FCC Publishes Unedited Kamala Harris '60 Minutes' Interview

President Trump and others accused CBS (Online news rated Lean Left) of deceptively editing an interview it conducted with Kamala Harris in October, less than a month before the general election. CBS and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released the raw video and transcript on Wednesday.

The Details: The CBS complaint was dismissed by the FCC under the Biden administration, but the new FCC chair Brendan Carr reopened the complaint. He requested the internal materials as part of his investigation. CBS, after originally declining to release the full transcript, said it was “legally compelled” to provide the material, which it did late Monday. Carr said CBS did not request confidentiality, so the FCC made the materials public on Wednesday. CBS News separately released the unedited transcript and raw footage from the interview. 

Key Quotes: Carr said, “CBS' conduct is hard to explain. On the one hand, CBS immediately released the unredacted transcript of a recent interview with Vice President Vance. Yet for months they refused to release the one with Vice President Harris.” Others accused Carr of political motivations. “The transcript and footage of this interview provide no evidence that CBS and its affiliated broadcast stations violated FCC rules,” said FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, a Democrat representative. “The FCC should now move to dismiss this fishing expedition to avoid further politicizing our enforcement actions.”

How The Media Covered It: Fox News (Right bias) quoted Carr's perspective and mentioned the differences in the raw footage, without mentioning concerns about the politicization of the FCC. The Washington Post (Lean Left) quoted CBS' statement and Gomez's concerns about the FCC but did not quote Carr or the FCC's perspective. CNN Business (Lean Left) said, “The transcript confirms what CBS said: That it engaged in normal editing, not any nefarious activity like Trump alleged. Instead of saying 'case closed,' though, FCC chair Brendan Carr is opening up the matter to public comment.”