Concha: CBS Editing Their Interview with Harris Justifies Trump’s Decision Not to Do ‘60 Minutes’

ROBERTS: “Critics are calling out CBS News for several editorial missteps. The big one, a recent decision to edit a response from Vice President Harris, which seemingly went in her favor. The media outlet now facing calls to release an unedited copy of the entire interview with Harris. Joe Concha is a Fox News contributor, he joins us now to talk about this. So, what we want to do here is we want to play, it’s the same question where Bill Whitaker asks about whether or not she would do anything different. Oh, sorry, he asks her about — about Netanyahu. And she has one answer. Sorry, I was thinking about The View. There are so many. So he asked her about Netanyahu. She has one answer that was put out in a promotional clip, and we aired that clip in its entirety. And then there’s the clip as how it appeared on 60 Minutes. Let’s watch them both here and see the difference.”

[Clip starts]

WHITAKER: “But it seems that Prime Minister Netanyahu is not listening.”

Harris: “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.”

WHITAKER: “But it seems that Prime Minister Netanyahu is not listening.”

Harris: “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.”

[Clip ends]

ROBERTS: “As you can see, the answers were completely different in the promo clip from what actually aired in the 60 Minutes program that evening. I don’t understand, why do you put out one answer as a teaser for everybody to see and then change it for the broadcast?”

CONCHA: “Well, the first answer, as we saw, John, that was all bubbles and no bath, right? Like, I could not decipher exactly what she was saying. So when the promotional clip went out, the campaign and Kamala Harris herself was getting a lot of backlash for it. And you hear those two words put together again, word salad. So CBS, seeing the backlash, then decided that when they broadcast that night — and remember, this is still a top 10 show, CBS, it’s on after NFL football, they have large audience — they put the answer out there that put her in the best light. So it’s very simple now at this point. If you’re CBS News, John, release the entire interview on cbsnews.com, infinite space there, let everyone see it from start to finish without any edits or jump cuts, release the transcript while you’re at it. But CBS only released the transcript of the edited portion of the interview. Why is that, CBS? The same news division that screams about the importance of transparency is being anything but transparency — transparent here. And this is journalistic malfeasance. And now the story, John, is far less about Kamala Harris’ actual answer after the edit and much more about 60 Minutes and their ethics, or lack thereof. They’ve become the story. So this justifies Trump’s decision not to do this interview, because if they edited Kamala Harris to make her sound better, what would they have done to the former president after editing his interview? The exact opposite, of course. There was no upside going there.”