Cheering Trump's Lawfare
The Media Research Center loved Donald Trump's lawsuit against CBS' parent company over the editing of a '60 Minutes' interview -- then mostly ignored the merger motivation behind settling it.
The Media Research Center made a needlessly huge deal over right-wing demands that CBS release a transcript of the interview Kamala Harris did last fall with “60 Minutes” last October. Tim Graham got the conspiracy ball rolling (with help from the MRC’s Trump Regime Media buddies at Fox News) in an Oct. 9 post:
Brian Flood and David Rutz at FoxNews.com reported that CBS aired two different answers to the same question on Israel in its 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. First they aired a word-salad answer on Sunday’s Face the Nation. But when the interview aired on Monday night, the answer was entirely different.
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Donald Trump’s campaign demanded CBS release a full transcript of the interview. Press aide Karoline Leavitt: “Why did 60 Minutes choose not to air Kamala’s full word salad, and what else did they choose not to air? The American people deserve the full, unedited transcript from Kamala’s sit-down interview. We call upon 60 Minutes and CBS to release it. What do they, and Kamala, have to hide?”
Jeffrey Lord advanced the right-wing narrative in his Oct. 12 column: “This one would revolve around a 60 Minutes interview with Harris. The bottom line of which is a released transcript of the interview that differed from the tape of the interview, which is to say, the tape was apparently edited to save Harris from another of her now trademark word salads.” He went on to whine that both CBS and the New York Times “both are effectively run by staffs of virulent left-wingers who have zero interest in straight news and every interest in slanting whatever news story of the moment is slanted in a far left direction,” urther huffing that “they are openly devoted to spreading Left-wing propaganda.” Lord doesn’t need any proof of that, of course.
Graham helped his boss pile on in an Oct. 22 post:
MRC founder and president Brent Bozell appeared on Monday night on the Fox Business program Evening Edit to discuss CBS refusing to release a transcript of its deceptively edited Kamala Harris interview in a Monday night 60 Minutes election special.
First, the CBS Sunday interview show Face The Nation aired a word-salad answer from Kamala on Israel. Then the Monday night special aired a much briefer, more coherent answer.
Fox host Liz McDonald asked “Who was it edited for? Was it edited for the viewer, or Kamala? And how about instead of releasing statements, why won’t they release the full transcript and footage?”
Bozell agreed: “So what’s going on behind the scenes at CBS? Who made the decision to edit it one way and then re-edit it another way after a backlash? Was it the staff that did it? Did the Kamala Harris campaign call them and say ‘that’s not what we want. We want you to air another part.’ We don’t know. Release the transcript.”
The MRC even reprinted an Oct. 22 post by Craig Bannister from its CNSNews.com propaganda mill hyping a poll claiming that that “Nine in ten voters say CBS should release the full transcript of its October 7 interview with Vice President Kamala Harris which the network edited before airing in an apparent attempt to present Harris’s comments in an unrealistically favorable manner.”
Graham returned in a nitpicking Oct. 24 post:
CNN’s Brian Stelter touted that CBS lawyers sent a “blunt letter” on Wednesday to Trump’s legal counsel Edward Paltzik, refusing to bend to public demands for the release of a full transcript of its sneakily edited Kamala Harris interview with Bill Whitaker on 60 Minutes.
CBS News senior vice president for legal affairs Gayle Sproul insisted the First Amendment “fiercely protects” their work on 60 Minutes. Sure, but that included Dan Rather’s freedom to use phony documents in an attempt to smear George W. Bush in 2004. Today it applies to CBS deciding to lead its evening newscast with anonymously sourced smears of Donald Trump.
“For that reason,” Sproul argued, Trump has no legal basis to sue, “and I note that you do not identify one,” Sproul wrote. “Nor is there any legal basis for your demand that we provide you with the unedited transcript of the interview, which we decline to do.”
In a two-page response obtained by CNN, Sproul wrote that Paltzik’s letter was “based on the faulty premise that 60 Minutes distorted its interview” with Harris “in order to present her in a positive light.” Banish the thought!
Gabriela Pariseau wrote a press release for her boss in an Oct. 31 post:
MRC President Brent Bozell has put CBS News on notice in a letter calling for the outlet to confirm whether or not it coordinated with Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign when it edited her60 Minutes interview.
On Oct. 6, CBS News’s Face the Nation previewed a 60 Minutes interview with Harris during which she was asked about whether Israel is conducting its war the way she wants it to. As recounted by Bozell, her “rambling response to a direct question” showed in the Face the Nation snippet received an avalanche of criticism on social media only to be edited out of the 60 Minutes interview and replaced with a “different, more cogent answer to the same question.” MRC’s president went on to urge CBS to attempt to repair the trust it broke with the American people, writing: “There is only one way for CBS to prove its innocence, and that is through simple transparency.”
Graham whined in a Nov. 1 post:
The liberal papers and TV networks are not rushing to cover Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against CBS for its dishonest clip job of their Kamala Harris interview on 60 Minutes. They most likely consider it a stunt like riding in a garbage truck, as Trump trying to refocus attention on CBS sketchily refusing to release a full transcript.
In his “Reliable Sources” newsletter on Friday, Brian Stelter noted (without mentioning CBS) that Harris did a “pull-aside” interview with NBC’s Yamiche Alcindor, seen above. “NBC immediately posted the full transcript.” Why can’t CBS do the same?
Perhaps because it has done nothing wrong — something Graham and the MRC are too biased to consider.
Curtis Houck cheered how the full force of the federal government under Trump would be taking over this partisan attack in a Feb. 3 post under the snotty headline “Give It Up, Eyeball Network”:
By appearing Monday on the Fox News Channel’s America’s Newsroom, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr showed he’s not messing around by reminding CBS News that Monday was deadline day for them to turn over the full transcript of its October 2024 60 Minutes interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
Monday could shape out to be quite the headache for CBS as the network was also barreling towards a possible settlement with former President Trump over a lawsuit he filed over said Harris lovefest in which answers were rearranged to make her more cogent.
Houck surprisingly admitted that Trump’s lawsuit is a partisan cash grab:
As for the Trump lawsuit, The New York Times reported Thursday that “many executives at CBS’s parent company, Paramount, believe that settling the lawsuit would increase the odds that the Trump administration does not block or delay their planned multibillion-dollar merger with….Skydance, an entertainment company backed by the billionaire Larry Ellison and run by his son David.”
The Times added a settlement — which ABC agreed to with Trump over March 10, 2024 comments made by George Stephanopoulos — “could also cause an uproar within CBS News” that settling would be “tantamount to a politician’s standard-issue gripes about a news organization’s editorial judgment.”
Houck seems oddly unbothered that Trump is abusing the power of the presidency to shake down his perceived enemies.
Video discredits attacks
The loud whining from the MRC and the rest of the Trump Regime Media — with an assist from the politically biased Federal Communications Commission, now subservient to Trump — eventually got so overwhelming that CBS finally released a transcript and video. Nicholas Fondacaro rushed to put the most pejorative negative spin he could cobble together in a Feb. 5 post:
After being compelled by the Federal Communications Commission to turn over the unedited transcript and video of their infamous interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris for 60 Minutes, the FCC released it to the public.
After reviewing the video (clip from the raw video below), NewsBusters can confirm that what appeared on 60 Minutes was highly edited. Not only did they edit what appeared on 60 Minutes, they also edited what appeared on Face the Nation, including cutting out a hard hitting question that called out the Biden-Harris administration for looking weak on the world stage.
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In a statement following Trump’s accusations of deceitful editing, which culminated with a $10 billion lawsuit against the news outlet, CBS insisted the accusation was “false.”
“Same question. Same answer. But a different portion of the response,” they argued. Adding: “When we edit any interview, whether a politician, an athlete, or movie star, we strive to be clear, accurate and on point. The portion of her answer on 60 Minutes was more succinct, which allows time for other subjects in a wide ranging 21-minute-long segment.”
But what CBS did was pluck out a fragment of a sentence that was in the middle of a word salad being spoken by candidate a with a problem connecting with voters. Again, they also edited out their reporter asking a question with critical analysis against said candidate. They later followed up with a different 60 Minutes episode smearing said candidate’s opponent.
CBS was caught red handed with highly edited video designed to hide Harris’s bumbling answers in pursuit of a favorable election result. Now we know why CBS staunchly refused to release the unedited video to the public.
Meanwhile, observers without a partisan, anti-media ax to grind and not suffering from CBS Derangement Syndrome had a much less alarmist — and much less biased — take on the evidence. Brain Stelter at CNN pointed out that “The transcript confirms what CBS said: That it engaged in normal editing, not any nefarious activity like Trump alleged,” and it “does not indicate any fraudulent behavior by CBS.”
Mediaite’s Colby Hall served up a more in-depth analysis that the MRC won’t tell you about, since it undermines its preferred narrative:
After careful review, I can confirm why CBS complied with the FCC’s demands: the footage and transcripts reveal that 60 Minutes followed the standard operating procedure that any news outlet would in editing a taped interview with a high-profile subject for air.
The raw footage is indeed different from what CBS aired. There are edits that reveal, well, editorial decisions intended to condense the raw footage down to the 13-minute segment that would ultimately air on 60 Minutes. That’s something that has happened in nearly every single broadcast interview ever. Those who complain about it are either parading their ignorance of how news production works or are making up false accusations as a cudgel to smear and intimidate the media.
One could argue that CBS did make a mistake by airing two different answers given by Harris to the same question. But it’s hard to see how either answer materially changes the substance of her response, which ultimately was a relatively bland bit of pablum that declined to address the question directly.
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As a former television producer who has conducted hundreds of interviews and scripted television programming by poring through transcripts, I can assure anyone that what 60 Minutes did was standard operating procedure.
Hall offered Trump’s presumed endgame:
Trump knows television and television production. So, we should assume that because of his experience and television knowledge, his attacks on CBS are less about the truth and more about browbeating media outlets into submission. Rumors persist that CBS is planning to settle with Trump, as ABC News did recently, revealing why Trump is on the attack here.
At this point, it’s not about the money. It’s about scaring news outlets into more generous coverage. There is no other way to describe this effort to cast a chilling effect on the media than authoritarian.
Despite the lack of actual evidence, the MRC still sought to exploit the story for partisan effect. Curtis Houck huffed in a Feb. 6 post: “With new reporting Wednesday night about CBS News employees enraged by its compliance with the FCC demand for the full, unedited Kamala Harris 60 Minutesinterview and rumors of a settlement with President Trump, Puck’s Dylan Byers bolstered the argument the liberal media are filled to the brim with insecure partisans.” Houck mentioned nothing about observers who pointed out that CBS did nothing wrong.
Jorge Bonilla similarly ignored those observers, because he had an anti-CBS narrative to peddle in a Feb. 27 post:
CBS News is still smarting over Paramount’s decision to release the full transcript of the creatively-edited 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, which removed significant word salads from her responses. The beleaguered CBS Evening News is still defending the interview, even as the parties move closer to settling the $20B lawsuit.
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Compare what CBS actually did in furtherance of Harris’s candidacy to Maurice DuBois’ labored copy, which focuses on the semantics of Trump’s statement. There was indeed some taking out, and viewers saw something different to what was originally said. CBS News is desperately trying to cling to some shred of credibility in the midst of turmoil which includes cratering ratings subsequent to the ouster of anchor Norah O’Donnell, and a much-criticized overhaul of the Evening News (we told you so).
But the news division’s tripling down comes as its corporate parent, Paramount, has decided to enter into mediation with Trump- a necessary step towards coming into agreement on a settlement.
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The decision to continually defend malicious and deceptive editing in the midst of potential settlement negotiations is but the latest in a string of incidents standing as proof evident of the decline and fall of CBS News.
Bonilla’s decision to continually insist there was “malicious and deceptive editing” in the midst of less biased observers pointing out otherwise — as well as a complete refusal to acknowledge that those observers exist — stands as proof evident that the MRC is much more interested in pushing a biased narrative than telling its readers the truth.
Sticking with the narrative
Despite the narrative being discredited, the MRC clung to it anyway, and Nicholas Fondacaro gushed that the lawsuit got its “first scalp” through the resignation of a “60 Minutes” producer in an April 22 post:
President Trump’s $20 billion defamation lawsuit against CBS News and 60 Minutes appears to have claimed its first scalp on Tuesday, with executive producer Bill Owens announcing his departure from the company via a memo to staff. The news outlet has been under pressure from its parent company Paramount Global to settle the election-related suit.
“The fact is that 60 Minutes has been my life,” Owens opined. “My 60 Minutes priorities have always been clear. Maybe not smart, but clear.”
Hinting at pressure from above, Owens huffed that it appeared as though he would not be allowed to run 60 Minutes under their typical business-as-usual approach:
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It became more obvious that the pressure on Owens extended from outside CBS News directly because he praised the network’s president and CEO. “Wendy McMahon has always had our back, and she agrees that 60 Minutes needs to be run by a 60 Minute producer,” he touted.
Fondacaro made sure to get in his pro-Trump, anti-CBS narrative:
60 Minutes came under pressure following the election-related defamation against the network. Trump accused the network of “deceitful editing” of their interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, arguing that it was done to help her campaign by making her look better.
NewsBusters later confirmed that the portion of the interview in question was highly edited, after the Federal Communications Commission published the unedited footage themselves. CBS News refused to share the unedited video with the public.
But Fondacaro and NewsBusters did not “confirm” that — actual, nonbiased media observers said the video shows normal video editing. Fondacaro did at least acknowledge the apparent ulterior motive for Paramount pushing to settle the lawsuit despite the facts being on CBS’ side: “CBS’s parent company Paramount Global was pushing for a settlement with Trump since the administration had to sign off on their merger with Skydance.”
Curtis Houck lashed out in a May 19 post after the resignation of a CBS News executive, headlined “She Is Not A Martyr”:
As reported by The New York Times and other fellow liberal media apologists, CBS News president Wendy McMahon announced Monday she quit as a sign of dismay and disgust with the network overlords moving toward a settlement with now-President Trump for 60 Minutes’s hatchet job of an October 2020 interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
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Trump sued CBS back on November 1, 2024 for what’s now $20 billion once it was revealed the network edited out one of Harris’s classic word salads while speaking to correspondent Bill Whitaker about the Middle East.
Since then, Paramount have seen fit to work towards a settlement with the now-President at the same time it’s angling for a sale to the media company, SkyDance (owned by David Ellison, the son of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison) and have that sale approved by the Trump administration.
Earlier this year, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr declared he too was interested in investigating CBS’s conduct vis-à-vis their pre-election special given a broadcast network’s broader requirements to serve the public good versus, say, a cable channel.
After noting alleged concerns at Paramount about how McMahon did her job, Houck exclaimed, “Oh, there it is! Job performance (or lack thereof),” adding: “So, when you’re a biased executive who’s donated over $6,000 to the Biden campaign (as per our friend Reagan Reese at the Daily Caller) and a poor performance record, don’t mind us if we don’t feel bad for her.”
Note Houck’s making a point of “a broadcast network’s broader requirements to serve the public good versus, say, a cable channel” — which tells us that neither Houck nor the FCC will hold, say, Fox News to those same standards, despite bias being much more rampant there than at CBS, and that the FCC’s targeting of CBS in this case is all about lawfare, which we were told right-wingers opposed.
Ignoring settlement motivation
Alex Christy was still pushing the Trump Regime Media narrative on that interview in a May 30 post:
ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel announced himself on Thursday as not be a fan of President Trump’s lawsuit against 60 Minutes, but whatever one thinks of the suit’s legal merits, Kimmel’s claim that the network did not deceptively edit the interview with Kamala Harris to make her look better fell flat.
Kimmel began by dreaming about using Trump’s legal arguments against him, “Trump right now is reportedly one step closer to settling the lawsuit he filed against 60 Minutes. Trump’s suing CBS for $20 billion because an interview they aired with Kamala Harris caused him ‘mental anguish.’ He can sue them for mental anguish; imagine how much we could sue him for. We’re going to be rich.
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Kimmel further explained, “But Trump, who never misses an opportunity to, A, whine and, B, abuse the legal system, claimed, based on no evidence, that 60 Minutes edited the interview deceptively to make his opponent look better.”
That’s just not true. In the original video, Harris was pressed from the left by Bill Whitaker on why Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not appear to be listening to the Biden administration. She gave a typical Harris word salad of an answer, “Well Bill, 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.”
In the version that aired on 60 Minutes, Harris came across as more competently, “We are not gonna stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”
Again, that claim has been discredited — observers who aren’t right-wing partisans noted that “60 Minutes” did normal, standard editing and not partisan work. But the MRC has never told its readers that because it’s, well, Trump Regime Media.
Trump and the MRC both got what they wanted from the nuisance lawsuit, as announced in a July 2 post by Bonilla, who merely copied what he found from his fellow right-wingers at Fox News:
In a late-breaking development, Paramount Global and CBS entered into an agreement with President Donald Trump to resolve his ongoing lawsuit against the former Tiffany Network. Trump has originally sought $20 billion, but the agreed-upon terms fall in line with the earlier resolution of his lawsuit against ABC.
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The settlement of the lawsuit clears the way for the sale of Paramount Global to Skydance Media, who will then have to decide what to do with the beleaguered CBS News. The most interesting development here will be CBS’s adoption of the Trump Rule, wherein full, unedited interview transcripts will be immediately released upon conclusion of an interview with a presidential candidate.
The Acela Media will surely whine about the settlement and Trump Rule, and call it some form or other of a capitulation before authoritarianism, or preventive obedience or whatever else they might want to make up. But it is important to remember what led to the suit being filed in the first place. CBS’s new ownership has an opportunity to assess a number of things related to how they cover presidental candidates going forward.
Fondadcaro followed by cheering Trump-style lawfare against media outlets — or as Fondacaro benignly described it, “Holding the Liberal Media Accountable Through the Legal System”:
Since 2016, the ends had justified the means in the liberal media’s total war against President Trump as they flaunted their false moral superiority as the sole defenders of democracy and the world. Drunk on their delusions of grandeur and thinking they were protected from defamation claims by New York Times v Sullivan, the liberal media would viciously lash out against anyone they wished with lies and falsehoods, quickly including private citizens. But by 2025, it was clear they had gone too far as they were repeatedly being held accountable by the legal system they thought they were safe from.
For decades, the conventional wisdom was that the bar to prove defamation or even to get the ball rolling on a case against the media was just too much to surmount. But now there have been numerous cases of private citizens like student Nicholas Sandmann, Navy veteran Zachary Young, the family of 9-year-old child Holden Armenta (trial pending), and Dr. Mahendra Amin (who settled with MSNBC) taking bite after bite out of the liberal media.
Then there was the settlement between ABC News and Trump. CBS’s parent company Paramount settled their own non-defamation-related case to the tune of $16 million upfront with it possibly reaching upwards of $30 million. The CBS settlement also reportedly resulted in an editorial change at the network in which they will promptly release full and unedited transcripts of future interviews with presidential candidates.
Fondacaro made sure to rehash once again the lawsuit Zachary Young filed against CNN (but not mentioning that he colluded with Young’s lawyers to make CNN look bad and Young look good). He also didn’t mention that Sandmann’s settlement was never made public, meaning it’s likely he never got anything more than token go-away money. Finally, he was silent on how his right-wing buddies at Fox News were held accountable to the tune of $787 million for its irresponsible fake news about the 2020 election that falsely smeared election-tech company Dominion. Fondacaro concluded — again, without mentioning Fox News — that “The future seems bright for media accountability.”
Bonilla cranked up the partisan schaudenfreude in a July 3 post:
Tonight’s CBS Evening News offerings presented viewers with an amazing split screen as it fell upon John Dickerson to deliver the news that Paramount Global entered into a settlement agreement that would terminate the lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump.\
If you listen closely enough, you can hear the chagrin in Dickerson’s voice as he looks to the teleprompter and reads what up to this moment must have been inconceivable at the former Tiffany Network. Dickerson slogged through it without sounding pompous until the very end, with the little flourish on the First Amendment.
But as is always the case when reviewing ANY legacy media news product: the most important thing in any given report is often that which is left out.
Bonilla then huffed that Dickerson had a different tone in an online report:
Viewers at Plus got the pomposity we are all used to. Here, there is no description of the settlement beyond its disclosure in the very first sentence. What follows next is a tour-de-delusion that gives us a glimpse at the sort of insular newsroom culture that allowed things to get out of control in the first place .
Rather than giving viewers a full accounting of the terms of the agreement, Dickerson delved into lyrical soliloquy about the sacred role of journalism, the importance of getting it right, and on working to regain lost trust. Dickerson sounded legitimately apologetic over the settlement, notwithstanding CBS’s lack of an actual apology over its standards and practices.
If we can learn anything from these twin segments, it is that there is still shock and denial over the settlement. One hopes that CBS News (and, by broader extension, the media) learned something from the 60 Minutes fiasco at the heart of the suit. Sadly, it appears that they haven’t.
Bonilla offered no evidence that CBS violated any standards or practices, thus negating the need for an apology — and he didn’t mention that the settlement was likely driven by Paramount’s desire to gain federal approval for a merger with Skydance Media, making it much more of a transaction and less of an admission of accountability.