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If you were yearning to know what art Kamala Harris has hanging in her home, last week was a good week for you. An art tour was part of the pre-interview banter to which the public was made privy when, on February 5, both CBS News and the Federal Communications Commission released the uncut tape of Bill Whitakerâs October interview with the thenâpresidential candidate, filmed for an episode of 60 Minutes. The road to the publication of the footage began when the Center for American Rights (CAR), a conservative nonprofit, filed a complaint with the FCC against CBS; the group argued that, in a promotional spot for the episode that aired on a different CBS show, Face the Nation, Harris was shown giving a meandering response to a question from Whitaker about Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, only for the episode itself to feature a much more cogent and concise answer.Â
CAR took the opportunity to allege that CBS had manipulated the footage to help Harrisâs campaignâthough the full recording ultimately revealed that both segments were parts of Harrisâs response to the question. The groupâs complaint to the FCC was initially rejected by the outgoing chairwoman, Jessica Rosenworcel, but was resubmitted after Trumpâs appointee, Brendan Carr, took over. Carr requested the transcript from CBS and, in a post on X, implied that the complaint could affect the FCCâs decision as to whether to allow Paramount, the company that owns CBS, to move forward with the planned sale of its broadcast licenses to another company as part of a merger. Meanwhile, a legal drama has played out in parallel to the FCC action: Donald Trump sued CBS in northern Texas, citing a consumer protection statute and accusing the broadcaster of defrauding the public. (The statute is meant to protect against misleading advertising and other âdeceptive trade practices.â) The New York Times and other outlets have reported thatâthough CBS has denied wrongdoing and legal experts think Trumpâs case is weakâthe station appears poised to settle, lest the lawsuit jeopardize the merger.
Seven media analysts independently told me that nothing improper appears to have happened behind the scenes at CBS when it comes to the Harris interview. âIt’s standard practice to whittle down interviews to fit into time constraints,â Mark Feldstein, a former correspondent at CNN and ABC News who is now a professor of journalism at the University of Maryland, said. âYouâll do the same after interviewing me, right? You’re not going to use all my comments.â (Transcript available upon request.) Legal experts largely agree that there is no case. Clay Calvert, a lawyer and nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank, called both the FCC filing and Trumpâs lawsuit âmeritless nonstartersâ that illustrate Trumpâs âanimosity toward press freedom.â He cited a 1973 Supreme Court case, Columbia Broadcasting System Inc. v. Democratic National Committee, in which the court ruled that, âfor better or worse, editing is what editors are for.â At worst, the discrepancy between the clips indicates poor communication between editors: clumsy, perhaps, but not illegal. (CBS did not respond to requests for comment.) At best, the editors determined that the different contextsâa promotional clip versus a full-length episodeâcalled for different content.
But the merits of the legal case are mostly beside the point. âWe’re watching a fairly concerted effort to marginalize legitimate journalism,â Philip Michael Napoli, a professor of media policy at Duke University, told me. CJR has reported many, many times about Trumpâs strategic targeting of the press, and how it serves not only to intimidate journalists but to discourage the public from trusting critical coverage that does emerge. In the past week alone, he barred an Associated Press reporter from the Oval Office because the APâs style guide still refers to the expanse of water between Mexico and Florida as the Gulf of Mexico, despite Trump renaming it the Gulf of America (part of the âRestoring Names That Honor American Greatnessâ executive order); yesterday, an AP reporter was blocked from the Oval for the third day in a row. Elon Musk and other Trump allies have attacked journalists by name over critical reporting and suggested that their articles may amount to criminal âdoxxingâ of federal officials. Today, an âAnnual Media Rotation Programâ was scheduled to take effect at the Pentagon, according to NBC, transferring office space from the likes of NBC, NPR, and the Times to outlets including Breitbart, One America News, and, confusingly, HuffPost, which didnât ask for it.Â
In March 2019, during Trumpâs first term, the historian Michael Schudson wrote for CJR that Trump was not the first American president to wage a calculated campaign to discredit those who gather and publish the news. He explained that the word âmediaâ itself came to replace âpressâ in popular parlance thanks in part to Richard Nixon, who believed that the change would spur Americans to associate journalists with the manipulations of the advertising industry. Schudson argued that, in the current political climate, itâs âeconomic inequality and inequality of social recognition and dignity,â and not a failure of journalistic practices, that feeds Trumpâs efforts to discredit the media in the eyes of the public. The appropriate response, then, is for journalists to hold the line: âSome things are more important than how people respond to pollsters asking about trust,â Schudson wrote. âOne of those things is responsible, accountability-centered journalism.â
In this light, the fact that CBS is reportedly considering a settlement with Trump for the sake of its business interestsâand has already implicitly accepted the FCCâs authority to adjudicate the same matter by turning over the interview recording and transcript without a fightâwould appear to be a dangerous concession that invites future attack and legitimizes the use of a federal agency as a political cudgel. And, perhaps ironically given the station’s desire not to become even more deeply embroiled in controversy, it might also do nothing to redeem CBS in the court of public opinion. âIn journalism ethics, the appearance of impropriety is exactly the same as actual impropriety,â John Watson, a professor of journalism ethics and communication law at American University, told me. âIf you pay someone off while complaining that you didn’t need to pay them off because you didn’t do anything wrong, you might as well have done that horrible thing as far as the general public’s understanding is concerned.â Of course, letting the lawsuit go to trial would also be an imperfect solution: that, Watson said, would generate tens of millions of dollars in free publicity for Trump. From that perspective, Trump wins âirrespective of what the court of last resort says,â Watson told me. âJournalism losesâexcept in the sense that it stood up for the right thing.â
Harris, by the way, has American art hanging in her home, including works by Carrie Mae Weems, Fred Wilson, and Ed Clark. You can read Schudsonâs 2019 essay here.
Other notable stories:
- After Trump blocked the AP from the Oval Office over his âGulf of Americaâ gripe, Nieman Labâs Joshua Benton asked other major outlets whether they would go along with the name change; most said that they would (mostly) stick with the Gulf of Mexico, though Gannett plans to use both names. Elsewhere in Washington, Musk attacked Reuters for supposedly taking federal funds for âlarge scale social deceptionâ and Trump (sort of) joined in; in fact, the funds went to an arm of the company Thomson Reuters, were part of a US defense contract that started during Trumpâs first term, and had nothing to do with Reuters, the news agency. And the Wall Street Journal reports that Melania Trump personally pitched Jeff Bezos on a documentary project before Amazon massively outbid competitors to license itâwith most of the money going to Melania.
- Last year, we learned that Rupert Murdoch was locked in an extraordinary legal battle with his four oldest children over the terms of his inheritance; control of his media empire was supposed to pass to all four upon his death, and irrevocably so, but Murdoch was trying to change the terms to hand control to Lachlan, his most conservative child. A commissioner in Nevada blocked the move in December; it is now under appeal. The proceedings played out mostly in secretâbut Jonathan Mahler and Jim Rutenberg, of the Times, obtained thousands of pages from the trial record and published a detailed article based on them yesterday. Mahler and Rutenberg have long covered the Murdoch dynasty, they write, but âhave never been afforded a more revealing window into it.â
- In media-jobs news, MSNBC officially appointed Rebecca Kutler as its new president after a brief spell in interim charge; she replaces Rashida Jones and will lead the network into a new period of corporate uncertainty. Elsewhere, The Atlantic raided the Washington Post for the second time in as many months, hiring Nick Miroff and Isaac Stanley-Becker to write about politics, immigration, national security, and related issues. Harvard Business Review named Amy Bernstein as its new editor in chief, succeeding Adi Ignatius. And, also in the world of Harvard, Ann Marie Lipinski, the longtime curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism, announced that she will step down in July.
- Yesterday, GLAAD, the LGBT advocacy organization, stationed a mobile billboard outside the headquarters of the Times to mark two years since more than a hundred signatories wrote to the paper demanding, among other things, that it stop âprinting biased anti-trans storiesâ and agree to meet with trans community leaders. Since then, GLAAD says, ânone of these requests have been fulfilledâ and the signatories have yet to hear back from the Times about the letter; a statement from GLAAD recognized âsome recent improvements in coverage, but emphasized that significant issues persist.â
- And a review by the AP found that Tesla, Muskâs car company, has taken an aggressive stance against critics in China, launching defamation lawsuits against at least six car owners who reported issues, six bloggers who covered the company critically, and two whole news outletsâand winning almost all those cases. (The others reviewed by the AP were settled or are on appeal.) Two anonymous Chinese journalists based in Shanghai told the AP that âthere is an unwritten rule to avoid critical coverage of Tesla.â
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