In the wake of a massive editing scandal surrounding CBS News’ “60 MInutes” during the 2024 presidential election, an incident in which it appeared to edit Kamla’s words to make her sound smarter, the executive producer of “60 Minutes” has remained defiant as CBS News’ parent company considers just settling the lawsuit brought by Trump.
As background, the suit at hand comes from a controversy surrounding how CBS handled the “60 Minutes” interview between Bill Whitaker and Vice President Harris, Particularly, it stems from an incident in which CBS appeared to have edited out what was originally a vague, rambly response by VP Harris. It then replaced it with her giving a more polished answer.
In the incident at issue, Whitaker asked, as shown by the teaser trailer for the episode, “But it seems that Prime Minister Netanyahu is not listening.” In response, Harris said, “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…” Continuing, she kept rambling and said, “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.”
That response, however, appeared to have been edited away and replaced with a more coherent, polished, and less vague response when the ep, drawing online criticism. In the shorter response, the one that aired, Whitaker asked, “Does the U.S. have no sway over Prime Minister Netanyahu?” Harris told him, “The work that we do diplomatically with the leadership of Israel is an ongoing pursuit around making clear our principles.”
In any case, it was CBS News executive producer Bill Owens, who has led 60 Minutes since 2019, who allegedly took a very tough line on the lawsuit from Trump and the editing incident. As Fox News Digital reported, he apparently said, during a staff meeting that he would neither apologize nor agree to a settlement.
According to the reports on the staff meeting in which he sounded off on the idea of a surrender to President Trump, the woke CBS employee snapped, “There have been reports in the media about a settlement and/or apology. The company knows I will not apologize for anything we have done.”
Continuing, he allegedly said that the edits of former Vice President Harris’ answer was “perfectly fine” and thus shouldn’t be a cause for concern for the network, which he thinks should move on from the matter. He reportedly said, “The edit is perfectly fine; let’s put that to bed so we can get on with our lives.”
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Trump very much disagrees. His lawsuit refers to the matter as CBS attempting to paper over Kamala’s bad answer, saying, “To paper over Kamala’s ‘word salad’ weakness, CBS used its national platform on 60 Minutes to cross the line from the exercise of judgment in reporting to deceitful, deceptive manipulation of news.”
Further, President Trump’s lawyers allege in the lawsuit that the edit that Ownes claims is fine was really an illegal “attempt to tip the scales in favor of the Democratic Party as the heated 2024 Presidential Election — which President Trump is leading — approaches its conclusion.”
Watch the clip at issue here: