Ouch: Wednesday’s release of the raw “60 Minutes” interview of Kamala Harris proves beyond a doubt that the once-respected news outlet covered for her big-time; how does CBS News earn its reputation back now?
Like all too many legacy media operations, it needs to clear out the partisan rot.
It can start by booting “60 Minutes” head producer Bill Owens, who has made all too many bad calls.
Most obviously, to slice-and-dice the Harris interview, cutting down one word-salad answer after another into seemingly coherent responses.
Owens told his staff that the interview editing was “perfectly fine” and that “the company knows I will not apologize for anything we have done.”
But it wasn’t journalism, but deception — hiding the true (incoherent!) nature of a favored presidential candidate.
And viewers likely never would’ve never known about the deception if CBS hadn’t released her full response to one question in a promo.
Whether it’s legit grounds for President Trump’s lawsuit over the deceptive editing is another matter, albeit a headache for Paramount, CBS’s parent company, Paramount, as it seeks a merger.
It also has the network taking heat from new Federal Communications Chairman Brendan Carr, who’s launched an investigation into whether the network violated federal rules against distorting the news — a probe that elbowed CBS into (reluctantly) releasing the full, unedited transcript and video of the Harris sitdown.
Owens also oversaw a badly biased “60 Minutes” report on the Gaza war that not only advanced the lie that Israel was blocking aid, but withheld the extremist affiliations of the advocates it showed claiming Washington was “complicit” in helping the Jewish state (supposedly) violate international law.
The segment was so blatantly biased against Israel that the network had to bring in veteran fixer Susan Zirinsky to oversee the Standards & Practices unit just to smooth things over.
Axing Bill Owens won’t magically restore CBS News’ reputation; Americans’ trust in mainstream media is at an all-time low for a lot of reasons.
But ousting the shameless partisans from power is a necessary start.
