the free speech platform X, more speech is the best answer to lies and censorship.
• Robert Knight is a columnist for The Washington Times. His website is roberthknight.com.
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