In this moment of fierce political division, few issues have the power to unite Americans and institutions from the left, right and center. One of them appears to be CBS and the pressure it is facing from the Federal Communications Commission over the “60 Minutes” interview broadcast last fall with Vice President Kamala Harris.
The ACLU, the United Church of Christ, TechFreedom, People Power United, Common Cause and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression have all lined up against the commission’s politically motivated probe of editorial decisions made by “60 Minutes.”
The FCC’s inquiry, prompted by a complaint filed by the conservative nonprofit Center for American Rights, echoes the novel legal arguments made in a civil lawsuit that then-candidate Donald Trump filed against CBS last year. It also comes as the FCC is weighing approval of aspects of the $8 billion acquisition of CBS parent company Paramount Global by Skydance Media and RedBird Capital. “60 Minutes” and CBS News have been caught in the crossfire of a case that will likely become a historical footnote — but could set a dangerous precedent for journalism.
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Robert Corn-Revere, a former FCC chief counsel who now holds that role for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, tells Variety that FCC leaders have a long history of leaning on the industry to get it “to behave in a way that the government prefers.”
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Brendan Carr’s actions are surprising in light of his past statements. Trump described Carr as a “free speech warrior” in nominating him for FCC chair after he served eight years as a commissioner.
“During that time [Carr] would quite often point out that the FCC was behaving in ways that threatened the First Amendment,” Corn-Revere observes. “To see him doing that now — well, we have to come up with a new word for hypocrite.”
Conservative lawyer Matt Mackowiak, a former George W. Bush administration official, worries that the partisan jousting over the “news distortion claim” will come back to haunt Republicans. “It is troubling to me that Chairman Carr, a conservative, has opened the door to punishing CBS for exercising editorial discretion under the First Amendment, thereby exposing conservative news outlets in all media to the same sort of attack in the future,” Mackowiak wrote this month in a column for the news site Townhall. “Conservatives have spent almost 40 years building a successful alternative to the left-leaning media establishment. Let’s not cripple those foundations, and roll back the fundamental right of free speech, just for the sake of ‘owning the libs.’”
The FCC’s CBS inquiry has generated more than 8,400 comments since the commission put out the call for public input in early February. Meanwhile, CBS is asking a federal judge in Texas to dismiss the civil lawsuit that Trump filed against the network. The lawsuit accused “60 Minutes” producers of deceptively editing the Harris interview to make her look like a better candidate and to harm Trump’s campaign.
Last month the president amended it to increase the amount of damages from $10 billion to $20 billion, adding a claim about having been harmed as a business owner of a social media platform that competes with CBS for viewership.
The swirl of legal and regulatory activity around CBS and “60 Minutes” has engaged more than just media watchdog types. The thousands of comments include quite a few with boilerplate lingo that was clearly distributed via media watchdog orgs, i.e. “The Federal Communications Commission should not be used as an attack dog to silence media outlets, censor free speech and go after political opposition.”
But many others were bespoke. A comment identified as coming from Jules Wang declared: “As a citizen of the United States and longtime consumer of current affairs and news from the major networks of ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN, and others, I see no reason for this probe to continue. I ask that Commissioner Carr tender his resignation at once.”
Elise Nappi couldn’t disagree more: “As a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism ’90, I am disgusted by the practices of 60 Minutes and CBS News in general. I would sincerely hope that the FCC finally takes a stand and imposes the kind of punishment on the program that not only makes a statement for the rest of the activist media, but lets CBS News and 60 Minutes know that this type of deception will no longer be tolerated.”
As Corn-Revere and others have noted in recent commentaries, the history of “news distortion” complaints at the FCC is closely intertwined with content that has aggravated politicians and policymakers. Only about 120 such complaints have been filed since 1969, when Henry B. González, a congressman from Texas, objected to the portrayal of extreme poverty in San Antonio in the 1968 “CBS Reports” documentary “Hunger in America.” González accused the network of exaggerating the problems of malnourishment among San Antonio’s poor to make for a compelling documentary. The complaint was ultimately rejected by the Nixon-era FCC.
By any measure, “Hunger in America” — anchored by CBS News legend Charles Kuralt, produced by Martin Carr and executive produced by future “60 Minutes” creator and executive producer Don Hewitt — holds up as an extraordinary work. It also underscores how the perspective of broadcast journalism has changed from public service to profit center in the past half century. After 49 minutes of meticulously documenting the economic inequality and policy failures that exacerbated hunger in the U.S., Kuralt looks straight into the camera and closes with a simple declaration.
“In this country, the most basic human need must become a human right,” Kuralt says matter-of-factly.
Imagine such a statement airing today.
